Why is there no B# or E# note on the piano?

in western music we have 12 unique pitch classes 12 notes seven of these notes are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet then we also have these five extra notes shoved in between the seven alphabetical notes these are the black notes these black notes each have two names depending on context they are either the sharp of the note to their left for example C sharp or they are the flat of the note to their right for example d flat but a question that every musician has asked at some point is why is there no black note in this gap or this Gap why is there no B sharp and no e sharp or why is there no C flat or F flat well the first step to understanding why there is no note in these two gaps is to first ask why are there gaps here in the first place if we wanted to we could arrange our 12 notes our 12 standard notes of western music like this with no gaps at all wouldn't this make more sense after all it would make the octave physically narrower so the human hand could play wider intervals wider chords and we could still work out which notice which by marking one of them in red like we do on a harp well the reason that we don't arrange our keyboard like this and instead use this familiar layout with the two gaps all comes back to one major part of western music the major scale as you probably know the white notes on the piano actually make a major scale if we play all of the white notes from C to C we get a C major scale and as you may have guessed this is not a coincidence the layout of the keyboard ultimately stems from the major scale and its importance in western music all major scales follow a pattern of tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone that's literally the gaps between the notes that defines the major scale a semitone is the smallest interval we use in western music and a tone is just two semitones so the short answer for why we don't have a note in this Gap or this Gap is because there is so to speak no note there there's no room to fit another note in the notes C and D for example are a tone apart two semitones so there is space in between to fit another note D flat or C sharp same goes for between d and e f and g g and a and between A and B but because E and F are only a semitone apart and B and C are only a semitone apart and the semitone is the smallest interval we use in western music we can't have a note in between enf or between B and C these notes are already as close as possible within our Western system so if we're going to keep the semitone as our smallest interval we don't actually need a note between E and F or B and C but even if western music uses the semitone as its smallest interval from a pitch perspective from a frequency perspective that is still technically space between E and F or B and C to fit another note there are intervals smaller than semitones we just don't commonly use them in western music if we cut the interval of a semitone in half we can get a quarter tone giving us space to fit another note in between these notes these would be what we call half sharps for example we'd have a b half sharp or an e half Sharp in fact we could have an extra note between any of the notes on our keyboard not just in these gaps we could have a g half sharp or a d half sharp we could even refer to these notes by different names we could call our B half sharp as C half flat if we wanted to these half sharp or half flat notes are called microtonal notes notes smaller than those that we usually get in western music if you'd like to learn more about micro tonality I've got a whole video on it here however this still doesn't explain why we base the layout of our musical keyboard and musical system around the major scale to find out why western music theory is built around the major scale or we can call with the diatonic scale we need to go back to what is generally considered to be the start of formalized western music theory playing Charmed [Music] plane chart also known as Gregorian chant was the music sung by monks and nuns from at least as early as the 8th Century at this time the music was monophonic meaning it was just Melody no chords one note at a time foreign the music was also exclusively diatonic meaning it only used the seven notes of the major scale now to be clear the 12th note chromatic scale that we used today did exist at this time but historically you wouldn't use all 12 notes of the scale in one composition like we might today instead the black notes were effectively alternative versions of notes from the major scale that's why the 12 notes of the keyboard aren't named after the first 12 letters of the alphabet you had your seven main notes a b c d e f g and then you might use an alternative version of one of those notes so the black notes didn't really deserve their own distinct alphabetical note name now as a brief aside you might be thinking if all of this plane chart was just using the seven notes of the major scale and didn't even have any chords surely it all sounded really samey well this is actually where modes come from just because we're limited to the seven diatonic notes the white notes doesn't mean we're stuck in the majors scale we could use a mode of the major scale for example if we use all of the white notes but treat a as autonomics note we are now using the aeolian mode the a minor scale or we could treat d isotonic note and we're now singing in D Dorian this is where our idea of modes comes from and is why they're often referred to as the church modes but anyway back to the topic at hand as I was saying the musical system of the time was based around just using seven notes the white notes so when did they start using some notes from Beyond the diatonic scale when did they start using what we would call Black notes well although I just said that Gregorian monks just used the seven diatonic notes they did actually sometimes use one other note they would sometimes swap be natural for B-flat the main reason they did this was to resolve the issue of the tritone between the notes F and B as you might have heard before at this time the tritone was considered an undesirable interval so for example if you were a 10th Century Monk and you'd just written this melody because currently we have a tritone here between the note F and the note B so how do we turn this undesirable dissonant tritone into a desirable consonant interval like a perfect fourth or a perfect fifth well by swapping the B natural for a B flat foreign this is where western music got its first black note with the option to swap be natural for B flat we can now have a nice continent perfect fourth or perfect fifth anywhere in the scale but why did they call this new note B flat well that's largely because this new note wasn't seen as a new addition to the seven pictures but instead was an alternative version of B the monks wouldn't have sung B and B-flat in the same piece of music they would have used one or the other so the piece would still be based on just a set of seven notes so we now have one of our five black notes but how did we wind up with the other four and why only four more well the next Black note that was added was E flat as I mentioned before plane chant was initially monophonic I.E it had no Harmony no chords it was just a single unaccompanied Melody however as early as the 9th century Harmony began to be used the