The 12 Notes Used In Music
The sounds we hear in music every day are played using what we call notes (these are referred to as pitches as well). These notes are identified using the first seven letters of the alphabet and two other symbols.
A B C D E F G and the ♯ / ♭ symbols
The symbol ♯ is called ‘sharp’ and means to play one note higher (to the right; all will become clear)
The symbol ♭ is called ‘flat’ and means to play one note lower (to the left)
There are twelve notes altogether and the sound they make gets higher pitched each time we move to the right. The notes are written in the correct order below so you can see:
A A♯ B C C♯ D D♯ E F F♯ G G♯
Audio examples at
This sequence of notes above is called the Chromatic Scale, just in case you ever hear the term in future.
A♯ is a little bit higher pitched than A, B is a little bit higher pitched than A♯ and so on.
The notes are labelled this way so all musicians have a language they can use to communicate with each other, no matter what instrument they play.
The sequence of notes can be repeated forever; so after G♯ we can start the whole sequence again from A each time.
A A♯ B C C♯ D D♯ E F F♯ G G♯ A A♯ B C C♯ D D♯ E F F♯ G G♯
You’ll need to know how to pronounce the notes that have the symbols after them. The note A♯ is said ‘A sharp’ and the note B♭ is said ‘B flat’, for example.
There are two terms you’ll need to be familiar with when listening to/speaking with others about notes. The first is a ‘semitone’ which means to move one note to the left (lower) or right (higher), the other is a ‘tone’ which means to move two notes to the left (lower) or right (higher)
Examples
B is a tone higher than A
D♯ is a tone lower than F
B is a semitone lower than C
If you're finding that these straight to the point explanations are useful, you can purchase the whole book here for just £9.99 ( to fast track your music theory progress if you want to learn more beyond this blog post!
I will only use the terms ‘tone’ and ‘semitone’ in this book but these are sometimes called whole step (tone) and half step (semitone) by musicians. Knowing this now may save you confusion in future!
The twelve notes can also be written using the ♭ symbol and that looks like this below:
A B♭ B C D♭ D E♭ E F G♭ G A♭
This way of writing the notes above, whilst important, isn’t essential to fully understand at this stage so don’t worry if it causes confusion.
All you need to know is that this exists to help people read written music notation, the traditional music on paper that we’ve all likely seen. The goal of this book is to help you understand music and how it works in the shortest time possible. I will explain any use of the ♭ symbol a little later on as it comes up to allow quicker progress right now.
If this is all new to you and you’ve managed to follow this so far then pat yourself on the back.
You’ve now covered the first of four steps on your journey to understanding how music works and creating some yourself!
Exercises
I recommend trying to write out the chromatic scale in the notes section on the next page.
(Remember B and E don’t have a sharp version of themselves).
Try and write the answers to the questions below, if you need to look back at chapter one then please do!
What note comes after F?
What note comes before A?
What note is a semitone lower than D?
What does the ♭ symbol mean?
I hope you found this very useful!
Good luck on your musical journey and be sure to check back here for more, simple beginner explanations!
