MUSIC READING - Level 6: Understanding Key Signatures

Andrew Wasson of Creative Guitar Studio answers a viewers question:

"I am more or less a beginner guitarist and I am hoping that you can help me with a good explanation about something called Musical Key Signatures.

So far, all I keep reading about is some concept to do with it called the, "Clock Theory." It seems to be used all over the internet, but I just don't get a number of things to do with this whole topic such as:

1). Why do we have to know about Key Signatures?

2). What can learning about this stuff do to help my guitar playing?

3). What does it all have to do with a Clock? It seems like most of the explanations online keep showing a clock. I just don't see how music keys relate to clocks?

Thank you for considering my question,
Jacob - Halifax, NS. CANADA

For a Handout of this lesson please follow the link below:
http://www.creativeguitarstudio.com/lessons/music_theory/key_signatures.php

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[Cyrix166]

Dude, i'm fucking hammered and I LOVE the way you talk really really fast. Nice lesson, I really learned a lot. actually, it seems, i learned all of it. All of my friends call me a "gifted musician because all instruments have come fairly easy to me, but I am an engineering major. I LOVE learning about music theory and this video helped me quite a bit. Thanks for taking the time to pot it. I really appreciate it!!!

[creativeguitarstudio]

@Cyrix166,

Wicked. Glad I was able to help!

Thanks for watching,

Andrew Wasson

[SpaceAceTX]

@inuyasha2448 Yeah but teacher probably gets paid by the hour, ha $ $

[Kensei83]

I want to add that even in music schools, nobody ever explained to me the circle.  When I was little I thought it was a UFO design.

[bmr21021975]

@hismajestythedessert cool man thanks...that actually makes sense

[hismajestythedessert]

@bmr21021975

i'm pretty sure it's because each note name can only show up once in a diatonic scale. in this case, if you called it F instead of E#, you would have repeated F twice and left out E...

so it should be: F# G# A# B C# D# E#

NOT: F# G# A# B C# D# F

[nicksprad]

thank you so much, man. i've been having trouble in my music theory class with key signatures and all. this helped out a lot. thanks a ton!

[bmr21021975]

can u tell me one thing? the key of F# has 6 sharps but i only count 5. It includes E# which is actually F natural. Why is it listed as E# when it is in fact F natural? Would really appreciate it if you could answer this. Thank you very much in anticipation..

[bmr21021975]

@darmel100 capo has nothing to do with it

[TobyEllisSongwriter]

@popups46okay you have to look at the notes. At a basic level, if the first note is C then its C, and if the first note is A its in A minor. More advanced is look at the first chord: again, if the first chord is C major its Cmajor, if the first chord is an Aminor then the piece is in A. Of course there are exceptions, but take on easy music first and then you'll easily be able to figure it out for yourself when its more difficult.

Remember A natural minor is the same notes as C major.

[shoepebble]

another way I found that makes it easy for me to remember the sharps and flats for each key all consist on the low E and the A strings. Start on G note on the 6'th string for the key of G and the sharp will be F#, jump a 5th up to the D note on the A string to the D note, key of D will have F and C as the sharps. The A note on the 6th string will be the key of A will have F#, C#, and G# and so on. For the flat keys I start on the F note on the A string and notice the notes going left.

[Sean791022]

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii­ice explaining it helpppppppppppps very much thx

[audiosyncrasy09]

tnx