"I play BG so that's what I can talk intelligently about." A line I loved and pirated from Mandoplumb
Tell me about it, especially when coming at it from different musical directions.
My fiddler Significant Other always objects when I call the note on my mandolin or flute an Eb in Irish trad tunes. She says it's a D# and then we go round and round because "Irish" flute players always call it that. And don't even get started on what happens when "modes" kick in, and the key signature isn't what you think it is.
On a flute, the Eb/D# requires the use of the same little finger key.
It's usually called "the Eb key"; however from a theory POV the name of the pitch depends on the key you are playing in.
In Cm, it's the minor 3rd, Eb.
In Em, it's a D#, the leading tone 7th.
in B major it's the major 3rd, D#.
Whistles and many Irish flutes are keyless, and the modal structure of the music as played in common session keys rarely requires Eb/D#.
And another way to explain it...there’s only one of each letter name in a scale in diatonic western music.
For example in the key of B, it would be B C# D# E....Not B C# Eb E..
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