How to Read Accidentals in Sheet Music

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Katie and I’m here on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk with you about accidentals. It’s also important to be aware of accidentals that occur within the piece of music, so in this piece of example the key signature contains no sharps or flats but that does not mean that a composer can’t throw in sharps or flats. So here for example we see a sharp a written sharp, here we see a written flat, now an important rule to remember is that any sharp of flat that appears in a measure here for example A-flat carries through the measure. Let’s look down here for a better example, looking at this measure the notes between two vertical lines we see an A-sharp appear, as soon as that first A-sharp appears we know that every other A that appears in the measure will also be a sharp, so this would actually be an A-sharp and an A-sharp even though the sharp is only written the first time. Now if for example a composer does not want a sharp or flat to carry to the measure he or she might write a natural sign to remind a reader of his intentions, so here for example we have an A-flat and an A-natural and all that natural means is that there is no flat and there’s no sharp it’s just a regular A so here the composer had to put in a natural so that the reader knows not to make this a flat because the A before it was a flat. Other times a composer might write a natural just as a reminder, here for example we see a C-sharp and even though a new measure has begun so we know this C will be a regular one, the composer helps you out by writing a natural to remind you that this is just a plain C and that’s everything you need to know about accidentals."