Hello again, user, I hope that you remember what you have learned in the last lesson, because we are going to build off of that lesson. Now that you know how to read sheet music, we are going to add in some of the things you would commonly see.  We will start with sharps , flats , and naturals .

When a sharp is placed in front of a note, it raises the pitch of the note one half-step.

As shown in the above diagram, adding a sharp before a G, turns it into a G#. You should be aware that the sharp carries through to all of the same note throughout the entire measure, unless a natural is placed before the note.


A G natural and a G are the same note.

Now that you have that concept under your belt, we will move on to flats. The flat is an exact opposite of a sharp, when placed in front of a note, it lowers the note's pitch by own half-step. Like the sharp, it carries throughout the measure, unless a natural cancels it out

The sharp and flat accidentals are also used in the key signature. This is when one or the other is placed to the right of a clef. That is the key signature. It means that instead of having a note be sharp of flat for just one measure it carries through all the measures. It can change if there is a natural sign in front of that note but it only stays natural for one measure. If there is a new key signature that has a natural in the place of a sharp of flat means that those notes are now normal.

As you can see the key signature shows that you have a B flat and a E flat in the first measure. The key is permanantly changed in the next measure when those two naturals are placed in the key signature. They cancel out both of the flats so now there are no sharps or flats in the key.

This concludes lesson 2 of Basic Music reading. In the next lesson we will cover what these are and how they relate to the beat or the pulse of a piece of music.