Why have sharps and flats instead of twelve notes with distinct names? [duplicate]

Question

I'm new to piano, and I'm new to music. 12 notes, 7 letters, and I'm mad at teacher. I tried looking up why there are only 7 letters for 12 notes, and I'm not satisfied.

Why do we have sharps and flats when we could have indicated these notes with different letters? So obviously, we've developed theory and notation around this and it seems to work quite well, but why couldnt we developed a system for twelve letter notes ... A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L? Is music theory easier/more practical under 7 letter notes as opposed to 12 or something? Does it have a practical usage with scales, or 3rds and 5ths or whatever? I dont like this C- sharp/flat nonsense.

Answer 1

A lot of my students pose similar questions. Sometimes my answer is to set the challenge of coming up with a different, better, more optimal system, if only for the note names. No-one's managed yet...They all say along the lines of - well, it ain't perfect, but it's better than anything I've come up with.

One stumbling block is that with so many different names - e.g. 12, they'd each need a place on some sort of map - the one we call a stave at the moment. Now, notes can share places, but how's that going to work in another system, where by definition each has its own separate name, thus place, I guess?

A rather similar question was posed here recently, and I urge the OP to have a look at its answers.

Answer 2

It is a long and complicated story. The main reason is that there was never a committee that debated and designed the theory of music and ensured that it was simple and logical. Instead, it has gradually evolved over a very long period. There are some aspects that could be improved and simplified but the inertia of the current system is too great. Look outside music: it would clearly be beneficial if the same units of measurement were used in all countries rather than feet, miles, pints, etc in some countries and metres, kilometres, litres, etc in others.

On the note names, a large part of the answer is that a very large proportion of music (in all genres) is wholly or mostly restricted to one 7 note key at one time. Think of the song Doe A Deer which uses just 7 notes. When you are restricted to one key, 7 notes is enough. If we switched to your 12 letter system, you would need to learn odd gaps in the scales. The current C major scale would become ACEFHJLA (I am guessing that you would also like to start the simplest all white notes scale on A rather than C). Some music, 12 tone music, would get simpler but most would get more complex.

Answer 3

To see HOW it works, look at a picture of a piano keyboard.

WHY is harder. And it's going to be hard to explain to a musical newbie in any useful way. Yes, it's to do with scales and keys. And about being able to stretch an octave with one hand on a keyboard. And yes, it could have gone in another direction all those years ago.

But we're stuck with the system. And we're wasting time that would be more usefully spent helping you PLAY music.

Answer 4

Why do we have sharps and flats when we could have indicated these notes with different letters? So obviously, we've developed theory and notation around this and it seems to work quite well, but why couldnt we developed a system for twelve letter notes ... A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L?

It's basically just the way it happened historically - we came up with the idea of a 7-note scale being something that sounded good before we came up with the idea of all possible 7-note scales living within a 12-note 'super-scale'.

Is music theory easier/more practical under 7 letter notes as opposed to 12 or something? Does it have a practical usage with scales, or 3rds and 5ths or whatever?

It can make things easier when you're dealing with pieces of music that actually stick rigidly to the 7-note scale. But once you move away from that 7-note scale in your composition, of course the presumption of a 7-note scale just makes things more awkward.

I dont like this C- sharp/flat nonsense.

Neither do I, and when I make or play music, I don't think about note names or sharps and flats at all - I don't find it useful. The only time I use those terms is when I'm talking to someone else about music because, for historical reasons, it has become 'the common language' of music. In this sense, it's a bit like a natural language (like English) - it isn't necessarily the only logical way to express ideas - it's just one way to express ideas that has evolved through various accidents of history.

You could try the fully 12-note world, and see if you like it: get hold of an isomorphic keyboard*, such as this one...

and try playing some music notated on a chromatic staff.

*_{though actually, this keyboard is still coloured according to the C major scale.}

Answer 5

(Western) music is based on a 7-note scale.

Mary Had a Little Lamb goes:

3 2 1 2 | 3 3 3--- | 2 2 2--- | 3 5 5--- |

Not:

5 3 1 3 | 5 5 5--- | 3 3 3--- | 5 8 8--- |

We then fill in the gaps evenly so that the system is fully symmetric, and that leads to 12 tones. But each key is a subset of 7 of them (primarily).