Why is there no black key on a keyboard in between the notes of E and F?
In: 9
The current answers are kinda technical so here’s a less technical answer:
There are generally 12 repeating notes in western music. A collection of 7 of them in a certain pattern generally sound good and most western songs will stick to using these 7. This pattern can start anywhere though, so you have 12 different sets of 7, referred to as keys.
This pattern of 7 is so important that we don’t have 12 letter note names, we picked one note as a starting location and named only the 7 in the cool pattern with letters, and made the other 5 flats/sharps. This does leave two empty spaces, as the cool pattern doesn’t go every other, some of the 7 are right next to each other.
In addition, from a keyboard design perspective, having white-black-white-black repeating forever would be a nightmare to play on as you can’t easily see what note you are going to play at a glance because everything looks the same. The uneven pattern allows keyboardists to see and feel where they are in moments.
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