got a good thingy for some people:

This is related/linked to phrydoms major scale lesson i am not explaining everything just giving you a usefull way of find this out..

Father Charles Goes Down And Eats Biscuits

If you remember that Phrase and then if you want to find out how many sharps are in a certain Major scale all you do is pick the root note or key of the scale you want to find out e.g

D major

and pick the letter before it in the alphabet which is C

and go:

Example 1: D Major

Father, charles
F#, C#

But remember to count the word that you are on.

D Major has 2 Sharps in it! see it works :)

Example 2: B Major

Father charles goes down and
F#, C#, G#, D#, A#

B Major has 5 Sharps in it!

If you want to know what notes are phrydom has went over it in his tuturial on steps and how the major scale is formmed.

good one, AJG, but I'd propose changing your little motto slightly to

Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle

and then, to work out the flats, it's the reverse

Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father

;)

so the key with one flat has a B flat, the key with three flats has Bb Eb and Ab etc... to know which key you're in go up a 5th (or down a 4th, it's the same thing) from the last flat, so

1 flat = Bb, go up a 5th from Bb and you get F - key is F major
2 flats, last flat is Eb, go up a 5th from Eb and you get Bb - key is B Flat Major
3 flats, last flat is Ab, go up a 5th from Ab and you get Eb - key is E Flat Major
4 flats, last flat is Db, go up a 5th from Db and you get Ab - key is A Flat Major

etc :)

i suppose though people can make up there own acronym if they like.

yer i herd about the reverse thingy aswell some guy told me about it at work lol

thing is aswell. what is the point of knowing this lol

if someone says to you "let's jam in e" you don't have to get out a book to see which notes you're allowed to play - you know all the notes on your guitar neck and you know that all Fs Cs Gs and Ds are sharpened, and all the other notes are natural... you know this because you know your music theory, and being a guitar player you're a musician and being a musician you know your music theory! ;)

That is the exact same thing my guitar teacher taught me. He says it so fast it took me a while to figure out what the hell he was saying :)

Time to get it branded into my brain

first time i heard it it was Fat Cook Goes Down And Eats Bread ;)

It's also clutch for sight-reading, in that they only notate the sharps or flats in the key signature, and only sharp or flat altered notes in the actual score.

Course, you COULD just learn the circle of 5ths, which is what that is... ;)

drew we must have been separated at birth! :lol:

i was thinking about reading notation when i posted my last post! :)

i was thinking of Every Gorgeous Bird Deserves Fancying for the lines and The Spaces Are FACE for the spaces in the treble clef, and Great Big Dreams For America for the lines and All Cows Eat Grass for the spaces in the bass clef ;)

but yes, you're right - sight-knowing a key signature is a good thing to be able to do, and these acronyms are exactly for that... the circle/cycle of fifths is the why part to this summary part ;)

Hahaha, something like that. :lol: I have a feeling we just had pretty similar musical backgrounds, but really, same difference. :)

I never think "Ok, I'm in E, and E major has four sharps, so I need to move these notes up a half step" while improvising, so for me when you start discussing how many sharps or flats a key signature has, it immediately becomes a question of notation.

Having a good working knowledge of the sequence of notes in the circle of 5ths is just an awesome thing to have on hand, though, for composition - if you want to get into modulation, then the resolution from a V-I is one of the (ok, THE) strongest our ears have been taught to accept, so when you're targeting a new key one of the best ways to do that (not the only way, but a good one) is to come into it from its' 5th. This even works for situations where you're changing tonality, not actual pitch - I mean, there's a reason Satch's "Always With Me..." pauses on the V (F#) before going to minor and returning to major in the solo. And, I mean, when you start looking at jazz changes, a lot of the "outside" chord voicings are made to sound natural by moving into them from a 5th off. If I had a guitar on hand I'd try to provide a few examples, but I've played so little jazz since college that I couldn't even give you a jazz blues off memory anymore. :lol:

oh, me neither! i'm more likely to say "i'm in E and i know which notes make up that key and where they all are" ;)

i'd disagree slightly there (i know you said "for me though" - i'm just adding my perspective ;)), many years ago i'd go through my little notebook, teaching myself new things... and when it came to both learning the notes on the neck and learning which keys had how many (and which) sharp & flat notes these two tasks would go together - start with c, play it all over the neck for say two weeks, then add a sharp, find out which one that is (F#) and which key that is (G), play that all over the neck for a fortnight, then add another sharp, and so on until i'd learned all the keys... that's the way i did it anyway ;)

oh, and yeah modulating with 5ths is popular, probably why i stay away from it :lol:

^^^ drew and phrydom

You two Music theory Buffs lol :P

Interesting... I've never methodically sat down like that and played each key all over the neck, gradually adding sharps and flats. I'll have to give it a shot. :)

Eh, I'm with you to a certian extent - it's an easy way to modulate, and thus a bit overused. But if done subtly (secondary dominants in a jazz context to spice up a chord progression, for instance - this is totally off memory and in a hurry, so it could sound like hell, but say i7-I7-iv7 in a minor blues) or using substitutions for the V (for examply, in that above example you could get back to the i with a iv7-vidim7-i7) they can be fun.

Then again, I grew up on Johnny Cash, and "I Walk the Line" with (IIRC) it's cascading series of V-I modulations through every verse, was probably the first contemporary piece of music I recall being aware of that I knew didn't stay in the same key, so I'm a little skewed. :lol:

I'll check some of the above changes with a guitar in hand tonight, and edit if need be. :)