1 finger up == 1 sharp: G
2 fingers up == 2 sharps: D
3 fingers up == 3 sharps: A
4 fingers up == 4 sharps: E
5 fingers up == 5 sharps: B

1 finger down == 1 flat: F
2 fingers down == 2 flats: Bb
3 fingers down == 3 flats: Eb
4 fingers down == 4 flats: Ab
5 fingers down == 5 flats: Db

------------------
Gary Shepherd

Carter D-10

I much prefer hand signals to the 'E for echo' system - 'two up', or 'three down' can't be misconstrued, and there's not so much shouting across the bandstand....

But the main problem with signing the number of sharps or flats, is that, while many horn players and keyboardists know the key signatures, very few guitarists do - in fact I would venture to say none I have ever played with. In fact, I have discovered that many guitarists don't even know what key a song is in, even though they may know all the chords. I have had singers and guitarists tell me the wrong key many times. Sure, what they told me was one of the chords in the song, but it was not the key. Stranger than friction.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 27 June 2005 at 08:57 AM.]

------------------
My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

There is also E# and B#. In the key of F# the seventh tone is E#. Although E# really is an F, you would notate it as an E# which would be easier to read on the staff. You can not have 2 notes is a scale with the same letter demonination.

------------------
http://home.comcast.net/~stevehinson

------------------
Bob
intonation help

1 finger down == 1 flat: F
2 fingers down == 2 flats: Bb
3 fingers down == 3 flats: Eb
4 fingers down == 4 flats: Ab
5 fingers down == 5 flats: Db"

What about minor keys? Every key signature is really two keys: C and Am, etc. How do you designate the tonic?
Cheers,
Alan Shank

------------------
Ray Qualls
President(KSGA)

quote:

---

"What about minor keys?"

---

Since the fingers represent the flats or sharps in a key signature of written music, the key signature of the relative Major should be used, along with some signal to indicate it's a minor.

For example for Dm , point one finger down (F is the relative Major) and put on a Miner's Hat.

On the other hand, players of stringed instruments can easily sharp an open note by shortening the string but have to do some maneuvering to flat the note.

In general, you will find jazz and other horn music played in keys with flats (F, Bb, Eb, Ab, etc.) while string playing musicians tend to play in keys with sharps (G, D, A, E, etc.). Not many jazz tunes are in the key of B but plenty of country songs are for sure.

Piano players just have to work harder no matter whether sharps or flats. Steelers, on the other hand, just play.

[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 27 June 2005 at 05:19 PM.]

I'll attest to this, I've had it happen many times over the years. I'm a guitar player, and although I started with classical piano, I still don't read standard notation for guitar/steel very well. As is being discussed in another thread, the fact that most notes can be played in a lot of different places makes it more difficult. On piano, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the written note and the piano note. Very much not true for guitar/banjo/steel. But here's a joke for you:

Q: How do you get a guitar player to turn down?

A: Put sheet music in front of him.

I'd like to use this system - I consider the 'key shouting' method very bush league. Each key can be uniquely identified except F#/Gb, which can be considered either 6 sharps or 6 flats. What do you do there? Use a baseball catcher's sort of thing, flash five fingers then one? F# is probably my favorite key to sing in (but sometimes move it to G or E to suit the rest of the band).

In principle, one can consider each key in terms of sharps or flats:

C/(Db)b: 0 sharps or 12 flats
G/(Ab)b: 1 sharp or 11 flats
D/(Eb)b: 2 sharps or 10 flats
A/(Bb)b: 3 sharp or 9 flats
E/Fb: 4 sharps or 8 flats
B/Cb: 5 sharps or 7 flats
F#/Gb: 6 sharps or 6 flats
C#/Db: 7 sharps or 5 flats
G#/Ab: 8 sharps or 4 flats
D#/Eb: 9 sharps or 3 flats
A#/Bb: 10 sharps or 2 flats
E#/F: 11 sharps or 1 flat
B#/C: 12 sharps or 0 flats

