Whole Steps and Half Steps
A half-step is when you move from one note to the note immediately following it.
The Double Sharp and the Double Flat
In the last article I talked about what it means to add a sharp (#) or a flat (b) to a note name. The sharp means "go up to the very next note," and the flat means "go down to the very next note."
I noted that Fb is the same note as E, and that even though there is a flat symbol, it’s not referring to a black key on the piano. F could also be shown as E#, and for that matter C could also be described as B#, and B could be described as Bb. Today we’ll look at what happens if we flat a note that’s already flatted, or sharp a note that is already sharped. Can you guess what note Ebb refers to?
The Twelve Notes in Music
There are twelve notes in Western music. We can identify all of them using seven letters and sometimes adding a sharp (#) or flat (b) symbol.
The seven letters are: A B C D E F G
This cycle keeps repeating. Before A comes another G, and after G comes another A. The distance between one note and the next note of the same name is called an octave. Two notes with the same letter name, an octave apart, sound "the same" to our ears…just at a different register.