The difference between flat and sharp are the same. For example Db and C#, but i don’t understand why in some songbook or websites i noticed they put C# instead of Db and vice versa. I tried searched for answer from websites , but i still couldn’t get it , they did said something about ‘accidential’ but i still need more details on this. Thanks alot
It can be quite complicated to grasp with a short answer but I’ll give it a go.
Starting with the obvious, if we lower a note in pitch then we flatten it, if we raise the pitch then we sharpen the note. So D can be lowered or raised to become Db or D#. So why would we say Db instead of C#, after all they are the same note. There’s two answers to this. The first is not really important in modern music, but for sake of a history lesson, many years ago, (before Bach I believe) the two notes were actually slightly different in pitch. I’m not exactly sure why but think it has something to do with the mathematics of pitch division and dividing the octave.
Then came along equal temperament which made these very closely related notes the exact same pitch. In other words, Db and C# used to be very slightly different pitches but that idea got dumped long ago in favour of equal temperament which, in western music, divides the octave into 12 evenly spaced pitches. I might not be completely accurate with the history but it’s somewhere along the right lines.
In modern music, as far as pitch itself is concerned, a C# and Db are exactly the same pitch. We call this enharmonic. Two notes that are the same but can be named differently. The reason we name them differently is all to do with key signatures and notation.
The key is derived from it’s associated scale. For example, the key of D major will have it’s chords built on notes from the D major scale. These notes are D E F# G A B C#.
The key of Ab will have the notes Ab Bb C Db Eb F G.
The important thing to realise here is that notes (letters) in a scale should not be used twice. For example. In the key of D major, if we used the enharmonic note Db instead of C# then we would have two ‘D’s in the scale .. D and Db. I.e., D E F# G A B Db.
This would make notation a lot more difficult to read because now D and Db would need to be written on the same stave line and the notation would become messy, especially if these two notes were used a lot in a section of music.
Once you start learning and memorising which notes and chords belong to a particular key it makes sense to think in the correct terms, it makes everything easier to communicate and keeps things clearer in your head.
Hope that helps. 🙂
