Playing Piano: Sharps, Flats and Circle of Fifths

Now, how this works—say, you want to play C-major, okay? So, you just start on C and look here. There are no sharps or flats, so you just go C, D, E, all the way up. So now, for G, you will go from G to G, and then F is going to be sharp. For E-minor—actually, I will talk about that later. Then for D-major, you will go from D to D, but F-sharp and C-sharp are going to be sharp. So, both the F’s and the C’s are going to be up one semi-tone. Now, you got an A-major and that is going to be F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, all sharp, but you will just go from A to A. E-major, all these. B, same thing. So, it will just go from whatever the key is. So, if that is an E-major, you are going to start on the E, and then you will just go up and follow how many key sharps or flats you have. To get the major scales going—I do not know, you can go on Google or something and download or something and then look at that. Anyway, how I figured this out is, once I read out the sharps here, then I will go F-sharp. Okay, what is one note higher than F? It is a G. One note higher than C, D. One note higher than G, A, and keep going like that. So, how do I write this? I will just go C-major, draw a circle and put A-minor underneath, then I will go down here—and this is the last one on the sharp side, it is an A-sharp minor and C-sharp major. So, I will draw those and then over here, the last one for the flat side is A-flat minor and C-flat minor, and look—it is C, A, C, A, C, A. So, you are just putting the flats on that side, the sharps on that side, and nothing here. And then I used “Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle” and all that other stuff to get my flats and sharps. And also, you can start from here and you can go, “Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle” and then “Father Charles.” So, it is just one big, huge thing spinning around. Now, to get a minor key from any major key—or actually, here. See this? That is an E-flat major, right? E-flat major means you are going to start on E-flat. It is a bit different, so you are going to start on E-flat, and then A-flat—A-flat, E-flat, and B-flat. They are all going to be flatted. So, it is going to be (music playing) E-flat. And then we are going to have A-flat and B-flat flatted as well. (Music playing) See how that works? This is pretty hard to just shoot at you guys. So, on minor scales—say, you are in F-major, right? You are in F (music playing). Now, you want to find the minor key, you will go down three semi-tones. One, two, three, and you are going to use the exact same key signatures you would with F-major. So, F-major had the B-flat. So, you are going to use (music playing). That does not sound quite right, right? All minor scales—harmonic minor scales, this is the general one, you always sharp the 7th note to make it minor. So, you take the original key signature and then you will just sharp the last note, just before you get back to the original note that you started on. So, it will be like (music playing). So, if you have the B-flat here and then instead of just playing the regular C, like you would in F-major, I will sharpen the C and then bring it back to the B. (Music playing) And that just sounds like A-minor. In what keys does it have? (Music playing) Right, and then all I am doing (music playing) sharpening the last note. Okay, try to have a good look at that, probably try and find this on Google or something, and study that and look for comparisons. And also, learn that slogan, “Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles’s Father”, etc. All that stuff. I have very little time left on this time period. I hope everything was not confusing. I do not know if that was all clear, I just kind of like—but whatever. So, keep working on that and I will see you later. Keep practicing. Bye.