Following on from our last post on flats, we’ll explain here what naturals are. The sign used for naturals, as shown below, doesn’t really have any common relatives which you may know of. However, if you take it apart, it looks a bit like two 7s, with one being flipped.

A natural states to you, as the performer, that the note should be played normally. It cancels out the previous flats or sharps, even those in the key signature (which we’ll have a later post on). For example, in the video below, the first note is a sharpened F , the second note is a passing E natural, and the third note is an F natural. As the first note is an F#, the second F has to be written with a natural sign:

The difference is very slight, so congratulations if you hear it the first time. It may take a few repeats to notice the difference.

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