C#, F#,Įtc.) are really cumbersome to write and play in, so I was wondering It seems that the really sharp keys (e.g. One could write a piece in B Major (5 sharps) that is more difficult to read than if it were notated in the enharmonically equivalent C-flat Major (7 flats) by virtue of the nature of any chromaticism.Īs the title says. It’s a similar choice when writing highly chromatic or atonal music: one would choose to use sharps or flats depending upon the readability of the resulting notation.Īs for any intrinsic difference in readability of sharp key signatures over flat key signatures, there is none. Similarly, a it’s not many secondary dominants away to double-sharp territory in F-sharp. Other answers have inaccurately used the word to describe the symbols in the key signature.)įor example: in a piece in G-flat, V7 of IV (C-flat 7th) would require a B- double-flat, whereas in F-sharp it would be a simple B7. (In this answer the word accidental refers only to an inflection sign - sharp, flat, natural, &c - that makes a note different from the key signature. The relative (dis)advantage of a key signature relates to the use of accidentals to inflect note throughout the rest of the piece & the effect on the readability of the music as written. This only makes sense of course if you don't want to rewrite the key signature, because if you do, Db is still better.Ĭuriously, you cited F# major and Gb major as an example, but these are the only keys that have exactly the same number of accidentals (6), so in this specific case it makes no practical difference for most instruments. For example, if the song is in C# minor, and you want to modulate to its parallel major, you would have more trouble converting all the notes to Db major (removing all 4 sharps and adding 5 flats), than converting to C# major (just adding 3 sharps). The only way I can think C# major is better would be during a (short) section of the song that was before in a key that has sharps and not flats, so that the accidentals would be minimized. So, talking about the main key of a song, there seems to be no advantage, and I don't think one would have a reason to prefer C# major over Db major. In general, flat keys have less accidentals than the equivalent sharp keys (for example, Db major has 5, and C# major has 7).

D-flat major