Reading Sharps & Flats on Sheet Music

Video Transcript

"As we talk about beginning piano basics, again, we are going to cover some things that will help you better understand this music. As you look at music, there are what we call sharps and flats, which are notes that have been modified slightly from the original note in order to produce the correct pitch within the music itself. If we're talking about a sharp, we are talking about taking a note, the note that is written and raising it a half step, meaning that you're going to want to go up a half step from the note that you start on. When we talk about a flat, that a flat will actually lower a note a half step. Now, here let me take a second and show you what I'm going to talk, what I'm talking about. If we're looking at a keyboard, again, find middle C. Take yourself to the two notes that don't have them between it, right next to these two. Okay? And as you find the black keys here, you're going to go to the one that's just to the corner of it, to the left corner. This here is middle C. Okay? Now if we want to take middle C and we want to do something to it, okay, we are going to add a sharp to that, let's say. Now, a half step, each one of these is a half step. Now, if I go another half step, I have now moved up a whole step. So this is C-sharp, right here. Okay? Now, if we want to take a note and we want to flat it, we'll start at the next note up, which this note here is D. Okay? And we are going to go down a half step. So this would also be D-flat. They are the same note. C-sharp and D-flat will end up being the same note on the keyboard. Now, as you look at the music here, you're going to look at the, you're going to see some different symbols that you hadn't seen before. These symbols here represent what we just talked about. This symbol here that looks sort of like a numbers sign is a sharp. That is a sharp to tell you that that note has been sharped and raised a half step. If we slide over here, we look at this, we have another sharp here. And the note next to it has this other looking symbol here. This is a natural symbol. This shows that the note has now been moved back to its original position and gone back. So we've now lowered it a half step once again. Okay? Now, of what a flat symbol looks like, we've got one down here. This is a flat symbol. It kind of looks like the letter B, with just a little bit of a clip off of it. Okay? And normally these are placed in front of the notes, the same way that the sharps were. And again, these will also, these will lower the note that you have written another half step."