So this gives us the notes for the D Major scale: Take the seventh note and again raise it by a half a note.(Note the important thing here is that you KEEP the F# from the G Major scale)

In this case that give you D so the notes you get are D, E, F#, G, A, B, C and back to D.

Take the fifth note as the starting point for your new scale.

Take your starting scale (in this case G Major).

Taking this concept once more we're now starting on G Major. If the first chord is G then it'll be G Major, if it's Em then it'll be E Minor. Generally (although not 100% of the time) the first chord in a piece of music will tell you whether the piece would be in G Major or E Minor. This will explain why this key signature also describes the related minor key of G Major which is E Minor. This is the music notation way of indicating what key a piece of music is in and is called the 'Key Signature'īefore I continue with this concept, I'll refer you back to the Scale Spelling section. In this case that give you an F#.Īnd ended up with G Major which has one sharp in it's key signatureĪs we now know that G major has one sharp in it, if you see this at the beginning of a piece of music:

Take the seventh note and raise it by a half a note.

In this case that give you G so the notes you get are G, A, B, C, D, E, F and back to G.

Take your starting scale (in this case C Major).So the steps for working out sharp keys are:

Remember, here the notes are essentially all the white keys on a keyboard giving you C, D, E, F, G, A, B and back to C. So how do you think about it as a sharp rather than a flat?įor sharp keys there are two simple things that you can apply which allows you to work out all your sharp keys.Įverything starts from the C Major scale. If you think about is as raising the note one fret from A you get A#, if you think about it as lowering the note one fret from B you get Bb. Depending on how you think about it this note can either be considered A# (A sharp) or Bb (B flat). So what is a sharp key as opposed to a flat key?Īs I said earlier you have your main notes (A, B, C, D, E, F and G) but between some of those main notes are additional notes (these are the black keys on a keyboard).

Sharpkeys