Sheet music question

[jbaird]

hey,

I have the book Standing in the Shadows of Motown, looking at the song Come 'Round Here but something is confusing me.

The song is in G, and the first bar of the verse shows the cord above as G and the first couple notes are G, simple.

The second half of the first bar is listed as Bm/F# and the first note is an F with a sharp sign, now does this mean that the sharp sign is just for clarification and I'm playing F# or am I sharping it again and playing G.

and to make matters worse the second bar has the cord listed Em and the first note is a E with a natural sign. which, eh, is what it should be anyway.. right?

am I missing something there?

also, is there some easy way to link in sheet music to a post, graphic or another webpage that lets you build a bar or two? Maybe I should polish up on my web programming skills

[Bassist4Life]

I'm looking at it right now.

The # on the F in the mentioned measure is there to remind you. It doesn't need to be there, but it is.

The next bar has an on the E natural. It doesn't need to be there, but it is.

It's redundant information that is meant to help you. Don't let it confuse you.

Joe

[Bassist4Life]

To avoid further confusion, you could just ignore the chords above the measure and read the notes. If you haven't been reading music for very long, I can see how this sort of thing might be confusing.

Joe

[jbaird]

Originally Posted by Bassist4Life

To avoid further confusion, you could just ignore the chords above the measure and read the notes. If you haven't been reading music for very long, I can see how this sort of thing might be confusing.

Joe

Well I didn't look at the cords much until I was trying to figure out if it was a F# or not. Wouldn't there be times when the # means to actually sharp it again and not just a reminder? But that would be pretty rare anyway so I should probably just not worry about it

Thanks for the help

[dlloyd]

Originally Posted by jbaird

Well I didn't look at the cords much until I was trying to figure out if it was a F# or not. Wouldn't there be times when the # means to actually sharp it again and not just a reminder? But that would be pretty rare anyway so I should probably just not worry about it

Thanks for the help

An accidental always indicates the actual note played.

If you already had an F# in the key and wanted to sharpen it, you would see an "x" or a "##" accidental.

Think of it this way... if you wanted to flatten the F#, would you use a "b" or a natural sign to indicate it?

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by jbaird

Well I didn't look at the cords much until I was trying to figure out if it was a F# or not. Wouldn't there be times when the # means to actually sharp it again and not just a reminder? But that would be pretty rare anyway so I should probably just not worry about it

Thanks for the help

Many times they put a accidental that is in the key signature as a gentle reminder, especially if there was an natural sign or double accidental sign previously changing the note. As JBaird said just take the note as written you don't add up signs just read what they write. If it;s wrong the copiest gets fired not you.

[Bassist4Life]

Originally Posted by DocBop

Many times they put a accidental that is in the key signature as a gentle reminder

That's a really good way to put it. "Gentle reminder".

[Smallmouth_Bass]

When I started to read, I always used to always pencil in the key accidentals on all the notes. "Gentle reminder" is a good way to describe it. They are generally put there when the note had a different accidental in the previous bar. So say the key had an F# in it and the previous bar had an F natural, they might put the # in front of the following bar's F.

[Scot]

This is called a "courtesy accidental" and, like already said, it's just a reminder. A place you'll commonly see them in a chart is just after a key signature change. Let's say, for example, the chart starts in the key of G and a key signature change to Ab cancels the F# and adds Bb, Eb, Ab and Db. The B, E, A and D notes could get courtesy accidentals (and the F note the natural symbol) the first time they appear after the key sig change. IMO, it's a little over the top here to give a courtesy accidental (might even be insulting to some) and, at the very least to avoid any confusion, it should be enclosed in parenthesis since it's common to do that to indicate that they are courtesy accidentals. Pencil in some parenthesis around that "#" symbol and then it won't confuse you if you look at that a few years later (I got my copy of that book years ago after it first came out and still pull it out every now and then).

My guess is that it's a really a mistake but I'm not looking at my copy of the book now.