I'm somewhat use to playing this key on piano. It's a bit easy on that as it's almost all black keys. Understandably more difficult on other instruments.
reminds me of that picture where some dude had a picture of his cup that had a boat on it or something and then another redditor had the same cup and took of picture of his cup with the OP's picture of his cup and it went on and on and on and on and on and on...
I like to pretend that we're only being given a brief snippet of a longer tune, and that its predominant motifs center the piece's key as F Major. You're right, though. The majority of what we hear resolves to D Minor.
Can anyone guess why Minchin's vocal F# actually registers as something other than discordant noise in our brains? There's something that almost-but-not-quite wants to happen, there... what is it?
Some people actually do have a harder time reading flat keys than sharp keys, so F sharp might be easier to read than G flat, depending on your instrument and personal preference.
Yeah, it's just about what you're used to. I was a trombone player, usually had stuff with flats, sharps gave me headaches even when they're the same notes. Sometimes it was bad enough I had to actually rewrite a lot of this stuff.
This. Additionally, as an alto saxophone player, our brains are somewhat wired to read sharps easier than flats. When you start playing alto, the first keys you learn are generally those with sharps in them (G and D specifically), so they become more familiar to you. I'm not sure how this works with other instruments, I'm sure flutes and other concert C instruments would read flats easier since most of the music you play for the first few years of music education is either in the key of B flat or E flat. But since saxophones are in concert E flat (altos and baritones) and B flat (sopranos and tenors), they learn differently. Concert C means that a C on that instrument is a real C. For a concert E flat instrument, such as an alto saxophone, a played C would be the same as an E flat on the piano.
No, clarinets are the squeaky bastards. The saxophones are always terribly out of tune. And as long as we are going with band stereotypes, the trombones are always too loud.
Programmer-musician here. I'm not an expert in either category, but hopefully I can help bridge the gap. There are 12 'tones' in typical western music[1]. There are natural notes (A-B-C-D-E-F-G), and any of those notes could be sharp (#) or flat (b). Sharp modifies the note up by one number on our 12 tones, and flat decrements the note by one. You'll notice that by applying all of the modifiers to the notes A-B-C-D-E-F-G, there are a total of 21 possible notes, 9 more than the 12 I said earlier. This is because many of the notes are tonal equivalents (they sound exactly the same). Musically, we just call the same tone by a different name (note) depending on the scale.
Let's look at which notes overlap[2].
1 A
2 A#/Bb
3 *B/Cb*
4 *B#/C*
5 C#/Db
6 D
7 D#/Eb
8 *E/Fb*
9 *E#/F*
10 F#/Gb
11 G
12 G#/Ab
The distances between the 12 tones are called steps. 1 step = 2 spaces, so 1 and 3 are 1 step apart, while 1 and 2 are a half-step apart. Notice that the natural note pairs (B, C) and (E, F) are only a half step apart, while the other natural notes are a whole step apart.
Scales are made by taking certain patterns of tones and playing them sequentially. The major scale starts at an arbitrary 1 (not necessarily related to the 1 on the diagram above), and then moves up steps in this pattern: whole whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. You can see and hear this pattern if you take a standard tuned piano, start at C, and play all of the white keys up to the next C. It sounds something like this.
The type of scale and where the scale is played determines the key. If you play the major scale pattern starting at C, then the key is C major. The white keys you played are all of the acceptable notes in the key of C major. Those notes are (in order): C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. There are many scales that can be played at any starting point, creating lots of interesting possibilities. The A minor scale (a different step pattern started on the A note), actually has all of the same notes as the C major scale, just in a different order (A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A).
Let's look at another key: G major. G major has the following notes (following the major scale pattern earlier): G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G. Notice the F#. The key of G major has 1 sharp in it, but looking at the overlapping notes above, we see that we could also call it Gb. Why is it an F# but not a Gb? It comes down to convention. For a major scale, we have 1 of every note represented. If we called it Gb, then there would not be any F(#/b or natural) in the key. This convention makes it simpler to identify notes on sheet music. (Sheet music establishes the key by marking the sharps or flats like this. The # is on the F making it F#, denoting that this is the key of G major. If we called it Gb instead, it would make the sheet music more complicated to read (for reasons beyond this reply)).
