Sharps, flats, etc. It seems so needlessly confusing to a layman.
In: 8
Originates from monk chants. They only sang in the C major key. They used the dots to represent the notes in the scale. Tails were later added to represent time length.
They then started to sing in C mixolydian, where instead of a B, you sang half way between a A and B, creating a flattened B.
In some European countries, the B was considered a hard B and the B flat was considered the soft key. So in German music, Bb is called B and B is called H for hard.
Then people stated to sing and play in more keys, this required the use of more notes, and these all had to be fit around C major. So we have sharps and flats.
You are a blacksmith in ancient Greece, and you’ve heard that the army needs a bunch of new swords, all the same size.
So you make one sword as a standard, and this goes “clang” when you hit it. You soon realise that if another sword is too big the clang is lower and if the sword is too small the clang is higher. Not just that, but comparing two different clangs has a odd warbly kind of sound whereas two identical swords have no warble at all.
Well, the army think your swords are fabulous. The general calls round one day and orders a bunch of daggers, half the size of the swords. So you get a sword sized block of bronze, chop it in half and make two daggers. You accidentally drop on onto the sword, and although the clangs are different, there’s no warble. Hmmm.
The army love these daggers too, and you make so much money that you can retire at the age of 25. But you’re still curious about the difference in weight and the difference in tone, so you make a middle piece based on the next simplest fraction, 3/2. This gives another pleasant tone. So you keep going until you have six pieces between the sword and dagger, all based in increasingly complex ratios, and you label the sword “A” and the other pieces “B” to “G”, and the dagger is another “A”.
So now you can play a tune in what is known as the Aeolian mode (what we call a Minor key) from A to A. Then you experiment starting on B, but you run out of notes so you add a full set and you have two octaves.
Playing B to B is … weird. We call this the Locrian mode, and uniquely it has a flat 5.
Playing C to C is lovely. Sunny and bright, like a nursery rhyme. This is the Ionian mode or what we call Major.
D to D is Dorian, E to E is Phrygian, F to F is Lydian, and G to G is Mixolydian.
These all sound different because the gaps betwwen notes aren’t equal. In modern terms we would say that they are all two semitones apart, except B&C and E&F which are just one semitone apart. And it’s where this smaller gap appears in the scale that makes the mood.
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FINALLY you might want to play G Ionian, but you don’t have the right bits of metal. Due to the way the spacing goes, you need a new piece between F and G, so we call this F#.
And then work your way through the other scales adding sharps (or flats if there are too many sharps) until you can play all keys in all modes. It just so happens that you never need a B# or an E#.
OP you’re going to hear an onslaught of different explanations from music theory enthusiasts who want it explained their way.
The basic gist is that the sharps/flats system is not only incredibly *more* efficient because of the way music is organized (both on instruments and in the way our brains process sound) but it’s almost unimaginable once you learn basic music theory that it could be notated any other way.
Not all notes of the available 12 are treated equally when it comes to putting them together. A certain pattern, a subset of the 12, is what you might call the “primary colors” or basic elements of the set. The sharps/flats system is necessary to communicate according to the terms of this foundational aspect of sound.
The reason I can’t say “which notes makes up the primary subset” is because it’s all relevant to what you select as your *reference point* ( in math terms maybe you’d call it the origin or x=0). The subset would be described like a function —> where you give me x and I’ll tell you the various other notes based on the x you gave me.
The notation here, again, is absolutely a given once you learn the basics.
This is less specifically music related, but another reason music notation stuck around is that its useful to have a singular standard of notation. This applies to many industries like electrical symbols, architectural symbols etc. In the age of the internet and globalisation you can’t really work with a few hundred/thousand different ways to express a thing.
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