Walt: Okay so what is your question?
Male: Like I said, I have been playing bass for about six years. My brother thought me. And, he has always thought me flat like B flat and E flat. But, you were displaying some notes and you said F# when I know it as G flat. So, I want to know the difference when you are supposed to use it after a certain time, which one is better, which one is first.
Walt: Yes, the rule of stone is that when you are in a sharp - by the way, for those who are not familiar, they refer to it as enharmonic and so enharmonic are when you can take one note and write it out to two separate ways. Now F# is the same as G flat is that if I just use my chart right here, so F# after I have said is the same as G going down in a half step. Now, that is the same on bass and the guitar too. When you are in a sharp key signature, for example let us start off in the key of A. A has three sharps F, C and G. Now when I am in the key of A, I am not generally going to use a flat in the key of A. So here is how it works.
Male: So you would call it G#?
Walt: You have it, you have it, you would write this note A flat, you would just write G#. Now, you are going to write G# for two reasons. One is because it is in the key and two because you do not have to keep writing the flat there. When you are in the sharp key, use sharp, when you are in a flat key – let me give you an example of a flat key. Let us say that you are in the key of E flat. E flat has three flats so let us put it in 4th fret and say you have to know B flat in this key. You have E flat, you have B flat, you would not write A sharp, you would just read that A flat, you would stay within the key.
Now, there are times when you break that rule. A perfect example is if I am going from A natural to A sharp in the key of D. Okay, D has two sharps in it. So now, we just went from the key of A to the key of D, two sharps F and C. So the two sharps F and C, I would go from C sharp to C natural. Now back to C sharp then back to C natural, let us go back C natural, C sharp, C natural. Difficult not to read, there is a lot of information, a lot of ink for the musician to read this entire if he was using the 16 notes. Okay that in fact is a lot to take in so you are going – instead of doing this, I can write this out just once as right here. I can do this as for example B natural or a B# just once and then I have to write it out again because it is considered to be to say that this B# is saying that it is the same as saying C natural.
Male: Right.
Walt: So I just write it out once. So let us do C natural or C# up there and so this looks lot more legible when you are reading it especially when you are playing a gig.
Male: Yes that is true, it looks a lot easier.
Walt: C#, B#, C#, B#, C#, and B # you are getting with of all the sharps gone, done you do not want them right?
Male: Right.
Walt: And so that is another thing and then the third and final way is that you have in the key of D. You have an E flat major chord. You would not, maybe you did not want to call this D# major because you are in the key of D and you want to keep like you are going to the key of major chord. Do you know what to call a D# major chord? For some reason, maybe because if for something I symbolize that the notes in this chord, D, F#, A. You do not want to sharpen it all again for that five reasons so here, that is another way that I would know to write flat in this key. So if an E flat, G flat and B, here we have those two chords. But those are the two ways, let me just resound it.
The first way is through the key signature. If there is a sharp key signature, you stay with sharps. If there are flat key signatures, you stick with flats. Another way is that you use the enharmonic in order to have it to take away the E# or the flat and makes it more legible to read and the third way is that if you have a chord that says E flat major. You know you are in a sharp, you are pretty much forcing out the key E flat, G, B flat as suppose to D#, F double #, A#.
Male: Man, that answers my question perfectly
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