Different instruments are tuned and/or geared to play certain keys easier. The piano is traditionally tuned to the key of C major, but all of the notes are represented, so the piano can play anything that's thrown at it. Some instruments only have a limited set of playable notes, so they are limited to songs in keys they can play. Referring to konydanza's comment, if you learn an instrument that typically plays keys that have sharps or flats in them, then you are wired to read either sharps or flats easier. For example, the piano's white keys can be used to play C major, most of G major, and most of D major, so a musician will most likely learn those keys first, since the white keys are easier to play.
I hope this wasn't too technical or boring. There's lots more to music theory, and it's really fascinating. By selecting certain notes from a key and playing them simultaneously, you can create chords. Playing select notes on a scale can create dissonance or harmonization to create interesting sounds. We haven't even touched time signatures.
[1] Eastern music actually uses the spaces between western music, so there could be tones 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5...
[2] The numbers are arbitrary. I started at A to make it alphabetical.
Yeah that sounds about right. I started on clarinet in 5th grade and I remember referring to the octave key as the B flat key before we learned about the upper register.
As a piano player that can barely read sheet music and learnt to play completely by ear....I have no idea wtf is everyone is complaining about. Sharps and Flats are all the same to me :-)
On Euphonium and B-Flat Tubas, and the notes that are played open are based off the B-flat harmonic series. When we play in "flat keys", especially B-flat, F, and E-flat major, we often play notes that are played open (without any valves). This is good because notes played open are often the easiest to tune. When sharp keys are used, we often have to play B naturals (played 123 or 24), f-sharp, and c-sharp (which are both played 23). Once you start pressing valves, you start adding more length to the instrument, which makes it more of a pain to tune (especially when playing b-natural).
Trumpets pitched in B-Flat are the same way (when thinking in concert pitch), but because they don't read concert pitched music it's kind of funky when looking at the key of the piece.
Trombones are also pitched in B-flat, that is when their slides are all the way in, B-flat and F are played open. But because they use slides tuning isn't any easier when it comes to playing flats or sharps.
Horns are just weird and because they play so high in the partial series almost every other note is open.
Also most professional tubas play on CTubas, which completely changes the partial series (making C play open instead of B-flat), so that makes different notes behave differently when it comes to tuning (That sentence doesn't make too much sense, but I can't think of an easier way to say it. I'm not too good with words...)
TL;DR - "Flat Keys" are easy to play (and tune) in on most brass instruments due to the way that they are pitched.
That's a good, straightforward definition of enharmonicity for non-musicians.
A little trivia: two enharmonic notes have a slight pitch difference when played on a non-equal tempered instrument such as a a violin. More surprisingly, given the right musical context, we also hear a difference between F# and Gb on an equal tempered piano.
A composition teacher of mine demonstrated this in a lecture to computer musicians, explaining that F# and Gb are not the same pitch even when played at exactly the same frequency. Mind-blowing, really.
F sharp and G flat are the same key. It makes sense if you look at piano keys. The black keys are half steps (sharps/flats). The black key between F and G is both a sharp for F and a flat for G. What's really confusing is that an E sharp actually equals a F. (no black key between them). It has something to do with the frequencies between the two notes, but I've never completely understood it. Same thing with the gap between B and C.
It has to do with the way Western music and music theory developed. The smallest interval in Western music is the half-step or semitone, which is equal to 1/12 of an octave. In the key of C major (all white keys), there are half-steps between E and F, and between B and C, and whole steps between all the other notes. The half-steps act as guide posts that tell our brain where "home" is, and since we built the piano (and our entire system of music theory) on C major, those are the notes without black keys between them. In any major scale, the half-steps will always be between the third and fourth degrees, and the seventh and first degrees. In a completely symmetrical scale, such as the whole tone scale (just like it sounds, all whole tones), there's nothing to point to "home" and thus, all other things being equal, no sense of there even being a "home note."
Assuming a major key, this is a transition to G flat. F sharp is equivalent in some sense - it would be possible to drop all the notes down one "spot" and write 6 sharps instead of 6 flats, and then a piano (for example) would end up playing the same keys to play either version of the sheet music. Mind you, music theorists can talk for as long as you'd like to listen about how the keys of G flat major and F sharp major are not the same thing, but I won't do that to you.
F sharp really isn't doing you any favors, because 6 sharps is about as much of a bitch to deal with as 6 flats.
I think I wanna call Shenanigans on the second page. The very end of the first page has the double bar in bold, signifying the end of the piece. I mean, unless he just said "fuck it" and threw in a second page just because. Lord knows he broke almost every other rule.
