Major Scales

What you are actually practicing

A key signature is a tally. It counts the sharps or flats that belong to a key, and the order they appear in never changes, which means the whole system can be learned as one sequence instead of twenty separate facts.

The order of sharps is F, C, G, D, A, E, B. The order of flats is B, E, A, D, G, C, F. Notice that the two are mirror images of each other.

How the game works

You are shown a major key and four possible counts of accidentals. Tap the correct one. A wrong pick shows the answer at once.

Easy covers keys with few accidentals, where the answer is small. Medium adds the middle of the range. Hard uses the full circle up to seven, which is where the extreme keys live.

The links worth knowing

Keys with sharps: C major has none, G major one, D major two, A major three, E major four, B major five, F sharp major six, C sharp major seven.

Keys with flats: F major has one, B flat major two, E flat major three, A flat major four, D flat major five, G flat major six, C flat major seven.

The same key can be written either way: F sharp major and G flat major sound identical, as do B sharp major and C major. The enharmonic spellings exist because a key signature has to be written on a staff with only seven slots for accidentals.

How to get faster

Use the circle of fifths and count in one direction only. Starting from C major, each step clockwise adds one sharp and each step anticlockwise adds one flat. Practise in one direction first; mixing both at once is where people get confused.

A second trick

The last sharp in a key signature is always the leading note, one semitone below the tonic. If the key you are looking at ends on F sharp, the key is G sharp major. If it ends on B, the key is E major. This is often quicker than counting from scratch.