Black note

On keyboard instruments, a black note is one of the smaller keys that stand above the white notes. All the black notes found within an octave form a pentatonic scale. Black notes can be referred to as sharps of the white note below, or as flats of the white note above. In keyboard percussion instruments with a layout similar to that of the piano, the corresponding notes are often also called "the black notes" even though in reality the bars producing those notes are of the same color as the rest of the instrument's bars.

Traditionally, the black notes on a piano were made of ebony, but today they may be made from any number of synthetic materials.

Trivia

Frederic Chopin's Etude No. 5 in G-flat is known as the "Black Key" etude because the right-hand part is played entirely on the black keys (save for some editions in which the part contains one white note).