Order of Sharps or Flats * Cranbury Music

Order of Adding Sharps or Flats

Here are two tables to help you see quickly and easily what happens in every key which contains sharps or flats. Of course that's all of them except for C Major and A minor.

The first table shows you the order in which we add sharps or flats to our key signatures. If we have two sharps, for example, simply read the first two letters starting from the left and you see that the sharps are on F and C. Similarly, if we have three flats, read the first three letters starting from the right and you see that the flats are on B, E, and A. It is interesting to note that only one table is needed here, because the order of adding sharps is exactly the reverse of the order of adding flats.

Order of Adding Sharps

Order of Adding Flats

The second table shows you which degrees of the major scale will have the sharps or flats as we add them. The table identifies the notes of the major scale in two commonly-used ways. The first is by syllables: Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, La, and Ti. This system is frequently used by singers. The second identification is by Roman numerals: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII. Using the same examples as above, if we have two sharps, they will be on Mi and Ti, or III and VII. If we have three flats, they will be on Sol, Do, and Fa, or V, I, and IV. Again, only one table is needed here, because the order in which sharps are attached to the notes, or degrees, of the major scale is exactly the reverse of the order in which flats are attached.

Order of Adding Sharps

Ti
VII

Mi
III

La
VI

Re
II

Sol
V

Do
I

Fa
IV

Order of Adding Flats