Flat (music)

In music, flat (Italian bemolle for "soft B") means "lower in pitch". Flat is the opposite of sharp, which is a raising of pitch. In musical notation, flat means "lower in pitch by one semitone (half step)", notated using the symbol which is derived from a stylised lowercase 'b'. For instance, the music below has a key signature with three flats (indicating either E major or C minor) and the note, D, has a flat accidental. { \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \relative c'' { \clef treble \key es \major \time 4/4 des1 } } Under twelve-tone equal temperament, D for instance is enharmonically equivalent to C, and G is equivalent to F. In any other tuning system, such enharmonic equivalences in general do not exist. To allow extended just intonation, composer Ben Johnston uses a sharp as an accidental to indicate a note is raised 70.6 cents (ratio 25:24), and a flat to indicate a note is lowered 70.6 cents. In intonation, flat can also mean "slightly lower in pitch" (by some unspecified amount). If two simultaneous notes are slightly out-of-tune, the lower-pitched one (assuming the higher one is properly pitched) is "flat" with respect to the other. Furthermore, the verb flatten means to lower the pitch of a note, typically by a small musical interval. Flats are used in the key signatures of F major / D minor (B) B major / G minor (adds E) E major / C minor (adds A) A major / F minor (adds D) D major / B minor (adds G) G major / E minor (adds C) C major / A minor (adds F) The order of flats in the key signatures of music notation, following the circle of fifths, is B, E, A, D, G, C and F (mnemonics for which include Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father and Before Eating A Doughnut Get Coffee First). Double flats also exist, which look like (similar to two flats, ) and lower a note by two semitones, or a whole step. { \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \relative c'' { \clef treble \time 4/4 beses1 } } A quarter-tone flat, half flat, or demiflat indicating the use of quarter tones, may be marked with various symbols including a flat with a slash () or a reversed flat sign ().

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Sharp (music)

In music, sharp, dièse (from French), or diesis (from Greek) means, "higher in pitch". More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by one semitone (half step)". A sharp is the opposite of a flat, a lowering of pitch. The ♯ symbol itself is conjectured to be a condensed form of German ligature sch (for scharf) or the symbol ƀ (for "cancelled flat"). In intonation, sharp can also mean "slightly higher in pitch" (by some unspecified amount).

Flat (music)

Pitch class

In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave position." Important to musical set theory, a pitch class is "all pitches related to each other by octave, enharmonic equivalence, or both." Thus, using scientific pitch notation, the pitch class "C" is the set {Cn : n is an integer} = {..., C−2, C−1, C0, C1, C2, C3 ...}.