The Differences (and Similarities) Between Sharps and Flats

Sharps and Flats are used to denote the movement up and down in pitch from a Major-sounding tone.

Sharp

Flat

A Sharp occurs when you raise a tone in pitch by either one fret or move up from a white key by one black key on the piano.

A Flat denotes one tone lower by dropping down a fret or by dropping down one black key on the piano.

Determining Sharps and Flats

The rule for determining the name for the Sharpened or Flattened note is by looking at which note it is right next to in the musical alphabet. For example, a D lowered would be a Db and a C raised is a C#. Where it gets tricky, and where many new music students get hung up is understanding that both Db and C# refer to the same pitch. Here's how--

It's easiest to visualize the relations of the Sharps and Flats to Major notes by looking at the keys on a piano keyboard. A keyboard is a very linear instrument and stripes out the sequence of notes very intuitively. Notice how Sharps and Flats are always present on each black key, yet they go by two names - the Sharp form and the Flat form.

(*Note the exception to this rule for the B-C keys and E-F keys, as no black keys exist between them)

Learning Songs by Recognizing Patterns

When I was first learning to play the guitar, I'll admit that I was completely overwhelmed by all of the the criss-crossing lines and dots on the music sheets that I was attempting to read off of. With all of the scattered cues and musical indicators I thought that you'd have to be a genius to make sense or more notably, music out of it!

What I soon discovered (with a little musical assistance) is that all of the scattered signals actually aligned into distinctive patterns that you could map throughout the entire song. Not only are songs broken up into larger chunks of verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus patterns, but they are also typically arranged into repeating chord progressions.

Repeating Chord Progressions

These chord progressions are what you recognize as the underlying rhythm tones for the verses and choruses, etc, such as a C-E-F-G, C-E-F-G progression. The building blocks that make up songs and musical pieces are much simpler than they appear! This realization alone brought my musical insight, and aptitude, to a whole new level that I'd never experienced before.

Predicting Notes

Learning to play songs on the guitar or piano is based securely on understanding this principle -- recognizing the patterns. You can also take this one step deeper; If you are able to recognize the notes composing a basic chord shape, you can predict which notes are played in that key for the song!

For example, say that you are playing in the key of C Major; By knowing each of the notes in the C Major Chord or Scale, you can better assess what the probable notes are in the melody line before you even look at the music sheets.

Coming Full Circle

Suddenly you are now armed with a palette by which you can paint many interesting melodies or even play off of existing melodies by musical interpretation. What I mean to say is -- You don't have to have perfect pitch to hear a song and play it right back! You also don't have to be well versed in music theory to understand how melody lines are stitched together and repeated throughout the song. It's all about pattern recognition.

Try it, practice it and most of all, develop it into a habit, you'll be amazed by the results!