Photo: Ivan Samkov

What are the 7 notes on a piano?

The most important thing to remember is that a piano has 7 white notes namely C,D,E,F,G,A,B and 5 black notes C#, D#, F#, G#, A# or Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb (depending upon which key your in). Nevertheless there's only 7 white plus 5 black which equals a total of 12 piano notes.

londonpianoinstitute.co.uk - The piano has only 12 keys. 7 white notes and 5 black notes | LPI

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As a new piano enthusiast sitting in front of the black and white notes for the very first time, it can be quite a daunting experience!You will probably feel lost and slightly confused by the magnitude of the piano’s keyboard.The most important thing to remember is that a piano has 7 white notes namely C,D,E,F,G,A,B and 5 black notes C#, D#, F#, G#, A# or Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb (depending upon which key your in). Nevertheless there’s only 7 white plus 5 black which equals a total of 12 piano notes. The next thing to notice is that the keys repeat again and again and again.

This diagram demonstrates how it works:

Diagram number 1 shows the 12 notes in total

Diagram number 2 demonstrates how this pattern keeps repeating over and over across the entire piano’s keyboard. So in actual fact if you think about the nature of this wonderful instrument you will notice that it is a repeated keyboard designed to fit a human’s reach. (If we had very, very, very, long arms, we could have a 10 meter wide piano repeating the notes again and again – although this would probably not make much sense as we would not be able to hear the extremely low and high frequencies!) I hope you’ve enjoyed this little article about how the piano works. It’s essential to understand the nature of an instrument in order to enjoy it more. Piano students who understand the nature of the instrument and how it works will make much faster progress than those without this basic understanding. A small tip for beginners: Buy a small little keyboard that you can take with you wherever you go. (At work/holiday or a business trip). You can then use that mini keyboard to visualise this exercise in more depth and to practice some of your scale patterns on it throughout different octaves of the keyboard. (An octave is a length of 12. Each new time the 12 notes are repeated, we are operating in a new octave. The sound will go higher in pitch when we ascend on the keyboard and lower in pitch when we descend.)

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What key is jazz played in?

G, E and A which are probably the most common rock keys. Similarly, the reason jazz is mostly written with flats is because jazz often uses horns and it's easier to play a horn in flat keys because they are transposing instruments (pitched in Bb and Eb).

rossimusic.biz - Why is jazz mostly written in keys with flats? | Rossi Live Music Blog

There’s lots of great answers to the question here, but I would like to add that, it’s the same reason that there are a lot of Rock songs in sharp keys! Why? Because it’s about who is composing the songs. Guitar players generally write rock music and they like to use keys where they have more open strings. It’s simply easier to play with open strings so that’s what they gravitate to. G, E and A which are probably the most common rock keys. Similarly, the reason jazz is mostly written with flats is because jazz often uses horns and it’s easier to play a horn in flat keys because they are transposing instruments (pitched in Bb and Eb). So, as an example, if a song is written in Concert F (one of the most popular keys), then Bb instruments (like trumpet and tenor sax) are playing in the key of G, and a song in the key of Bb would put a horn in the key of C, etc. Those are easy keys to play for horn players so those are the keys that jazz writers tend to gravitate to especially if they’re writing for horns as well as the tradition of flat keys. One of the favorite keys of guitarists is E and that puts a Bb horn player in the key of F#. Not at all a friendly key for most horn players. But, even if you’re a horn player and you are forced to play with guitar based bands you will become more adept at playing in sharp keys. There are some horn players which actually PREFER sharp keys especially for blues based songs because the blues scale adds flats to the key.

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