Be an Expert on Major Keys | Parallel Major Lettered Keys

It doesn't take an aspiring piano player long to find out how important it is to learn their Major keys of music. They're an incredibly valuable tool. When you get them well under hand, they open the door to understanding chords and chord progressions.

The little known secret about Major keys that I want to share with you are parallel lettered Major keys of music. Now I want to clarify that this article is about parallel lettered Major keys and not parallel keys of music.

Parallel keys of music are Major and minor keys (or scales) that have the same tonic (or first note). One is Major and the other is minor.

Parallel lettered Major keys are ones which have the same lettered notes in the same sequence minus the presence or absence of sharps and flats.

For example, the key of B Major and the key of B flat Major have the same lettered notes in the same sequence.

Barring the sharps and flats, these two keys are identical in their lettered sequence. The significance of noticing this characteristic is that it condenses the number of Major keys and makes them easier to learn and identify.

Backing up just a bit, let's look at all 7 lettered notes.Every Major key of music must contain all 7 notes. They can not appear twice in the same key. If any one of them contains an accidental (sharp or flat), any other note that has an accidental must be of the same type.

Let's look at a few examples.

The key of C Major starts on C and progresses and starts over with A. There are no sharps or flats in this key. All 7 lettered notes are represented in this key.The key of C sharp Major also starts on C, progresses and starts over with A. It is identical alphabetically. The difference is that every note is sharped (raised a half step). If you refer to any note as natural or flat you would be technically incorrect. C sharp is also enharmonic (has the same notes) with D flat Major.

For example:

The note commonly known as F isn't an F in this context. If you referred to it as such, you would have two F's. As I said before, each lettered note can only appear once. So it's correctly referred to as an E sharp.It's the same with the note commonly known as C. You already have C sharp, so to refer to it as C would be incorrect. It's actually a B sharp.All of the black keys of course are sharps and named as such. So it's incorrect to refer to any of them as flat.

There's another parallel lettered Major key in the same sequence as C. It's the key of C flat Major. C flat Major is enharmonic with B Major. Again, they share the same notes.

Just as with C Major and C sharp Major, C flat Major has the same lettered note sequence. But every note in C flat Major is flatted.The note commonly known as B isn't a B in this context. It's C flat.What looks as an E is an F flat.All of the black keys of course are flats and named as such. So it's incorrect to refer to any of them as sharp.

The parallel lettered sequence of C Major occurs in three Major keys. It's the only Major lettered sequence that occurs 3 times.

Every other Major key of music has parallel lettered sequences that occur only twice.