Why does a piano have twelve keys in an octave while the staff has only seven note names? Why are there sharps and flats at all? The answer begins with the ancient Greeks and takes its shape about a thousand years ago, in an Italian monastery choir.
Twelve notes, seven chosen
The twelve notes are older than the staff. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is credited with finding that notes sound well together when their strings are in simple ratios, such as 2 to 1 for the octave and 3 to 2 for the fifth. Keep stacking fifths and, after twelve of them, you arrive almost exactly where you began: that is where the twelve notes of the octave come from. From the twelve, music chose seven that sound especially well together, and the scales and modes of Western music grew from those seven.
A monk, a choir and a staff for seven notes
Around the year 1000 the monk Guido of Arezzo had a problem: his choir had to learn the chants by ear, from teacher to singer, and it took years. So he drew lines a third apart, placed the notes on and between them, and named them with syllables from the start of each line of a hymn to Saint John: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. With his method a singer could be trained in a year or two instead of ten. Later, si was added and ut became do. Guido's staff was built for the seven notes of the scale: each line and space is one of them, with no place for any note in between.
The first flat: a round b
The note B was sung in two versions, a softer, lower one and a harder, higher one. Scribes wrote the soft B as a round letter b and the hard B as a square one. The round b became our flat sign, and the square b became both the natural sign and, later, the sharp. That is why the flat still looks like a small b.
More keys, more signs
As harmony grew richer and music moved through more keys, the notes in between were needed more and more. Instead of redesigning the staff, musicians kept the seven positions and added signs in front of the notes. The signs a piece used all the time were gathered at the start of each line: the key signature. Notation kept changing with every era, in the shape of the notes, in where the signs were written and in the rules for how long they last.
The keyboard follows the staff
Keyboard instruments grew in the same way: seven white keys for the seven note names, and the extra notes added as shorter black keys between them. The piano you play today is a picture of that medieval seven-note system with five extra keys.
What iCanPiano Style changes
Standard notation shows the black keys indirectly, through signs you must remember. iCanPiano Style draws them directly: a note on a black key is half black and half white, and the black half points to the key. It is one more small change in a thousand years of changes. We do not want to break the tradition, only to make it easier to read.
- F sharp: right half black. Play the black key to the right of F.
- B flat: left half black. Play the black key to the left of B.
- B natural: no natural sign. A note that is all black or all white is played on a white key.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the flat sign come from?
From a rounded letter b, used in medieval music for the soft, lower form of the note B. The square b became the natural and sharp signs.
Who invented the musical staff?
The staff of lines and spaces is credited to Guido of Arezzo, an Italian monk, around the year 1000. He also named the notes with the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la.
Why are there no black keys between B and C or E and F?
Because those notes are already a half step apart in the seven-note scale the keyboard is built on, so there is no note between them.