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334 Part VII: Appendixes TEAM LinG
Table A-1 (continued)
Number in What It’s What It Means
Figure A-1 Called
4 Ledger lines If you want to write notes higher or lower than the
staff, you can “extend” the staff, above or below, by
adding very short additional staff lines called ledger
lines. The notes (letter names) move up and down
alphabetically on the ledger lines just as they do on
the normal staff lines.
5 Accidentals The seven notes that correspond to the first seven
(sharps, flats, letters of the alphabet (sometimes called natural
and naturals) notes) aren’t the only notes in our musical system.
Five other notes occur in between certain of the natural
notes. Picture a piano keyboard. The white keys
correspond to the seven natural notes, and the black
keys are the five extra notes. Because these “blackkey”
notes don’t have names of their own, musicians
refer to them by their “white-key” names, along with
special suffixes or symbols. To refer to the black key
to the right of a white key (a half step higher), use the
term sharp. The musical symbol for a sharp is #. So the
black key to the right of C, for example, is C-sharp (or
C#). On the guitar, you play a C# one fret higher than
you play a C. Conversely, to indicate the black key to
the left of a white key (a half step lower), you use the
term flat. The musical symbol for a flat is %. So the
black key to the left of B, for example, is B-flat (or B%).
On the guitar, you play a B% one fret lower than B. If
you sharp or flat a note, you can undo it (that is,
restore it to its natural, “white-key” state) by canceling
the sharp or flat with a symbol known as a natural
sign ($). The last note of the first staff of Figure A-1,
A-natural, shows this kind of cancellation.
6 Key signature Sometimes you play a particular pitch (or pitches) as a
sharp or flat (see the preceding explanation of accidentals)
consistently throughout a song. Rather than
indicate a flat every time a B occurs, for example, you
may see a single flat on the B line just after the clef.
That indicates that you play every B in the song as B%.
Sharps or flats appearing that way are known as a
key signature. A key signature tells you which notes to
sharp or flat throughout a song. If you need to restore
one of the affected notes to its natural state, a natural
sign ($) in front of the note indicates that you play the
natural note (as in the seventh note of figure A-1,
where the natural sign restores B-flat to B-natural).