Hello Lee, I have purchased your book and have been enjoying it thoroughly. I have understood everything up until page 11. A# major scale. I am confused why B# is a sharp, I was under the impression B and E do not get sharps on a guitar or piano. I am also confused why C## has double sharps, I am not sure what this means. If you could please help me understand this I would very much appreciate it, thank you from Canada.
Hi.
I don’t have the book at hand but I’m pretty sure I probably explain this somewhere further into the book.
It’s really more to do with keeping notation easier to read so that two notes don’t end up on the same line. In short, each scale, where possible, should only use one of each letter. In other words, one A, One, B, One C and so on.
In the key of A# we have A#. B#, C##, D#, E#, F##, G##.
Now let’s rename them to …
A#, C, D, D#, F, G, A.
Now the notes make more sense. Problem here is for readers, the B isn’t used and we have an A and A# sharing the same staff line – also the D and D#. This will force us to use accidentals each time the note changes and it becomes a mess.
For a sight reader this is bad and inconsistent. If we stick with the rule of not using a note name twice then everything is cleaner and easier. Once you get used to this then you start thinking in terms of those note names.
So it’s just a naming convention. If you want to think of, or call a C## a D then that’s fine if all of the above doesn’t matter to you.
Lee, thank you so much for the fast reply. That helps very much and I now understand!
