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Musical intervals (Western music) This page is part of www.amarilli.co.uk by Brian Capleton
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You will need Windows media player installed, or something else that can play mp3 files! Broadband is recommended
Continued...
Naming notes on the keyboard:
The black notes (raised notes on a piano keyboard) have names too. Starting on any letter note, if we go up in pitch one semitone to a black note, we take the letter name of the note we started on, add the suffix "sharp" to the note letter name, and apply that to the black (or raised) note. For example, the black note between F and G would be F sharp, written F#.
If we go down a semitone to a black note, we apply the prefix "flat". For example, going down from G to the black note between F and G, we would call the black note G flat (this can be written in a normal font as Gb, where the b stands for the music notation flat sign which looks quite similar to a normal lower case b).
Hence, notes can be named differently on different occasions. Usually, the default system when just talking about the keyboard is to name the black notes C#, Eb, F#, Ab and Bb, but this is just a convention.
Note that there is only a semitone between E and F, and between B and C. There are some times when the key E would be called F flat, or the key C would be called B sharp, and so on. The key F might sometimes be called E#, and the key B might sometimes be called Cb
The actual choice of note name depends on the musical context, and on the rules of tonal grammar.
In modern tonal grammar there are also double flats and double sharps, where we go up or down two semitones instead of one. There are specific rules in tonal grammar for when these apply. For example, the note G on the keyboard might sometimes be called A double flat (Abb)
Notes that are not flat or sharp (or double flat or double sharp), are also sometimes called natural. Thus C might also be called C natural.
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