Over the centuries, the pitch of the classical orchestra kept rising. Eventually A was standardized at 440 hz, but it previously was down around what is now G. I'm not sure why the pitch krept up. Possibly strings and instruments improved so they could handle more string tension, which translated into more tone and volume. With stringed instruments, it was a simple matter just to keep tightening up the strings. The dimensions of the instruments did not have to change. However, the brass instruments were made to fixed dimensions that could not easily be changed without completely redesigning the machinary for making the instruments. All horns can be tuned a little flat or sharp (by moving the mouthpiece, or a tuning slide, etc.), but usually only about half a step. For whatever reason, the horns stayed the same. What were originally C instruments, now are Bb instruments, meaning that when a C is fingered, you are really playing a Bb. In addition to C instruments, some instruments were designed to have F as their home key. In other words when they fingered a C, they were playing an F. This was just a way to get good harmony voicings for things like alto and baritone sax. Their music was written in a different key than the "concert key." This was so that they would be fingering and reading in fairly normal keys. In other words, all horns finger a written C note as a C on their instrument, although they are really playing different concert pitches. So I can play a soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, or bass sax. When I read the music written for them, a written C is fingered exactly the same on each instrument, although those are different concert pitches. Once the pitch had risen a whole step, all the written music for those instruments had to be dropped a whole step. So the C horns now are Bb horns (their C is concert Bb), and the F horns are now Eb horns (their C is concert Eb). Apparently the flute is a C instrument - don't know how that happened. So that is how the horns ended up in weird keys - I think (okay this is all hearsay and speculation - I would love it if someone who knows better would confirm this or correct it).

The key of C is the easiest key on any instrument, because there are no sharps and flats to remember in the written music, and because the "white notes" are easier to finger than the sharps and flats. Therefore, Bb horns (tenor and soprano sax, clarinet, etc.) love Bb concert, because for them that is the key of C (it has nothing I can see that has to do with extending tubes to flatten the pitch - it is just an easy key to play in). Eb instruments (alto and bariton sax, etc.) like concert Eb, because that is the key of C for them. In a nutshell, that is why those flat keys are the "horn keys."

Violins, violas and cellos are tuned in fifths. Their strings are GDAE (I may have the order wrong?). They like those keys, so they can use the open strings. It happens that those keys are sharp keys (but I think that is coincidence, and has nothing directly to do with shortening strings).

I have no idea how guitars got tuned the way they are, but the obvious guitar keys are E, A, G, and D. Throw in the key of C, because everybody likes it for written music. You can see there is a lot of overlap between the fiddle keys and guitar keys. That is probably not an accident.

Put the fiddle and guitar keys together and you have the country keys, because those were the dominant instruments. Blues and rock is mostly guitar music, which relies heavily on E and A, for obvious reasons if you play a guitar.

So that's what I make of it all from a little knowledge from playing piano, sax and guitar, and with a heavy dose of speculation. If anyone knows more about this, I'd love to get better educated on it.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 27 June 2005 at 07:41 PM.]

Conversely, to sharp a note on a stringed instrument one simply shortens the string by one fret (or one position in the case of fretless instruments). To flat an open string one must understand the intervals between the strings and play the next lower string several frets higher - not necessarily so easy due to our friend Mr. Brain having to put in another appearance.

This is why you will find that virtually all music written for wind instruments is in the keys that I mentioned earlier, those with flats, and virtually all music written for stringed instruments is written in keys with sharps.

Symphonic brass and woodwind players have to learn to make these adjustments all the time because the music they play is generally written for the string players sitting in front of them.

It's easy to lengthen a horn but not always to shorten it and easy shorten a string but not always to lengthen it.

As for a shift in the common concert pitch leading to brass instruments being pitched a whole step out, etc. - it's true that the common conbcert pitch has grown sharp over the past six centuries but by the time saxophones were invented the concert "A" was already pretty well defined as 440Hz. At the end of the 19th century saxophones and brass instruments were manufactured in a broad range of pitches and played in ensembles containing nothing but like instruments of different pitch - saxophone "orchestras" were quite common before the stuffy classical folks folded and allowed them to be played in other contexts with classical reeds and stringed instruments. The Bb tenor sax, for instance, was originally designed one whole step flat to concert pitch as for some reason unkown to me the C melody sax could not be made to play in tune with itself. I know, I played one (a "C Melody" sax") for a while, probably what led to my ability to play the PSG so superbly out of tune!