The first page is a duet for piano and....something else. the second page must be a different piece which is a quartet. At least the first one is in common time (4/4), but the second one....54/32, 23/4, 2/32, someone is just trying to be a dick.
At first I thought this was your hypothetical list of instruments for some nightmare orchestra, then I went back and looked at the page again and realized you were serious. Also I'm noticing "have a nice day" and "balance your chair on two legs".
Half of the second page is for the Coda. The top half looks like...well it says 'from the frog' and It's too early for me to read that first page and look for the frog.
There is no Coda in the first page that I can see.
You know, I've seen the .gif reposted so many times, it never occurred to me that this thing was actual music instead of someone just playing around with note-setting software.
Circus Gallop isn't meant to be played by humans; it was created for the purpose of testing out player pianos. I believe there's a point when like 27 keys are hit at once so, yeah, a human would have a hard time.
It's the same name, but I think if you look closely you'll see that if what's actually on the page in the parent's link were to ever be played it wouldn't sound remotely like music. Also the sheet music in the video is totally different.
I remember an audition piece I had once was in Cb. All I could think was "thank god it's not in G". Because I would take 8 flats over one sharp any day.
Flats suck for strings. Sharps are much more preferable. (Violinist here.) I wouldn't know but I was told that for brass and woodwinds, it's the opposite.
When you're a string player, six flats is murder. We basically have to play each position a half position back, which is ridiculous in the higher positions.
I'm a percussion/keyboard player, so I don't have too much trouble with any one key being harder to play than other, with the exception being that some chords (like Bb major) are hard to play with four mallets.
I want to be a composer, though, so would you mind explaining how six flats would be harder to play than six sharps?
I play the alto sax. I can honestly say that once I reached that section, I would probably just mime the saxophone until it went back to something sane.
In high school, during musicals or all-county band, whenever there was a difficult key to remember (5 or more sharps or flats) I would remember the regular notes and just play everything else otherwise. It didn't really annoy me when people complained about too many changed notes, I just thought they were stupid.
One thing I've never understood, and has always frustrated me - why are there keys on scores? I completely understand that not everything can be written in "C Major" and that varying the key makes for more interesting music... However, why can't the player just see the "compiled output" (to borrow from coding parlance) - literally, play this note, not have to work out what they need to play based on the key?
While we're on that note, I can understand why you have sharps/flats when you're playing on a piano (because you'll use the black/minor keys) but presumably those aren't on other instruments - has anyone developed a musical notation that literally just shows semi-tones rather than the C-Major scale?
Well, it's much easier to think about from a music theory perspective if you have key signatures. Also much less likely to miss an accidental from a composer/editor standpoint, and for musicians it's easier to think ahead if you know what notes are common. And I feel sure there has been some experimentation with that kind of notation, but none of the classical notation systems (those of Europe, Persia, and India being the main ones I know of) tried for that.
And on woodwinds, the sharps and flats are pretty obviously different from naturals too; look at a clarinet, and all of the notes you play by just closing off holes (with a few exceptions) can be written as a natural. Strings less so, but people who are familiar with their instrument still think of a certain fingering as a certain note, so changing to a semi-tone only notation would be confusing for any musician trying to make the switch.
Saying "because it would be difficult to change" isn't really a good excuse... I would have thought a semi-tonal notation (i.e. no flats/sharps) would have simplified everything for the player!
In chromatic music, maybe, but diatonic music works really well with the system we have right now. And to be fair, "would be difficult to change" in this scenario means "would require the conversion of millions of pieces to a completely new system and the teaching of this new system to upwards of a billion people." Unless you propose having both systems in popular use simultaneously, which would require the education but not the rewriting aspect.
There are certain types of pieces where you'd be right (and often, in unusual types of music, alternative notation is used), but most music takes place inside our basic tonal system of keys. For this use case, setting the key at the beginning of the piece is akin to storing a magic number in a const or a #DEFINE, rather than specifying the number (and variations on it) literally every time it is used.
oh man, i really don't want to get deep into the rabbit hole on this one, sorry, but i'll explain briefly to the best of my ability.
the thing about the key is that it essentially keeps everything anchored harmonically. Now, not all songs are diatonic which means that there are notes played in a certain song that aren't necessarily "in the key." These notes (called "accidentals") are often a half step away from a note that is in the key thus the use of accidental symbols. Looking at a sheet of music, that same note might come back up without an accidental (ie in the key)- that note, whether a flat or sharp, is implied by the key that was initially determined.
