Sharp (music)


In music, sharp, dièse, or diesis means higher in pitch. More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by one semitone ". Sharp is the opposite of flat, which is a lowering of pitch.
An associated sharp symbol that resembles the number sign "#",, occurs in key signatures or as an accidental. For instance, the music below has a key signature with three sharps and the note, A, has a sharp accidental.

Moreover, under twelve-tone equal temperament, B, for instance, sounds the same as, or is enharmonically equivalent to, C natural, and E is enharmonically equivalent to F. In other tuning systems, such enharmonic equivalences in general do not exist. To allow extended just intonation, composer Ben Johnston uses a sharp to indicate a note is raised 70.6 cents, or a flat to indicate a note is lowered 70.6 cents.
In intonation, sharp can also mean "slightly higher in pitch". If two simultaneous notes are slightly out-of-tune, the higher-pitched one is "sharp" with respect to the other. Furthermore, the verb sharpen means to raise the pitch of a note, typically by a small musical interval.

Variants

Double sharps are indicated by the symbol and raise a note by two semitones, or one whole tone. They should not be confused with a ghost note. Historically, in order to lower a double sharp by one semitone to a sharp, it would be denoted as a. In modern notation the natural sign is often omitted.

Less often a score indicates other types of sharps. A half sharp raises a note by a quarter tone = 50 cents, and may be marked with various symbols including. A sharp-and-a-half raises a note by three quarter tones = 150 cents and may be denoted.

Although very uncommon, a triple sharp''' can sometimes be found. It raises a note by three semitones.

Correctly drawing and printing the sharp sign

The sharp symbol resembles the number sign. Both signs have two sets of parallel double-lines. However, a correctly drawn sharp sign has two slanted parallel lines that rise from left to right, to avoid obscuring the staff lines. The number sign, in contrast, has two completely horizontal strokes in this place. In addition, while the sharp also always has two perfectly vertical lines, the number sign may or may not contain perfectly vertical lines.

Order of sharps

The order of sharps in key signature notation is F, C, G, D, A, E, B, each extra sharp being added successively in the following sequence of major keys: C→G→D→A→E→B→F→C. Similarly the order of flats is based on the same natural notes in reverse order: B, E, A, D, G, C, F, encountered in the following series of major keys: C→F→B→E→A→D→G→C.
In the above progression, the key of C major may be more conveniently written as the harmonically equivalent key D major, and likewise C major may be more conveniently written as B major. Nonetheless, it is possible to extend the order of sharp keys yet further, through C→G→D→A→E→B→F→C, adding the double-sharped notes F, C, G, D, A, E and finally B, and similarly for the flat keys from C major to C major, but with progressively decreasing convenience and usage.

Unicode

In Unicode, assigned sharp signs are as follows:
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