Keys Signatures information
You may have noticed in looking at your piano sheet music that there are some symbols in the beginning of each line. If you are familiar with them, you recognize that they are sharp signs and flat signs. The sharp signs look like miniature tic tac toe boards, and the flat signs look like a lower case letter b. You may also run across a natural sign at the beginning. A natural sign is made up of two right angles put together like an L and a 7. Sharps, flats, or naturals that are found in the beginning of a piece of music are called the key signature. The key signature of a piece of music is important because it tells the performer which notes are to be played sharp, which should be flat, and which should remain natural. These three “flavours� of each note have three different sounds, and playing music using a particular variety of each note will give a different sound to the music being played. For example, playing a piece where the entire A notes are played as A flat will sound very different than playing the same piece using A natural or A sharp instead. Composers use different key signatures for a variety of reasons. They may want the music to be high enough or low enough in the staff for a particular singer or musical instrument, so they change the key to accommodate the instrument they want to write for. Other times, the key signature is used to create a particular sound the composer had in mind. The key signature can give a piece of music an eerie sound, or a calm, relaxed sound.