earliest example of Harmony was what's called organum this was when the main Melody would be harmonized by another voice simply singing the same Melody but a parallel fifth or fourth below it so for example if we take that Melody that we had before we could add a voice singing a fifth below it like this [Applause] and this is where we encounter the need for an E flat note see here the interval between these two notes the E and the B flat is our old foe the undesirable tritone so to give us a nice perfect fifth below the B flat note here we're going to have to flatten our e giving us our next Splat note E flat [Applause] so we've now got B flat and we've also got E flat but what about the others well it isn't clear exactly when our other black notes began to be used and of course the practice of Music varied from place to place so it wasn't like there was one big decision made to add new black notes even the addition of the B flat and E flat that we've discussed before would have happened at different times in different places but ultimately the reason that the last three black notes were added was due to ever more complex use of Harmony over the coming centuries Harmony would evolve from just two voices moving together like this into full polyphony with various voices moving with their own independent motion now although the tritone was becoming a more acceptable choice of Harmony at this time composers still needed and wanted to be able to build a lovely perfect fourth or perfect fifth above or below any given note so for example if they wanted to have a note a fourth Above This E flat note well they need to use an A flat note so now we have an A flat and of course we also want to have the option to build a perfect fourth Above This note above this a flat note so we're going to need a d flat and now I also want to be able to have a perfect fourth above our d flat note which requires a g flat and furthermore I also want to have the option to have a note a fourth above the G flat note well luckily we don't actually have to add another note this time we already have a note a perfect fourth above g flat B so now with this set of five black notes we can actually have a perfect fourth or a perfect fifth above or below any other given note so that's why we only need five black notes they were added in such a way to allow a perfect fifth or perfect fourth to be played above or below any other note on the keyboard and that is why we don't need a note between E and F or a note between B and C because forcing some sort of B Sharp note in between these two notes wouldn't give us access to any perfect intervals like a fourth or fifth it would just introduce a whole bunch of weird micro tonal intervals of course let's not forget that this whole time we've not actually been talking about keyboard music we've been talking about monks singing plane chant but it was this musical system first developed for writing categorizing and arranging plane chart that went on to become the basis of all Western music making and thus the system that instruments like keyboard instruments were built around this 12 note system has been around for a long time now the earliest known example of an instrument with a modern chromatic keyboard layout like the one that you would recognize was an organ installed at halberstadt Cathedral Germany in 1361. so by the time that any other keyboard instruments like the harpsichord or the piano were developed this keyboard of 12 notes seven white and five black was already the well-established default and despite the centuries has remained the default ever since now one topic I haven't mentioned so far in this video is temperament put simply for a piece of music to be perfectly in tune to be in what's called just intonation the tuning of each note needs to be able to move and flex as the music is performed which is something that can be done when singing a note for example but not when playing on a fixed tuned instrument like a piano where adjusting the tuning in real time would be impossible now some attempts were made historically to offer alternative tunings of each note on the keyboard to bring your playing closer to just intonation some keyboard makers experimented with split keys to offer two different tuning options for the same note But ultimately rather than adding more keys to the keyboard to offer multiple tunings of the same note we settled on a tuning system on a temperament known as 12 tone equal temperament and this is the tuning system that almost all music uses today to find out more about what 12 tone equal temperament is and why Music performed on the piano is not perfectly in tune check out this video I did previously so that's why we don't have a black note here or here we simply don't need these notes but there is still one last thing I'd like to address in this video before the end we've established now why we don't have a B sharp or an e sharp on our piano but we can actually have a B sharp or e sharp on our sheet music for example here in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata we can see a couple B Sharps [Music] so how are we meant to play these notes where do we find our B Sharp note well B Sharp is actually just another name for C natural sharp effectively means just to rise by one semitone so although this note on the keyboard is usually referred to as C in some contexts we can instead refer to it as B Sharp so why do we do this why do we have a B sharp in our sheet music even though it doesn't exist on our keyboard wouldn't it be easier just to call it C if that's what it's actually meant to be well you'd think so wouldn't you but actually based done the way that sheet music is written and the way that accidentals work in sheet music it's actually more practical to describe this note here in Moonlight Sonata as a B Sharp rather than just calling it a c natural let me show you why if we did notate these B Sharps as C Naturals instead we would have to add a natural Mark here because the key signature is making all of the seasonless piece of music C Sharps by default but okay whatever let's put that natural Mark in what's wrong with that well the problem is an accidental like a natural Mark is in effect for the entire bar it doesn't just affect this note it affects every note on that line of space until we reach the bar line so by putting this natural Mark here we've now inadvertently made this C here a natural even though it was actually meant to be a C sharp so to fix this we're now going to have to add a sharp to this C but wait there's more just like the natural Mark the sharp we've added or so lasts for the entire bar meaning that it's turned this C that wasn't C natural into a C sharp so now we have to add another natural Mark to undo that sharp so as you can see this has quickly become quite a mess and this is why b-sharps can be useful even though reading the note B Sharp might be a bit jarring at first it's still a better solution than having to read such a mess of accidentals like this we need a name that's witty at first but it seems less funny each time you hear it how about the B sharps [Music] perfect

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 439,643

Keywords: b sharp, f flat, e sharp, c flat, black notes, piano, why, explained, history, keyboard layout, notes, major scale

Id: lN54Y73LlLo

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023