3: Key Signatures

 The very next symbol that appears after a clef is called a “key signature,” and is some number 0 to 6 (usually—some very exotic piece might have more than six) of either sharps or flats added in a very specific order. I’ll get into detail about why the orders are what they are, but for now, know a few things:

1.       Zero is an allowed number, and it does mean something!

2.       You cannot mix sharps and flats in a key signature

3.       You must add them in a specific order, and cannot skip them

4.       If you see a key signature, you never have to guess what key it refers to, because every key has a unique key signature, and every key signature refers to exactly one of each major and minor keys. (We’ll talk about what major and minor mean very shortly.)

5.       For the order of notes to be sharpened, it is as follows: F, C, G, D, A, E, B (little kids remember this as “Father Charles goes down and ends battle”) and B, E, A, D, G, C, F for the notes to be flattened (“Battle ends, and down goes Father Charles”).

6.       The orders of the sharps and the flats are exactly reversed.


This, for example, is the key signature of G major or E minor on a treble staff:

G Major Scale - All About Music Theory.com

And this is G-flat major or E-flat minor on a bass staff:

Major Key Signatures for Bass Clef Flashcards | Quizlet

 

In an upcoming section, we’ll get to what major and minor mean, how to build scales, the relationship between a major-minor pair (G/e, from the treble clef, for example). But before we do that, we’ll focus our very next section on the notation of rhythm.

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