B#m chord???

[chris ivey]

thank you for understanding. i'm glad we all agree that i'm right, once again!

[Scott Shewbridge]

What a relief. I'm glad to see that we can't disagree about something.

[Herb Steiner]

Yeah... sure.

[Keith Davidson]

Herb, couldn't agree with you more!

So many people, including my buddy who plays in our duo confuse notes with keys. I'll ask him what key he wants to do a song in and he'll say D#. I keep telling him the key is Eb NOT D# but it never sinks in, he just laughs and says it's the same thing.

Just for a note the keys are:

C C# D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B

Just wanted to add to what Herb mentioned

[chris ivey]

what? ...no B#?

[Keith Davidson]

Chris,

There is a B# but it is a note in a particular scale and not designated as a key that you would play in. It just wouldn't make sense since your key would be C not B#.

However in the key of C# for example, using the standard whole tone, whole tone, half tone, etc. sequence for a scale, the 7th note of the C# scale would be B# which would be a C BUT designated as the 7th note of the C# scale which would have to be called a B# and not C. This is because the key is C#.

Hope this isn't becoming more confusing.

Think of the standard major scale with it's intervals. W = whole tone and H = half tone. These would be the intervals between each note of ANY major scale.

They would be W W H W W W H - this would always give you a whole tone between every note of the major scale except from the 3rd to the 4th and the 7th to the 8th.

[Keith Davidson]

chris
As Scott correctly pointed out, B# is the seventh degree of the scale if the key signature is C#, the third scale degree if in G#... theoretically, if anyone would write a score in those keys.

In my real world experience, Db and Ab are the keys of choice when those tonalities are desired. I have to play in those keys all the time.

Herb, that is absolutely correct. To add to the same thought, G# would be the 5th chord of the C# key, but if it was used as a key, the key would be Ab and NOT G#.

[chris ivey]

oh don't think i don't grasp the concept!
since i don't read music, those academic, heady, intellectual notes don't exist. unnecessary!!

a B# is a C

a Cb is a B

you will never convince me otherwise...

you can call it whatever you want, but don't suck me into your program.

[chris ivey]

i tried to find a set of strings for my Fb9 tuning but all i could find were E9 sets. they told me i was crazy.

[Earnest Bovine]

... B# is .. the third scale degree if in G#... theoretically, if anyone would write a score in those keys.

.

... but if it was used as a key, the key would be Ab and NOT G#.

The key of G# major has 8 sharps. Every note on the staff is sharped, and F is double sharped.
In this section of Chopin's Op. 11 concerto, the movement is mostly in the key of E major, and the key signature is 4 sharps. But sometimes he wanders off into the key of G# major for a while, as in this section:






Actually it is not hard to read if you have seen this sort of thing before. But nevertheless, modern editors usually print this section in A flat major:

[Scott Shewbridge]

Earnest - If I'm not mistaken, that comes from the LA session player sight-reading certification test given by local 47, right? Apparently you have to nail it, first time, at 120 bpm, before you can do any work with Quincy Jones.

Seriously though, that is a great example of "arcane" theory being put into practice. Eight sharps, sheesh, that'll get ya!

[Herb Steiner]

EBster
I'm hip to Chopin being a hurricane on the ivories, but the horn cats would have thought he was from, like, nowhere.

[David Griffin]

My head hurts!

[Keith Davidson]

oh don't think i don't grasp the concept!
since i don't read music, those academic, heady, intellectual notes don't exist. unnecessary!!

a B# is a C

a Cb is a B

you will never convince me otherwise...

you can call it whatever you want, but don't suck me into your program.

Chris,

Just keep it simple. Just stick to the keys that are used most commonly among players as I listed above. Noone is going to tell you that the song is in the key of B# when it is in C.

Don't worry about the notes if they are playing in a major as they will always follow the WWHWWWH pattern for each scale.

[Earnest Bovine]

If you lower it a half step, that Chopin example is just 1 5 1 5 1 in G, G and D7, just like Hank done it. The loud bar would just be C B7 Em A7-5/Eb and then back to G D G (=1 5 1), which is a progression we play every day in country music, except maybe that A7 with flat 5 may be different. Listen at 6:35 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsmvq0ZRNR8
So apropos of getting back on topic, that loud bar in the original key is C# B#7 E#m A#7. It's not exactly B#m as in the topic of this thread but it is close and that is what reminded me of how these chords could arise in a real world situation.

[Tracy Sheehan]

Any one ever try playing in F flat or E#
Seriously as i first started on piano amd fiddle and later took up steel. Talk about messing your head up, when i play fiddle i still have to know the chords to the song because i still think in chords.

I gotta go take an asprin or two. Or is that 2 asprin?

[Jim Bob Sedgwick]

Play the song at home twice, once with the Bm chord and once with the B#m or Cm, and see which one sounds right.

Mike, I did as you suggested and tried both. I feel the timber of the B# is slightly better than the C-
chord. JMO

Have you ever played an F flat minor? Same results as the above.