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Welcome to the Home of the Manx Saxophone Ensemble

Keys look complicated, so why have them ?

There are twelve notes in an octave.  On a piano, these are the 7 white notes, and 5 black notes (or accidentals).  You can play any tune starting on any of the 12 notes - and each variation of the tune requires a different set of accidentals (sharps and flats) to make the tune sound right.

 

 

 

 

Scales work the same way. A scale contains all of the primary notes that you’ll find in a tune of the same key.  As an example, start on C and play a C-major scale.  You won’t need any accidentals at all.  Start the scale on any other note, and you’ll need to use accidentals to make it sound right.

 

E.g. - A scale of D includes F# and C#.  Play a tune in the key of D - you’ll use the same two sharps.

 

To make things easier for the player, we use keys to tell us which accidentals to use for a given piece of music.  By declaring the accidentals at the beginning (in the key signature), this saves the composer the bother of writing out every accidental, and makes the sheet music less cluttered.

 

So, it’s essential that you learn which sharps or flats belong together in which key, so that you are able to read music in each of the given keys.  Actually, if you learn the keys up to 4 sharps and 4 flats, you’ve pretty much covered 99% of all the tunes you’ll see up to grade 5 standard.

 

A sheet containing commonly used scales can be downloaded here ...

 

Take a look at the key definitions below.  Use the mnemonic to help you remember which sharps and flats appear and in which order.  Oh and as a final hint ...

 

The keys in which sharps appear go up in “perfect fifths” from C

The keys in which flats appear go up in “perfect fourths” from C