With all this talk about sharps … and flats … and key signatures, you might start to think there’s something special or different about the black and white notes of a keyboard. After all, music notation seems to make a big deal about which notes should be sharp, flat, or natural. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter whether a piano key is black or white. The only thing that does matter is how all the notes relate.
So don’t get all caught up on the sharp and flat symbols you see in music. That’s just distracting. The only thing you really have to focus on is the intervals between notes. And as we’ve already seen, these intervals—called “scale degrees”—are easy to follow. In fact, they work the same way in every key … so they’re surprisingly simple to learn.
Of course, we’ve gone through all these intervals before. But just in case you think music notation has somehow changed the way music works, let’s look at the key of C one more time. And you’ll see the notes on the staff are laid out in the same, predictable pattern.
So … just like before, we can easily see notes 1, 2, 3, 4 … 5, 6, 7, 8 of the C major scale:
And, like before, it’s obvious that notes 1 and 8 are the same. Like a pair of bookends, they span an octave … with all the other notes spaced in between:
This tonic (note 1)—and its octave—act as the home base for the key … with all the other notes spaced at specific intervals in between. And as we’ve already seen, it’s easy to break down each interval using the squares and circles of the chromatic scale.
As you play through these same intervals in all 12 keys, the notes on the staves follow the same pattern as the notes on the keyboard. It’s pretty cool, actually. And that’s what makes music notation so useful. By showing all the same notes you see on your instrument, it makes it easy to play all sorts new patterns—like scales, melodies, chords, and progressions.
As long as we don’t worry about the sharp and flat symbols in music notation—and we just focus on the notes themselves—we’re in good shape. In fact, very good shape. I’d even say we’re ready to start playing some new note patterns … like blues scales, pentatonic scales, and minor scales. And as it turns out, these patterns are simply different arrangements of the same, basic notes.