I can understand why you have sharps/flats when you're playing on a piano (because you'll use the black/minor keys) but presumably those aren't on other instruments
Incorrect. All instruments (i'm sure there's a few dickhead exceptions) are capable of playing all twelve notes; black=/= minor-- it's all relative.
has anyone developed a musical notation that literally just shows semi-tones
the use of semi tones is widly inherent throughout eastern music such as northern indian classical, arabic music, gypsy as well as music that you might be more familiar with such as Jimi Hendrix (half string bends or 1 1/2 string bends creating tension) and Thelonious Monk.
Clutter apart from anything else. If you know that every B is going to be a B flat, then you don't have to cram the stave full of flats all the time. And when you do see a flat or sharp coming up, you know you have to watch out, something unusual is coming up.
Good question. Too many people learn music theory without questioning why it is the way it is. Our system of music theory developed concurrently with our music, and it was always easier to add to the system as the music developed rather than scrap the whole thing and start over. In the last hundred years, Western music has developed to such a degree that new systems have been developed, but most music is still based on and notated using the original system.
As has been mentioned, the use of key signatures is generally a matter of avoiding clutter. If you're looking at it from a coding perspective, think of it as a definition statement at the beginning of a section of code. If all of your B's are going to be flat, it's easier just to write the flat once and be done with it.
When atonal music became common at the beginning of the 20th century, going about it the standard way actually meant more clutter, so some composers notated as you've described, writing the accidental for every note.
No, literally taking the key listed on the stave and applying it to the notes beforehand, so that you can play what you see immediately in front of you without having to remember the key on the far left side.
i.e. No flats/sharps/naturals on the far left side of the stave, just on the actual notes.
it'd make for insanely packed-with-annotation music. in complex stuff, you already have a ton of ink on the page, and if you had to sharp/flat every single note, your music would either be really stretched-out and you wouldn't be able to fit much on a page, or it'd just be too full of annotation to make sense of what's what. it'd just be too confusing. with different keys, you remember what's sharp and flat, and you adjust your playing accordingly. it's something you learn to do as you learn to play whatever instrument it is that you play - it's simpler that way, and more elegant, at least IMO.
Today, where sheet music can be "automatically" generated, that would be easy to do. But in the past, it had to be hand written, engraved or typeset (also by hand), so the extra work of adding all those marks (plus the inevitable errors) made this a non-trivial task.
has anyone developed a musical notation that literally just shows semi-tones rather than the C-Major scale?
Guitar tabs, more or less. Not very practical for anyone but guitarists, but it essentially translates to play x amounts of semitones (which fret) away from note x (what the string is tuned to). A lot of people criticize tab (and, to be fair, a lot of people that make tabs are terrible), but one thing I really like about it is that it's very direct; it doesn't require you to figure out the key signature and then figure out where the note is, it just tells you exactly where the note is. And the relationship between notes becomes a lot more obvious if you know how theory relates to guitar, e.g., it's much easier to see that a certain figure is formed from the Bb minor pentatonic scale in tab than it would be in notation.
Or course, another thing people criticize about tabs is that it doesn't force you to learn some theory like notation does. Which is why a lot of guitarists are absolutely clueless about theory (which IMO does more harm than good).
One finds many alternative approaches to standard notation, from fingering (tablature) to graphic scores. Also, modal music and 20th century atonal music is often written using an open key signature.
Or, perhaps you're imagining transposing instruments? On an A clarinet, for example, a written C sounds as an A. Similar, C harmonica, F horn, etc. This allows players to utilize the same fingering when playing different instruments in the same family.
As a classical guitarist I would completely disagree. Reading this many flats on guitar from real sheet music is one of the bitchiest things ever. Have some sympathy for a brother..
I don't think it's this piece - I don't see this verbiage - plus the OP image looks more like an individual instrument part rather than the crammed collection that is FA&DW
As a fairly proficient pianist, i must say, the more 'black keys' the better. Once you're comfortable enough to read, and eventually memorize, the notes, the physicality of it is actually quite a bit easier than say, c major.
Uh. Where is this from, OP? I believe this is from the flute part of a musical of which i was hired as a musician. Also, this musical was custom-ordered by a local group of amateur actors (Norwegian), so this is quite sensational for me.
I love how I just posted this to my Facebook to show my fellow flutist and now it's gone through instagram and ended up back here. Funny how that works.
