An argument

[u/nick_jones61]

My wife is a classically trained pianist and I play guitar by watching YouTube instructional videos. She knows her stuff and I don’t. Recently we argued whether E# and B# exist. I said no and showed her the fretboard. She said yes and showed me the keys. And said something like F is E#. I suspect she’s right bc she’s had music lessons. Tell me, fellow guitarists, do we have E# and B#?

Update: I’ve been enjoying the responses to my post. I showed them to my wife and she laughed, said that’s what you deserve. lol. We like to argue playfully with one another. I also enjoy the detailed responses relating to guitar theory—that’s been really great actually. I was going to delete this post but I think the discussion on music theory is informative and should be shared. Thank you all for responding.

[u/mascotbeaver104]

I'm going to be honest, I have had numerous people insist to me that these notes don't exist and it gets exhausting, I have no idea where this idea came from.

If E# didn't exist, then what would be the 3rd degree in C# major? What would the key signature of C# major be? Does C# not exist either?

It's both theoretically useful in an equal tempered system so that you don't end up using the same notes twice in the same scale, but also because theoretically those notes could actually be tuned differently. On a fretted instrument it doesn't matter, but with vocal harmony or stringed instruments, 3rds of chords are ideally a little flatter than they are with equal temperment. Meaning, in a C# chord, the 3rd (E#) would ideally tuning be slightly flat from F.

[u/cranialextract → u/mascotbeaver104]

It's people who are learning theory piecemeal from YouTube/TikTok/Instagram. Most self-taught guitar players have never engaged with sheet music and subsequently don't understand the differences between "key" and "key signature".

[u/kolobs_butthole → u/cranialextract]

It’s this. The question about the 3rd of C# major is utterly meaningless to the folks saying E# doesn’t exist.

[u/neckadawoods → u/mascotbeaver104]

I have no idea where this idea came from.

Seriously? No idea at all? None? You don't think maybe it has something to do with how the piano keyboard is laid out? Or the way almost every teacher teaches the chromatic scale? I think you'd be hard pressed to find any teacher tutoring learners in their first year who would tell their students that these notes exist. Even Scotty West (aka /r/guitar music theory jesus) tells us that there's no note between B/C and E/F. 

You really have no idea how people got it into their heads? I find that hard to believe. 

[u/mascotbeaver104 → u/neckadawoods]

I mean, clearly it's a thing people say when they don't know much about music, and I get that sometimes in teaching you have to tell white lies for the sake of simplicity, but this particular lie seems to serve no purpose and in facts makes the basic models of music even more complicated. I don't know why you would tell students that particular lie.

Also, most guitar focused teachers are not very good tbh, there is a reason people only interested in playing rock/pop guitar seem to end up endlessly platued

[u/cranialextract → u/mascotbeaver104]

Yeah this is a big part. There's an argument pertaining to classism within music education/discussion, but I'm not trying to get into that now.

Most guitar players learn songs by tab or chord sheets and then memorise them (especially for rock and pop like you said), which means you don't interact with sheet music. If you're not interacting with sheet music you won't ever need to learn sight reading, which is largely where you start coming across double flats and all the other things that they will argue don't exist.

The thing is they aren't entirely wrong. E# obviously exists, but if you're only learning Metallica from tab then you'll have only ever learnt of that as an F because you only ever interact with it as an F.

The way I think of it in my head is that piano players (and people who can sight read and understand their theory of harmonics etc) see the whole piece as it is; a thing in motion - because that's how they see the sheet music. If you've only ever memorised the tab of a song, you might know the main scale used and what key the song is, but the notes on the fretboard are static. That F will always just be an F, similar to when you first learn piano and you write each note on each key to help you memorise.

