4 Sharps: E Major / C Sharp Minor
Four sharps is E major, or C sharp minor. The sharps are F sharp, C sharp, G sharp and D sharp, and a semitone above D sharp is E.
4 sharps
E major / C♯ minor
The last sharp written is D♯. Go up one semitone from it and you have the major key: E major.
E major scale
E F♯ G♯ A B C♯ D♯
C♯ minor scale (relative minor)
C♯ D♯ E F♯ G♯ A B
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E major scale
E F♯ G♯ A B C♯ D♯
C♯ minor scale
C♯ D♯ E F♯ G♯ A B
The guitar's most resonant key
Standard guitar tuning is E, A, D, G, B, E — and both of the outer strings, the lowest and the highest, are the tonic of this key. The B string is the fifth degree and the A string is the fourth. An open E major chord fingers three notes and lets three strings ring, two of them the tonic itself, spread three octaves apart.
Nothing else on the instrument sounds quite like it, and it is the reason E major and E minor dominate blues and rock guitar writing to the extent they do. The choice is not stylistic in origin; it is a consequence of how the instrument is tuned.
And the key a wind band will not use
The same key is close to the worst case for the instruments that dominate a concert band. A B flat trumpet or clarinet sounds a whole tone below its written note, so concert E has to be read as F sharp — six sharps. An E flat alto saxophone sounds a major sixth below, so the same music arrives as C sharp: seven sharps, every letter of the scale raised.
This is why band and orchestral wind repertoire clusters in the flat keys while guitar repertoire clusters in the sharp keys. Both groups are picking the key their instrument reads and fingers most easily, and those keys are on opposite sides of the circle.
C sharp minor
The relative minor here is C sharp minor, three semitones below E, and it is a key with a substantial classical presence — Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14, the one nicknamed the Moonlight, is written in it, and being long out of copyright it is easy to find in facsimile and to study directly.
On a piano the key sits well: four sharps means four black keys in the scale, and the hand finds the black keys naturally. On a guitar it is a barre key, fourth fret, which is the usual trade — the key that is easy to read for one instrument is rarely the key that is easy to finger for another.
Four sharps, and what is left unsharpened
E major is E F sharp G sharp A B C sharp D sharp. Only two notes in the scale — E and A, plus B — are natural; four of the seven are raised. At this point the useful mental shift is to stop tracking which notes are sharpened and start tracking which are not, because the shorter list is easier to hold.
The diatonic chords are E, F sharp minor, G sharp minor, A, B, C sharp minor and D sharp diminished. The B chord as the fifth degree is major, and on guitar it is the one chord in this otherwise very open key that requires a barre — which is why so many guitarists in E reach for a B7 shape instead, a chord that keeps the same function with an easier hand position.
The seven chords of E major
Every major key produces the same pattern of chord qualities — major on the first, fourth and fifth degrees, minor on the second, third and sixth, diminished on the seventh. Only the names change.
Questions people ask about this signature
- Four sharps is what key?
- E major, or C sharp minor. The four sharps are F sharp, C sharp, G sharp and D sharp, in that fixed order.
- Why do so many guitar songs sit in E?
- Because a guitar's lowest and highest open strings are both E, and the B and A strings are the fifth and fourth degrees of the key. More open strings ring in E than in any other key, so the instrument simply sounds bigger there.
- Why is E major difficult for wind instruments?
- Transposing instruments read a different key from the one that sounds. A B flat clarinet reading concert E sees six sharps, and an E flat alto saxophone sees seven — so a key that is easy on guitar is close to the hardest available for the wind section.