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Key Signatures

Music is often described as the universal language.

However, there are variations within this language.

Key signatures tell us what dialect/variation of this universal language we are speaking at any one time.

In order to understand key signatures when learning how to read sheet music we need to learn about scales and keys.

Scales and Keys

Crucial things to know about scales and keys:

1. There are 2 main types of scale/key – Major and Minor (major sounds happy, minor sounds sad).

2. There is a major and a minor scale for every note (including sharps and flats) – this means that there are 12 major and 12 minor scales.

3. Each scale has a different number of sharps and flats in it.

When a composer is writing a piece they will have to decide the following….

Which key (or scale) to write it in.
Whether to write it in major or minor (this will largely depend on what mood they are wanting to create).
Which note of the scale to write it on (different notes have distinctive tones to them. e.g. Bb Major is a very rich key, whilst F# Major is very bright in tone). They will also need to think about the range of the instrument they are writing for and the difficulty of the piece (keys with a greater number of sharps and flats tend to be more difficult to play in).

One thing which does make the whole process easier is that every Major scale has a corresponding Minor scale with the same same number of sharps/flats. These are called the Relative Major and the Relative Minor.