Musical Symbol Flat Up

It lowers the note by an amount set by the tuning.

An accidental is a sign that changes a note’s pitch. This microtonal flat is useful when standard notation, with 12 equal steps per octave, cannot express the intended pitch. MusicXML, a digital score format, groups it with quarter-tone accidentals; in 22-EDO notation, which divides an octave into 22 equal steps, it lowers two steps. The pitch distance depends on the tuning.

Place it just before its note. Replacing 𝄬 with ♭ gives a standard flat and changes the tuning instruction.

When did flat-up enter music notation?

The encoding record is not the sign’s origin.

A 1998 proposal for encoding Western musical symbols lists flat-up. That marks computer-encoding work, not when the sign first appeared in music.

The encoded arrowed series groups it with flat-down, natural-up, and sharp-up. MusicXML gives Turkish and Iranian microtonal accidentals separate choices; similar pitch-changing jobs do not make them interchangeable.

How do I type 𝄬 in notation software?

Choose flat-up in the score’s active tuning system.

Search the editor’s symbol picker for “flat-up” or “flat arrow up.” In a 2024 Dorico discussion, imported microtonal accidentals disappeared until the matching tonality system was selected.

For text entry, use U+1D12C where the editor supports Unicode code-point input. Text fonts may render it tiny or omit it; text encoding alone does not place it on a staff. Choose a music font or use the notation editor’s accidental menu.