You may in a conversation about music hear someone use the term accidentals but this doesn't mean things that didn't mean to happen.
Notes that play themselves by mistake, sudden strange noises or musicians falling off their chairs.
Accidentals is the term given to notes that are sharp or flat, or where a note is expected to be sharp or flat but is marked natural instead.
A sharp note is a note that is a semitone - half a tone - higher than the same natural note and a flat note is one that is a semitone lower than the natural note.
That means if there is a tone between two natural notes then the sharps and flats meet in the middle.
The easiest way is to picture a piano keyboard.
Where the notes go white note, black note, white note they are a tone apart.
So for example if the first white note is a C natural and the second white note is a D natural the black note is halfway between the two.
That means the black note is a C sharp because it is half a tone higher than the C and also a D flat because it is half a tone lower than the D.
So C sharp and D flat are the same note.
There are natural notes where there is only half a tone between them, these are E natural and F natural and B natural and C natural.
So an E sharp which is half a tone higher than E is the same as and F and an F flat which is half a tone lower than an F is an E natural, and the same applies to B and C.
However, it is not that common to see for example an E sharp, it will nearly always just be written as F natural.
When a note is to be played sharp it will either be
Notes that play themselves by mistake, sudden strange noises or musicians falling off their chairs.
Accidentals is the term given to notes that are sharp or flat, or where a note is expected to be sharp or flat but is marked natural instead.
A sharp note is a note that is a semitone - half a tone - higher than the same natural note and a flat note is one that is a semitone lower than the natural note.
That means if there is a tone between two natural notes then the sharps and flats meet in the middle.
The easiest way is to picture a piano keyboard.
Where the notes go white note, black note, white note they are a tone apart.
So for example if the first white note is a C natural and the second white note is a D natural the black note is halfway between the two.
That means the black note is a C sharp because it is half a tone higher than the C and also a D flat because it is half a tone lower than the D.
So C sharp and D flat are the same note.
There are natural notes where there is only half a tone between them, these are E natural and F natural and B natural and C natural.
So an E sharp which is half a tone higher than E is the same as and F and an F flat which is half a tone lower than an F is an E natural, and the same applies to B and C.
However, it is not that common to see for example an E sharp, it will nearly always just be written as F natural.
When a note is to be played sharp it will either be
- Indicated in the key signature, so in the key of G all F's are played sharp unless indicated otherwise or
- If a note is not sharp in the key the music is written in and the composer wishes it to be played sharp then a symbol is placed immediately before the note.
The symbol looks like a hash #.
Once it has been placed in front of a note then all the notes of that pitch are sharp for the rest of the bar unless a natural sign is placed in front of the next one.
So if # is before the first F in the bar and the notes in the bar are F G F B then both F notes will be played sharp unless a natural sign is also placed in front of the second F in which case the notes will be F sharp, G, F natural B.
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