Natural (music)

In modern Western music notation, a natural (♮) is a musical symbol that cancels a previous sharp or flat on a note in the written music. The sharp or flat may be from a key signature or an accidental. The natural indicates that the note is at its unaltered pitch.

♮
Natural (music)
In Unicode	U+266E (HTML : &#9838)

Examples

The natural symbol can be used as an accidental to cancel sharps or flats on an individual note. It may also be shown in a key signature to indicate that sharps or flats in a previous key signature are cancelled.

A note is referred to as 'natural' when the letter-name note (A, B, C, D, E, F, or G) is not modified by flats or sharps from a key signature or an accidental. These notes correspond to the white keys on the keyboard of a piano or organ.

The keys of A minor or C major and their scales contain all natural notes, whereas other scales and keys have at least one sharp or flat.

F♭, C♭, E♯, B♯, and most notes inflected by double-flats and double-sharps correspond in pitch with natural notes but are regarded as enharmonic equivalents of the natural note.

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

Notation

In musical notation, a natural sign (♮) cancels a flat or sharp from either a preceding note or from the key signature.

Sometimes these cancelling naturals at a key change are omitted, although they must be shown to indicate a new key with no flats or sharps.

Like all accidental markings, the natural symbol would be written to the left of the note head and it applies to any subsequent notes of the same pitch through the remainder of the measure.

To cancel the previous natural signs on notes of the same pitch, another accidental, such as a flat (♭) or a sharp (♯) is used.

Double natural

A double natural is a symbol that has two naturals (♮♮). It may be used to cancel a double flat or double sharp, but in modern notation a single natural sign (♮) is acceptable.

Similarly, a simple ♭ or ♯ without any natural sign can be used to indicate that a double flat or double sharp has been changed to a single flat or sharp, but older notation may use ♮♭, ♭♮, ♮♯, or ♯♮ instead.

• The same principle can apply when canceling a triple sign (triple flat/triple sharp) or beyond.

• When changing a flat to a sharp or vice-versa, the combined symbols ♮♯ or ♮♭ can be used.
• In John Stump's Prelude and the Last Hope, when removing double flats in the key signature, the double naturals are used.

Other situations

• If a key change indicates flats or sharps of a key signature changing to double flats or double sharps, naturals may be used to cancel the single flats or sharps but this is not necessary.
• The score editing program MuseScore does not use cancelling naturals when a key signature changes. While this is acceptable notation if the new key signature shows sharps or flats, the cancelling naturals are required if the new key signature has no sharps of flats—this is a software bug in the program. The following example shows G sharp major modulating to C major, incorrectly leaving out the cancelling natural signs.