How Many Sharps Or Flats Does Each Key Have?
Here is a transcript of the video if you would like to follow along:
Good morning. This is Duane. Have you ever wondered how many sharps or flats are in each key? A lot of people ask me that. How do I know how many sharps or how many flats are in each key? Well, it’s real, real simple and at the end of this short video today, you’re going to be able to know how many sharps there are in each sharp key and how flats are in each flat key. Not only that, you’ll remember the order of them and why. It’s really, really simple, but music theory sometimes makes things more complex than they should be.
First of all, let’s start with the key of C. The key of C is based on the C scale. As you can see, there’s no sharps or flats in that key. If you come to a piece of sheet music and you don’t see any sharps or flats at the beginning of the line of music, it’s in the key of C because it’s based on that scale of C, which goes like that. D, C and F.
Let’s go to sharp keys. G is the first sharp key. That is, it has one sharp. It’s based on this scale. It’s all white, except for that F-sharp. Just memorize that. There’s one sharp in the key of G, and it’s F-sharp. Easy enough so far. The second one is the key of D, which has two sharps. Starts on D and it goes like that. What was the first sharp? F-sharp, right? That was in the key of G. What was the second sharp? C-sharp.
Now we’re going to take the key of the third key. I know this sounds confusing at first, but you’ll understand in a minute. The third key is the key of A, which has three sharps. Guess what the first two are? Right. The ones we’ve had, F-sharp and C-sharp. The key of A has C-sharp in it and F-sharp in it, but it also has G-sharp in it.
So far, the three sharps are F-sharp, C-sharp and G-sharp. F, C, G. The fourth, the key that has four sharps, let me play it down here, starts on E. It has four sharps. It has the F-sharp, the G-sharp, the C-sharp, and the D-sharp. The four sharps now are F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, and D-sharp. Notice a pattern yet? Up five notes, up five notes, up five notes. They’re a fifth apart, aren’t they? F, C, G, D.
Five sharps is the key of B, which goes like this. It uses all of the black keys, so it’s very easy to remember. The key of B, five sharps. Let’s learn those five sharps, then. F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp and A-sharp. They’re a fifth apart. They’re five scale notes up from each other. Fat Cats Go Down Alleys. If you can remember Fat Cats Go Down Alleys, you have just remembered the five sharps. F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, and D-sharp, and A-sharp. F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp and A-sharp. The five sharps. Fat Cats Go Down Alleys.
There’s two more, but they involve some white keys, some white note keys. I don’t think I’ll take those up right now, we’ll take them later. Just for now, remember that, Fat Cats Go Down Allies. If you want to know what the last two sharps are, you can say Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bologna. Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bologna.
That’s easy enough. However, it gets easier. Let’s take the flat keys. The first flat, we know in the key of C there’s no sharps. The first flat key is F, which we know has one flat and that’s B-flat. Based on the scale of F, which has a B-flat in it, one flat. If you have one flat in a scale, it’s B-flat.
If you’ve got two flats, it’s E-flat. If you have three flats, it’s A-flat. Four flats, D-flat. Five flats, G-flat. Then the last two sharps are C-flat and F-sharp, or F-flat, which we’ll take up later when we take white key flats and sharps.
Notice this. The flat keys are just opposite the sharp keys. In other words, Fat Cats Go Down Allies Eating Bologna is just opposite from B, E, A, D, Go Catch Fish. B, E, A, D, Go Catch Fish. Got that? BEAD, Go Catch Fish. The word bead, B-E-A-D are the first four flats. Then G-flat, C and F. Got that?
If you want to know what key any given song is in, all you have to do is find the number of sharps or flats in it, and that’ll define the key. If you have one sharp in the key signature, it’s F-sharp. Then you can find any sharp key by going up a half step from the last sharp. If the last sharp is C-sharp, what key are you in? D-sharp. If the last sharp is G-sharp, what key are you in? A. If the last sharp is A-sharp, what key are you in? B. You go up a half step from the last sharp. In other words, you look at the key signature in the song, in the sheet music you’re playing at, find out how many sharps there are, and then go up half a step. That finds the key.
You always know the order of the sharps because they always, always, always, forever, evermore, will come in that order. F, C, G, D, A, E, B. Fat Cats Go Down Allies Eating Bologna. The flats will always, always, always occur in the opposite order, which is B, E, A, D, G, C, F.
Flat keys are easy to find because the second to the last flat in the key signature is the key. In other words, if you’ve got three flats in the key, we have three flats in that key, how do you know what key it’s in? The second to the last flat in the key signature is the key. If you see three flats in the key, you see three flats in the key signature, B, E, A-flat, what key is it in? It’s in the second to last flat, which is E-flat. If you’ve got four flats in the key signature, B, E, A, D, what key is it in? B, E, A, D, it’s in the key of A-flat, second to the last flat.
I’ve provided a chart here for you so that you can look at the chart. A combination of the chart and watching the keyboard here ought to do the job. You can memorize that easily and henceforth and evermore you’ll know how many sharps and flats are in each key.
Thanks for being with me, and if you enjoyed this tip, come on over to play the piano and sign up for our free newsletter. We have tips like this most every day and whole series of lessons on cords, so do yourself a favor and come on over and sign up. We’ll see you to tomorrow, and bye-bye for now.
Here is the chart shown in the video:
Here is the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAmrd_-Y2G4&feature=youtu.be
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