For the month of March, our theme is Know Your Signature – That’s the Key! My goal is to help students not only memorize their key signatures, but also understand the concept that key signatures indicate which scale forms the basis for a particular piece of music. In order to reinforce that concept, I’ve created these Key Signature-Scale Matchup Music Worksheets that I plan to go over with each student and have them complete at their lesson next week. (Actually, I’ll let them choose one to do at their lesson, and assign them the rest to do on their own and bring back to their lesson next week.) Feel free to download them for free and use them with your students as well!
There are four worksheets included in the set: Major-Sharp Keys, minor-sharp Keys, Major-Flat Keys, and minor-flat Keys.
If you have a Fresh and Fun! idea for the month of March that relates to helping students learn key signatures, please leave it in the comments below or e-mail it to me. Basically, a Fresh and Fun! idea should just be a simple activity requiring about 5 minutes that can be done at the beginning of a lesson to help reinforce the concept.
Sofia says
I am working as a non-British music student on your drilling worksheets and have a question: What is the difference between scale name and key name? Please can you help. Wonderful worksheets, by the way. Thank you
(The worksheets I refer to are the KEY SIGNATURE-SCALE MATCHUP ones)
natalie says
Hi Sofia!
That’s a great question. In the end, they will be the same, but I used the different terminology to help students make the connection that whatever the name of the scale is with the correlating sharps and flats becomes the name of the key when used in reference to answering what key a piece is in. It’s really just a way of reinforcing the same concept. Once they figure out that the scale with one F# is the G Major scale, then they look for the key signature of one F# and transfer the scale name to determine that the F# in the key signature means it is the key of G Major. Hope that makes sense!