Encyclopedia > Flat

  Article Content

Flat

In music, flat means "lower in pitch by a semitone," and has an associated symbol, which looks like a lowercase "b"; the note A flat is shown in musical notation in Figure 1. Under equal temperament, C flat is the same as B and F flat is the same as E. There also exist double-flats, which look roughly like "bb".

In musical tuning, flat can also mean "very slightly lower in pitch." If two strings are slightly out of tune, the lower-pitched one is said to be flat with respect to the other.


Figure 1. The note A flat on the treble clef.

Play an A and an A flat

See also sharp


The word flat also has other, unrelated uses:



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Bullying

... for someone with absolute governmental power, from the Greek language turannos. In Classical Antiquity[?] it did not always have inherently negative implications, it ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 39.6 ms