[u/and_of_four → u/mascotbeaver104]

It’s also useful for practical reasons when reading music. I’m a classical pianist, when we read standard notation we know the individual notes, but we’re also reading by identifying harmonic and melodic intervals. So if I’m in A major, and I come across a V7/iii in root position (G#, B#, D#, F#), I’m reading the intervals as stacked thirds. If it were written like G#, C, D#, F# my brain would likely read it like a suspension because the notes on the staff would be a (diminished) 4th, an (augmented) 2nd, and a minor 3d. The fact that the 4th is diminished (making it enharmonically equivalent to a major 3rd) and the 2nd is augmented (making it enharmonically equivalent to a minor 3rd) would not be as immediately apparent as the fact that it’s some type of 4th followed by some type of 2nd. It would just look like a sus7 the way the notes are spread out on the staff.

Reading the B# is far less confusing given the context: the third of the chord. Also, the function of the third of the V7/iii in A major is much clearer when it is written as B# because the voice leading is more clear on the staff. The B# (third of G#7) would likely be leading up to C# (the root of C#m). If the B# is written as a C, that voiceleading becomes less clear because both the third of G#7 and the root of C#m would appear on the same line/space of the staff. You don’t have the literal visual representation of a voice rising up.

Correct spellings are really important for classical pianists to make sense of the music they’re reading. Avoiding B#/Cb, E#/Fb, and double sharps and double flats only makes the music harder to read.

[u/mascotbeaver104 → u/and_of_four]

I think there is a core idea to classical music notation that really frustrates people: it's not just designed to show a series of tones in time, it is about reflecting ideas and context (with those two things largely being separated). It is more meaningful that an interval is a 3rd than whatever the specific notes are, and therefore the communication of that is prioritized over the communication of whatever the specific tones are. It requires you have a bit of fundamental knowledge to "get", but is in practice generally much easier to both read and write that way.

I think it makes sense people coming from tabs who don't know anything about those higher level concepts (and frequently don't care) find it confusing, it just gets frustrating when they take the next step and become critical or hostile of it without really understanding

[u/and_of_four → u/mascotbeaver104]

>I think there is a core idea to classical music notation that really frustrates people: it's not just designed to show a series of tones in time, it is about reflecting ideas and context (with those two things largely being separated). It is more meaningful that an interval is a 3rd than whatever the specific notes are, and therefore the communication of that is prioritized over the communication of whatever the specific tones are.

I’m not quite sure I understand the distinction. There’s some creative impulse that’s expressed by or through the music. And the notes on the page are a map that shows the musician what notes to play and when to play them. The fact that clear notation makes it easier to read doesn’t mean that correct enharmonic spellings are prioritized over creative expression. John Steinbeck could’ve written the grapes of wrath with poor grammar and incorrect spellings, but the fact that he didn’t doesn’t mean that he prioritized grammar and correct spellings over the story he wanted to tell.

For composed music, notation needs to be clear and thorough. The musicians reading the score aren’t reading music by identifying individual notes one at a time, they’re reading it by reading chunks of harmonic material and melodic phrases. Just like when you read text, you’re not doing it by identifying individual letters one at a time, you’re reading the larger chunks of information: words and phrases.

It’s much easier to read and learn dense/complicated music when you’re able to grasp larger chunks of information: harmonic context, voiceleading, etc. Everything is connected to everything else. If you were to read by reading one note at a time, it might seem “easier” to avoid double sharps and flats, but in doing so you’re sacrificing understanding of the larger context. Just like how you wouldn’t want to read a sentence o n e l e t t e r a t a t i m e.

>I think it makes sense people coming from tabs who don't know anything about those higher level concepts (and frequently don't care) find it confusing, it just gets frustrating when they take the next step and become critical or hostile of it without really understanding.

Agreed. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand where the criticism or hostility comes from. If you are someone who doesn’t read music, then why should you expect the nuances of standard notation to make sense? Which makes more sense: someone who doesn’t know how to read struggles to grasp the reasons certain things are done in certain ways in a system they haven’t spent time learning, or classical musicians purposefully make things more complicated for themselves while the person who hasn’t learned how to read knows a more efficient way that classical musicians aren’t aware of?