Is that any clearer than mud yet?

[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 27 June 2005 at 11:31 PM.]

C - "the cowboy key"
E - "the money key"
F - "the key of love"
G - "the key of the people"
...and so forth - he had a name for every key and for some reason we all knew what he was talking about then, although I don't remember much more of it than that now.

quote:

---

What about minor keys? Every key signature is really two keys: C and Am, etc. How do you designate the tonic?

---

Alan, The fingers designate the tonic only. (3 fingers up means A major or minor) You are expected to know if the song is major or minor if it is in the standard batch of tunes that get called cold on the bandstand. Think of the tune "Jolene". Basicly you are expected to know the standard songs already. The hand signals are only to let you know where to start.

------------------
Bob
intonation help

As far as the C melody sax is concerned, my understanding is that the Bb and Eb saxes were the originals. The C melody sax was made later (around the 1920s?). The reason they don't play well is that they were amateur quality instruments marketed toward amateurs. The idea of making them in the key of C was to make them easier to play for amateurs, for example to make piano sheet music available for them on sax. I don't think there is any reason someone couldn't make a good professional quality C sax, but no one ever has, so pros disdain them for the reasons you mentioned.

On sax, sharping a note is no more difficult than flatting a note. Sure beyond C# at the top of the lower register, you have to hit the register key. But likewise, when you go lower than D in the upper register you have to release the register key. It's all the same. Going up a chromatic scale is no more difficult than going down. In both cases you have to sometimes slap a pad down, or release a pad. If other woodwinds or brass are different, I was unaware of that because I don't play those instruments. But I am surprised to learn that sharping a note is more difficult than flatting a note on any horn. I do see your point about the strings. At least for the open strings, sharping a note is easier than flatting a note.

I think everyone mostly prefers the plain letter or "white note keys," because at least your tonic is a natural note. It happens that they are all sharp keys, except for F. That may be the real reason strings and everyone else mostly prefers the sharp keys. The two exceptions for horns are B and E. The reason is that concert B has horns playing in either C# (for Bb instruments) or G# (for the Ebs); and concert E has Bb instruments playing in F#, and the Ebs playing in C#. Whereas, moving each of these keys down a half step puts horns playing in C or G (for concert Bb), or F or C (for concert Eb). But the other plain letter keys are fine for horns, because they end up playing in other plain letter keys.

Three sharps is either A major or F# minor, or the relative minor to A major.

Do you guys in NYC disregard this principal? I'll admit that I've encountered finger-signals less among country musicians ('D for dog' is more common in that genre) than I have with more mainstream players, but I've never come across what you describe; you may all know what you mean by lumping A major and A minor under one key signature, but it's misinformation.

I'll have to be aware of that next time I'm there....

I suppose I'm flogging a dead horse here, but it would seem to me to be more crucial to give the proper key signature. As you say, we should generally know that, say, 'My Funny Valentine' is in a minor key (usually C minor), but it'd be pretty ripe if someone popped an E natural in there....

Maybe I should retire gracefully, but not before saying that, in London, we always did it to denote the scale, not just the tonic: three flats = Eb maj or C min, etc, etc, etc.....

As a weary traveller once said, I rest my case....

" You say potato and I say tater " !

Bob

[This message was edited by Bob Hoffnar on 28 June 2005 at 06:09 PM.]

(really!!! You can look it up!)

Seriously, around here I've seen some pickers who can lead you through an intricate progression just using fingers, not just telling you the key. Very much like their own sign language for the deaf.

Then again, I did a gig backing up Jay Dee, Reece, and Dave W. recently, where all of Jay Dee's songs were in "D Dog, E Dog, Bb Dog etc. etc.