Music Video Lesson: Why do they write E sharps and C flats?

Hey, welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with a viewer question. Why do they write E sharps and C flats? These are white keys after all. Why wouldn't they just write B or F if they're going to have those notes? This is an excellent question and there's tremendous ramifications for the whole structure of western music that's implied by this question. So western music, the music we're all familiar with, whether it's symphonies or a pop song, it's all based upon scales. What are scales? Scales are a series of whole steps and half steps that have all the notes, all the letter names in order. So, for example, a C major scale is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Very easy to recognize when you see a string of notes together. And it's diatonic, that is all built in the interval of a second. One letter to the next letter. Very simple.

Well, here is where I'm going to be able to impart to you exactly why it would make more sense in a certain context to have a E sharp or a B sharp instead of the key F which is the same as an E sharp or a C which is the same as a B sharp. Why would they write it? Well, let's say you had a piece that was in a C sharp major. Well, you start with C sharp. The second note of the scale is D sharp, the third note of the scale is, yes, E sharp. Then you go to F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B sharp, C sharp. Notice, it has all the same letters as the C major scale except each one is a sharp. So if you were going C, D, E and you were in C sharp major and had C sharp, D sharp, F! That would be rather shocking because from D to an F doesn't look right on the page, because it is not step-wise. So it actually would be easier to decipher the notes by having it spelled diatonically, that is step-wise with all the letters in order.

Likewise, chords are built on the interval of a third. Thirds are simply two letters apart like C, skip the D, go to E, skip the F, go to G. C, E, G, a C major chord. Well if you had a C major sharp chord, indeed it would be much easier to see it as a major chord C sharp, E sharp, G sharp. Instead of C sharp, F, G sharp, which doesn't make much sense as a chord because chords are always all the lines or all the spaces.

So you can instantly identify something as a chord, simply by how it looks on the page. I hope this makes sense to you and next time you have an E sharp or a C flat, you don't curse it and you realize yes, it's logical and you understand that it can actually be easier to read by having these nomenclatures. Thanks so much for the great questions. Again, Robert Estrin at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com.

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