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I have piece of music I going to start working on. The music is in 4/4 time with nothing indicating a key signature. Therefore I assumed the piece is in C. Here's where I get confused: the very first note in the very first measure is a G...with a natural sign in front of it. The second measure has flats written in on A, B, & E. Then the third measure has another G, again with a natural sign. I don't understand the purpose of the natural sign...I see nothing to indicate that G should be anything else. Is it possible the publisher forgot to print the key signature or is there something about music notation I don't know.

sounds kinda odd to me too.

i guess does the G natural sounds good to you, if yes, then just do what it says in the book.

Can you scan it?

JimmyEb....Music with nothing in the key signature will be either C major, or its relative minor, A minor. Both have no sharps or flats in the key signature.

Having said that, I have no idea what is the key of your example.

Those are only two of many possibilities. There are many kinds of keys, not just major or minor. For example, D Dorian has no sharps or flats (D E F G A B C). E Phrygian has no sharps or flats (E F G A B C D). F Lydian has no sharps or flats (F G A B C D E F).

Also, sometimes if the key is not major or minor, then key signature will be left blank, and accidentals are added as needed. For example if the music is pentatonic, the scale might be Gb Ab Bb Db Eb. If the key signature had those five flats in it, you might be tempted to think that it is in Db Major or Bb Minor, when in fact it is not major or minor.

Sometimes a key that isn't major or minor will use a familiar key signature that includes some of the sharps/flats in the key being used, but not all. For example, there is a very common Jewish mode called freygish, which might go D Eb F# G A Bb C# D ("D Freygish"). But it might be confusing to put both sharps and flats in a key signature, so a piece that uses this key might have a key signature that looks like Bb Major, with Bb and Eb in the key signature, and then the F# and C# would be added throughout the piece as needed with accidentals. Or, on the other hand, it might be written without any key signature at all, and all of the flats and sharps would be written as needed as accidentals.

And of course not every piece of music is in a particular key. There is a lot of atonal music, too, that wouldn't have a key signature because it's not in any particular key.

So yes, sometimes a blank signature means c major or a minor, but not always.

Without further context, it would seem that
this is in A min., which has no sharps or
flats in the key signature, but in A min.
G is often sharped (the A natural min.
scale has no sharps, but the A harm. min.
scale has G sharped). So this might be
a case where the G could possibly be sharped
and would sound okay, so in order to
eliminate any possible confusion the editors
put a natural sign in front of the G.

The Ab, Bb, and Eb in the second measure
seems to support this, because this is
apparently a modulation to C min. A
piece in A min. can easily modulate to
C maj., since the key signatures are the
same, and a piece in C maj. can easily
modulate to C min., since the maj. and min.
versions of a key are so closely related.
So an A min. piece has a natural affinity
to C min.

I have a scan of the beginning of this song, but it seems we can't attach things to posts in this forum. Anyway what Gyro says makes sense to me. I'll try playing it exactly as written and not think about it too much. FYI - the music is Enya's Book of Days.

Jimmy, yes, you can attach images to posts.

1. Upload it to the web; I like to use this easy website: http://www.imageshack.us

2. Copy the URL for the image

3. Type the following into your post:

Very easy to do.

Link: Book of Days sheet music

KS

Not sure why there's a natural written in the first measure.

I'd say the introduction (first two measures) is in C Minor, and the rest is C Major.

I'd say the person writing it just doesn't understand the conventions of writing music. Or it's a thing the computer thought it should add and nobody did the necessary editing.
It's C major (after a little chromatic intro).

Am I the only one who finds this sloppy computer-generated writing infuriating?

Not to confuse matters, but I feel the above quoted text may confuse some people :p

I have never heard of the modes described as keys. Modes can be described as extensions to keys, but not as a keys in themselves. We have "key based" and "modal" music (and modal music in early music is quite different than that from e.g. modern jazz). I guess you could say that the Ionian and Aeolian modes can be thought of as keys as they are what became the Major and Minor keys.

Anyway, it is common practice to notate modal music (at least the modern variant) with no key signature. This looks the same as C Major/A Minor, but is conceptually not the same thing.

I'm in no way an expert in these things, but us guitarist have an unhealthy gravitation towards modes and thus I have read and studied them quite a bit

Major and minor are actually modes. A mode could be thought of as a given arrangement of the notes in an octave where the order of tones and semitones form a set pattern. That pattern of tones and semitones never changes, regardless of your starting note. Thus a major scale is always WWSWWWS in intervals. Key signatures are a nifty invention, because it allows that pattern to occur without any extra effort by the composer, regardless of your starting note. Thus, with your four sharped notes in E major, if you start on E and sharp those four notes, you will end up with the major "mode" with the pattern of WWSWWWS.

These modal patterns create mood and colour. The major "mode", which used to be called the Ionean in the old church modes, is happy and cheery. The minor "mode" is considered sad, blue etc. Those are the two that are the best known.

Our modern music centers or gravitates toward a certain note, which we call the tonic. In order to stay oriented in that music, we need to know what that tonic is - in other words, what key it is in. We can get that at a glance by looking at the key signature. Four sharps, E major (maybe), everything is going to gravitate to that E, we will have certain kinds of chords and colour - knowing this lends automatism and spontaneity to our playing because we feel at home. Four sharps in the key signature, and a bunch of sharped B's (confusingly enharmonic C) and we don't have to worry anymore - that's probably C# minor.

But then we get to music in modes (or the "other" modes). Key signature confuses us, because we expect either a major or minor scale, and having become centred on the tonic and these two modes, we are lost. We don't know "what mode to think of". That's why modes are often written without a key signature, to signal to everyone that it is a mode. Modal music can also be written with a key signature, and handled in one of two ways. In one of those ways, accidentals are more common, and serve as a signal that this is a mode.

That's as far as my understanding goes so far. (Sort of trying to round out that part of the discussion.)

PS: If this piece is in C major, then it does actually have a key signature. No sharps or flats is the key signature of C major.

Well said!

I'm not sure I'd call it "chromatic".

There's really nothing in the first measure that suggests it has to be C Major -- it could just as well be C Minor. The only notes that are different between major and minor (B/Bb, E/Eb, A/Ab) aren't there in that measure, so it really could be either.

But the 2nd measure is very clearly in C Minor -- yes it is full of accidentals, but those accidentals are all part of c minor, and the g in the right hand at the end of the measure leads very clearly to a C tonic. If there was, say, a Gb thrown in there -- that Gb would be chromaticism, because it isn't part of the scale. But everything there just screams "C Minor".

It's pretty common in classical music to have a minor introduction that leads to a major rest of the piece. It's actually also common to have an introduction that is ambiguous just like this between major and minor -- a famous example is Beethoven's 5th. Just from the opening 2 measures, we don't know really if it is C Minor or Eb Major. It could be either. But then only after that, is C Minor confirmed. Another famous example is Haydn's "London" Symphony No. 104 -- just from the beginning few measures, we have no idea if it is D Minor or D Major -- it could be either. But then after those first few measure, then we find out that it is D Minor, but then of course after the d minor introduction, the rest of the piece is centered around D Major.

So I think that's exactly what's happening in the piece in this thread -- it starts off ambiguously, could be major or minor, then we find out the intro including that 1st measure is really minor, and then the rest of the piece is c major.