Double sharp/flat

[ravelfan07]

In all reality, what is the point of double flat and sharp?
You could put natural with zero exceptions, is there a rule I am missing?

[brogers70]

In all reality, what is the point of double flat and sharp?
You could put natural with zero exceptions, is there a rule I am missing?

Makes it easier to see the harmonic progressions. Say you're in G# minor and you are going to use the dominant 7th chord D#7, you spell it D#,F*,A#,C#, using the F double sharp. In terms of which buttons to press you could certainly call the F double sharp G natural, but it would make it less clear what the role of that chord was.

[lelle]

brogers gave you a good answer.

It's basically the same reason you sometimes use E#, B#, Cb and Fb instead of F, C, B and E natural.

You could go very indepth to explain this, and I'm gonna skip over a lot, but basically western classical music is constructed using the scales we all practice. These scales provide basic patterns for constructing, and, importantly, understanding how the music you are reading is constructed, which helps with reading speed, improvisation, memorization, all that good stuff, once you understand and have internalized these systems. This is because the patterns are the same regardless of which note you pick as your starting point - ie if you are playing C major, A flat major, C minor, G sharp minor, etc.

It'll be easier and much faster to read a D sharp major chord spelled with F double sharp than it would ever be to read the same piece with all F double sharps spelled as G naturals once you approach music from an understanding of these basic patterns.

Check out this picture and see if it gives you some kind of intuitive sense of what I'm talking about:

[ravelfan07]

Makes it easier to see the harmonic progressions. Say you're in G# minor and you are going to use the dominant 7th chord D#7, you spell it D#,F*,A#,C#, using the F double sharp. In terms of which buttons to press you could certainly call the F double sharp G natural, but it would make it less clear what the role of that chord was.

That definitely makes sense for chords, I was thinking in the role of music writing.
 like in a piece in a flat major for an example, why would you annotate “F Sharp” instead of “G Flat” when your piece is written in a flat signature.
I might just have an aesthetic issue with it…….

[timothy42b]

That definitely makes sense for chords, I was thinking in the role of music writing.
 like in a piece in a flat major for an example, why would you annotate “F Sharp” instead of “G Flat” when your piece is written in a flat signature.
I might just have an aesthetic issue with it…….

While there are often valid reasons, as explained above, it sometimes is an artifact of the notation software. 

[brogers70]

That definitely makes sense for chords, I was thinking in the role of music writing.
 like in a piece in a flat major for an example, why would you annotate “F Sharp” instead of “G Flat” when your piece is written in a flat signature.
I might just have an aesthetic issue with it…….

In the case of a piece in Ab, imagine your harmony is Eb (the dominant) and imagine you have one of those little effects, common in the classical period, where your melody has non-chord tones a half-step below the third of the chord. So maybe over an Eb major chord, the top voice does something like F#-G-F#-G. Of course you could write the F# as Gb, but since it is resolving up to the G, lots of composers would write it as F# to show where it's going.

Same thing in G minor, another flat key. The leading tone for the harmonic minor in G minor is F#. It would be very awkward to write it as Gb (even though there are flats in the key signature), because every time it resolve up to the tonic you'd have to write a G natural (and you'd be writing the dominant D major as Dnatural/Gflat/Anatural  - also pretty hard to read.

The choice of whether to write a note as its flat or sharp enharmonic depends on the role it has in the melody and in the harmony that is going on. If the only issue were to show which key to push down, it would not matter at all.

[ravelfan07]

In the case of a piece in Ab, imagine your harmony is Eb (the dominant) and imagine you have one of those little effects, common in the classical period, where your melody has non-chord tones a half-step below the third of the chord. So maybe over an Eb major chord, the top voice does something like F#-G-F#-G. Of course you could write the F# as Gb, but since it is resolving up to the G, lots of composers would write it as F# to show where it's going.

Same thing in G minor, another flat key. The leading tone for the harmonic minor in G minor is F#. It would be very awkward to write it as Gb (even though there are flats in the key signature), because every time it resolve up to the tonic you'd have to write a G natural (and you'd be writing the dominant D major as Dnatural/Gflat/Anatural  - also pretty hard to read.

The choice of whether to write a note as its flat or sharp enharmonic depends on the role it has in the melody and in the harmony that is going on. If the only issue were to show which key to push down, it would not matter at all.

Would this be a good example of what you said(taken from Ravel’s Le Gibet)?

[brogers70]

Would this be a good example of what you said(taken from Ravel’s Le Gibet)?

Well, I must admit I was thinking of much simpler examples. When you get to something like that bit of Ravel, it's less obvious to me that there's a single, clearly best way to spell the notes in order to make clear what their harmonic or melodic role is. But maybe I just have not spent enough effort analysing that excerpt.

[lelle]

Would this be a good example of what you said(taken from Ravel’s Le Gibet)?

I would say that it sort of is but it's a bit complicated to use as your first example to study . Ravel knew his theory very well and the way he spells things reflects this.

The overall harmony from bar 17 is an Eb11(b9) chord, and the accidentals he chose enables him to show the melodic movement / voice leading of his melody to and from that chord.

A shorter way of putting it is that he wants you to be able to tell at a glance if the melody notes are moving somewhere or not.

[ravelfan07]

I would say that it sort of is but it's a bit complicated to use as your first example to study . Ravel knew his theory very well and the way he spells things reflects this.

The overall harmony from bar 17 is an Eb11(b9) chord, and the accidentals he chose enables him to show the melodic movement / voice leading of his melody to and from that chord.

A shorter way of putting it is that he wants you to be able to tell at a glance if the melody notes are moving somewhere or not.

Yeah it’s definitely more on the complicated side…
 But I do think that excerpt (along with the whole 2nd page in general) seem really good to study this section of music theory