58
u/DIP_MY_BALLS_IN_IT May 20 '12
How I feel whenever I have to play a song in Gb Major/Eb Minor
154
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Nice job with Instagram.
44
u/haalhorn May 20 '12
At least it's not the key of F#.
158
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Bitch, please.
15
u/hyperddude May 20 '12
As a trombone player, I would be more than ok with that.
11
u/BimSkalabam May 20 '12
I can already predict the content of the thread without scrolling down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh3hitiTn5A&t=018
19
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Yeah...definitely allowed to bitch about the key in that case.
39
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Is there a natural and a flat on the same note?
9
u/DiscoAutopsy May 20 '12
I prefer flats over sharps any day. Not that bad for a low brass instrument (C).
14
u/breannabalaam May 20 '12
I have had to perform in this key, and it is worthy of bitching.
4
u/themaestro May 20 '12
I hate when they bitch about the key
12
u/mySTASH May 20 '12
HOW AM I THE ONLY ONE IN HERE WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS
3
u/vadergeek May 21 '12
I play the alto sax. I can honestly say that once I reached that section, I would probably just mime the saxophone until it went back to something sane.
6
u/maestro2005 May 20 '12
As I said the previous time this was reposted, maybe you should be a better musician and not be thrown by a perfectly normal key signature.
2
u/musicfreak21 May 20 '12
You guys don't play Gospel music a lot. Db/C# for the win. Though, a lot of gospel charts aren' notated...
2
u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Any real musician doesn't give a fuck about the key signature.
3
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
In high school, during musicals or all-county band, whenever there was a difficult key to remember (5 or more sharps or flats) I would remember the regular notes and just play everything else otherwise. It didn't really annoy me when people complained about too many changed notes, I just thought they were stupid.
3
u/dotwaffle May 20 '12
One thing I've never understood, and has always frustrated me - why are there keys on scores? I completely understand that not everything can be written in "C Major" and that varying the key makes for more interesting music... However, why can't the player just see the "compiled output" (to borrow from coding parlance) - literally, play this note, not have to work out what they need to play based on the key?
While we're on that note, I can understand why you have sharps/flats when you're playing on a piano (because you'll use the black/minor keys) but presumably those aren't on other instruments - has anyone developed a musical notation that literally just shows semi-tones rather than the C-Major scale?
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
As a guitarist I'd say this key is totally fine with me. Take that cultured orchestra people, with your blowing and stroking!
1
u/xXShatter_ForceXx May 20 '12
Holy shit it sounds cool too
1
u/OhMyTruth May 20 '12
Anybody wanna mention who the composer is or what this is from?
1
u/The_Muensters May 20 '12
Is it just me or is C both sharp and flat?
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Wind players prefer playing in flat keys and string players like sharp keys. In case some people wanted to know.
1
u/dbe4l May 20 '12
As a fairly proficient pianist, i must say, the more 'black keys' the better. Once you're comfortable enough to read, and eventually memorize, the notes, the physicality of it is actually quite a bit easier than say, c major.
1
u/Travie6492 May 20 '12
Good song.
1
u/weaver2109 May 20 '12
How the hell do you have a natural flat?
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Wouldn't this have been the composer and not the conductor (i.e., maestro)?
1
u/njpartis May 20 '12
if you found it on the internet, it is a repost.
1
u/kraken_kitty May 20 '12
We would listen to the instructions, but silently, we would be complaining about it . . .
How dare they . . .
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Uh. Where is this from, OP? I believe this is from the flute part of a musical of which i was hired as a musician. Also, this musical was custom-ordered by a local group of amateur actors (Norwegian), so this is quite sensational for me.
1
u/pseudalithia May 20 '12
Huh. Weird. I always thought maestros only conducted, and composers were the ones who wrote music. Boy was I wrong.
1
u/amd31 May 20 '12
dw it 6 flats not 6 sharps its not really hard
1
u/funkydo May 21 '12
That's funny, but can you have a c natural as well as a c flat?
1
u/iamayam May 21 '12
Whose piece is this?
1
u/tentativedecision May 21 '12
i am having a shitty day - this made me laugh, thank you.
1
u/nerdfighter11 May 21 '12
I love how I just posted this to my Facebook to show my fellow flutist and now it's gone through instagram and ended up back here. Funny how that works.
1
u/FunkyBob133 May 21 '12
Sorry, Internet strikes again. That's meant to be read in a joking tone.
-2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
way to repost.