In music theory, a natural (♮) is an accidental which cancels previous accidentals and represents the unaltered pitch of a

note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...

. A note is natural when it is neither flat () nor sharp () (nor double-flat nor double-sharp ) (nor triple-flat nor triple-sharp). Natural notes are the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G represented by the white keys on the keyboard of a

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

or organ. On a modern concert harp, the middle position of the seven pedals that alter the tuning of the strings gives the natural pitch for each string. The scale of C major is sometimes regarded as the central, natural or basic

major scale The major scale (or Ionian mode) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double ...

because all of its notes are natural notes, whereas every other major scale in the

circle of fifths In music theory, the circle of fifths is a way of organizing the 12 chromatic pitches as a sequence of perfect fifths. (This is strictly true in the standard 12-tone equal temperament system — using a different system requires one interval of ...

has at least one sharp or flat in it. The notes F, C, E, B, and most notes inflected by double-flats and double-sharps correspond in pitch with natural notes; however, they are not regarded as natural notes but rather as enharmonic equivalents of them and are just as much chromatically inflected notes as most sharped and flatted notes that are represented by black notes on a keyboard.

Natural sign

In musical notation, a ''natural sign'' () is an accidental sign used to cancel a flat or sharp from either a preceding note or the

key signature In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp (), flat (), or rarely, natural () symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef a ...

. : If a bar contains a double sharp or double flat accidental and the composer wishes to denote the same note with only a single sharp or flat, a natural sign traditionally precedes the (single) sharp or flat symbol. Naturals are assumed (by default) in key signatures and mentioned only in key signature changes. The natural sign is derived from a square ''b'' used to denote B in medieval music (in contrast with the round ''b'' denoting B, which became the flat symbol). The

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

character MUSIC NATURAL SIGN '♮' (U+266E) should display as a natural sign. Its HTML entity is .

Double natural

In a case where one needs to cancel both sharps or flats of a

double sharp In music, sharp, dièse (from French), or diesis (from Greek) means, "higher in pitch". More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by one semitone (half step)". Sharp is the opposite of flat, which is a lowering of pi ...

double flat In music, flat (Italian bemolle for "soft B") means "lower in pitch". Flat is the opposite of sharp, which is a raising of pitch. In musical notation, flat means "lower in pitch by one semitone (half step)", notated using the symbol which is deri ...

, it is acceptable to write a single natural. In older practice, two naturals () can be written. Similarly, to cancel one flat or sharp from a double flat or sharp, the traditional convention is to use () or () respectively, but the naturals are generally omitted in modern notational practice.

References

{{Musical notation Musical notation Pitch (music)

Natural sign

Double natural

See also

References