All the notes we have seen so far correspond to the white keys of the piano keyboard.

Here we show how the white keys of the piano are written on the staff:

How do we write the black keys?

Let's take an example. The black key located between the C and D keys can be notated by preceding the C with the symbol of the sharp accidental or preceding the D with the flat accidental symbol . The other keys can be written in a similar way:

The distance between any key and the following one is called a half-step. The sharp symbol raises a note by a half-step, while the flat symbol lowers the note by a half-step.

---

Translated by Dan Román, revised by Sue Talley.

---

---

---