There’s a part of every responsible music teacher’s curriculum that’s usually called “scales”. This is not a great name for this category of study. I call this very big category “notes”, but “scales” is a more common name for it because this is usually where this work starts and, sadly, it often does not go far past this preliminary study phase.
What we are talking about might be better named “keys” or even “harmonic material”. These note combinations are the core “words” of our music language.
If we want any experience of music as a creative activity, we need to know this material. If you had to refer to a dictionary for every word you speak you would not be having interesting or creative conversations.
So we have to memorize this material. It has to be at our fingertips, just like other stuff you know, like your name, your address, and so on. There are only 12 major keys so this is a very do-able project. I have had many young and inexperienced students start lessons in the fall each year for many decades. Every one of these kids learned all their major scales from memory between September and December of their first season of lessons.
So if you’re a more experienced player or just an older person, you can certainly learn this stuff. (Please don’t say that kids are ‘better learners’. Sure, they do have a sponge-like quality at that age but as an adult you bring a great deal more to the table. You are way smarter and much better at understanding and applying good principles.)
The language analogy that I used a few sentences back is often applied to music, with good reason, but talking about scales or keys is even more fundamental to music than words or phrases are to language. It’s the very stuff music is made of – it’s the notes! Unless your music lives in a post-harmonic world of sound effects (which is a real thing and completely awesome, by the way) – if you are playing notes you need to know your notes. You must know, as a bare minimum, your 12 major keys as they are expressed in the 15 key signatures.
If you’re reading this you might be aware of a lack in your training and a gap in your current practicing. Let’s fix that right now.
Simply put, when we first start learning music we learn our notes. That’s step one. Step two is learning our keys, and we usually accomplish that by learning “scales”. If you haven’t done step 2, step 1 is probably a bit undercooked – are you perfectly clear about notes like B#, Fb, Cb, E#? You will be when you learn your key signatures.
What’s step 3? Step 3 includes developing strong skills in sight reading, playing melodies by ear, improvising, composing, and arranging, and a strong understanding of harmony. All made possible because you actually know your notes on your instrument.
Let’s get some clarity about what were talking about. We are starting with the major keys. And there are 12 of them. There happen to be 3 ‘enharmonic’ keys which mean there are 3 keys that can be written in two ways (kind of like music synonyms). So that’s how we end up with 15 key signatures for only 12 keys.
Here are the three enharmonic key signatures:
C# major sounds the same as Db major (we would say, C# is enharmonic of Db or vice versa);
F# major is enharmonic of Gb major;
and B major is enharmonic of Cb major.
Enharmonic keys sound the same and we play them exactly the same way but it is a very different experience to think (or read) one or the other. Consequently we have 15 keys to learn.
(Theoretically, we could have an infinite number of key signatures but the system is limited to the most practical number by avoiding double sharps and double flats in key signatures.)
We need to learn to play in 15 keys. But to learn to play them we have to know them intellectually. There’s no getting past that. To begin we need to be able to figure out what any major scale or key signature would be without having to look it up.
There is a straightforward calculation to derive the key signature for any key or to determine what any key signature is.
All this information needs to be at our fingertips – go ahead and write things down if it helps you to memorize, but please don’t spin your wheels by reading scales out of a book. It’s hard to think of a more meaningless activity….
So here is your first memorizing project. Here are two mnemonics and two rules, one each for sharp and flats.
The order of sharps is:
F# C# G# D# A# E# B#
What I mean by “the order of sharps” is that if we have a key in three sharps those sharps will be F# C# G#, if there is another sharp it will always be the next one in that sequence, so the key with 4 sharps will have this key signature: F# C# G# D#
Here’s a cute way to remember this sequence – it works for kids so it will work for you too!
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle
Of course there are plenty of other words you could use to help you remember this vital sequence but what’s special about this version is that it works in the opposite order:
Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles’ Father
– which is the order of flats in flat key signatures.
Here are the two mnemonics:
For key signatures made of sharps memorize:
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle
For key signatures made of flats memorize:
Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles’ Father
I said there were two different rules for flats and sharps.
Here they are:
For sharp key signatures, the last sharp is “Ti” or the leading tone of the scale.
So with your mnemonic for sharps and this rule you can now calculate any key signature made of sharps.
For example, if you have a key signature with 5 sharps in it, you would know from your mnemonic that the sharps are Father Charles Goes Down And or F# C# G# D# A#. The last sharp in that sequence is A# and that is the Ti or leading tone of the scale.
So what key is in five sharps?
What note is one semitone above A#?
B, right?
So, B major has 5 sharps (and you know which sharps they are!).
Here’s the rule for flat keys:
The second last flat in the key signature is “Do” or the tonic.
This is easy. So if we have a key signature with 5 flats we know from our mnemonic that they would be Battle Ends And Down Goes or Bb Eb Ab Db Gb. The second last flat in this sequence is Db. That means this is the key signature for Db major.
We have been starting with a key signature and figuring out which major key it represents. You can ask the question the other way. You could ask “what is the key signature for Cb major?” or “what is the key signature for F# major?” and we can find the answer with our two mnemonics and our two rules.
What is the key signature for Cb major?
Well, we know it’s a flat key signature because the tonic (Cb) is a flat. Do you remember the rule for flat keys? It’s “The second last flat in the key signature is “Do” or the tonic”. So we need a key signature with Cb as our second last flat, so we have to go through our mnemonic for flats until we get to Cb and then add one more flat.
So we recite our mnemonic: Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles’ – there’s C, so one more and we get Fb.
And that’s all the flats. So Cb major has 7 flats, which means every note is flat in that key. (Makes sense, C major is all naturals, it follows that Cb would be all flats and C# would be all sharps.)
What is the key signature for F# major?
Do you remember the rule for sharp keys? It’s: “For sharp key signatures, the last sharp is “Ti” or the leading tone of the scale.”
So we need a key signature in which the last sharp is one semitone below F#.
Don’t say “F”.
Yes, F is one semitone lower than F# but we need a different letter name. The note we are looking for is E#.
Does it make sense to you that it’s E# and not F natural? Every major key has seven different notes with different letter names. It would not make sense in this system to have a scale with two F’s and no E.
So E# is our last sharp, so we have to go through our mnemonic for sharps until we get to E.
Here we go:
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends
That’s the key signature for F# major, 6 sharps, F# C# G# D# A# E#, and what’s more you know the one note that is natural in this key – it’s B, as in Battle.
That’s it. That’s the “math” of key signatures. Memorizing this information gets you started on step two of learning your notes, memorizing the 15 major keys.
All this information needs to be memorized and at your fingertips but don’t worry, I’ll show you how to do that painlessly. Meanwhile here are two key signatures that need to be memorized right now because the method I gave you in this article doesn’t produce them. One is C major. You probably already know that C major is all naturals, no sharps, no flats. And F major is in one flat: Bb.
In my next article I will show you ways to practice these keys so that you will not only remember them, but you will be making music with them right away.