How to Read Music (Reading) 9
Lesson 9 of the 10 lessons on how to read music is about 3 minutes long and has a little more about sharps and flats and key signatures.
https://youtu.be/N1lLDGCeh3k
This lesson has brief excerpts from some beautiful music and includes the order in which sharps are added to a score in order to form key signatures. If a piece is in one sharp, the sharp is F; if it's in two sharps, they are F and C. Three sharps are F, C, and G.
Although the order of sharps doesn't really change, not all sharps are usually used in most key signatures: F, C, G, D, A, E, B.
When a piece is in flats, they are added in the same way, except in the reverse to sharps: B is the first flat, B and E the first two flats, and so on. The order of flats, then, is B, E, A, D, G, C, F.
Although these orders might seem arbitrary, there's an excellent musical reason for them. The sharps start with F# and then rise by perfect fifths; the flats start with Bb and then fall by perfect fifths.
Examples
The key of D Major uses two sharps, F and C: D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D
The key of C# Minor uses four sharps, C#, D#, E, F#, G#, A, B, C#
By the way, when musicians refer to a piece as being "in" a key, they mean that the piece uses (mostly) the notes in that scale. A piece in G Major uses notes in the G Major scale, which includes one sharp, F: G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. Not necessarily in that order, of course. Those notes are the basic building blocks for the melodies and harmonies of the piece.
This is one reason that pianists and other musicians practice playing scales, sometimes ad nauseum. When a piece is written in a key (scale), the musician can learn to read the printed music more easily by thinking "in" that scale. Among the beasts portrayed in Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals (music begins at 4:50) are pianists who are, of course, practicing their scales (at 17:10, complete with mistakes, as per the composer's directions).
I invite you to take the 10-question quiz over this video and blog. Find it here.
Next week: How to Read Music (Reading) 10