The key signature is found at the beginning of the staff directly after the clef. Its job is to tell you what the root note or safest tone is in the piece of music. Each “Key” has its own unique key signature.
The key signatures only job is to tell you what note will be played sharp, flat or natural.
A key signature looks like a series of sharp symbols (#) or flat symbols (b) placed on the music Staff. These symbols designate the notes that are to be consistently played one half step higher (sharp) or lower (flat) than the equivalent natural notes.
The clef and key signature are the only symbols that normally appear on every line of the staff. They are important symbols because they tell you what note is on each line and space of the staff.
The clef tells you the letter name of the note (A, B, C, etc.), and the key tells you whether the note is sharp, flat or natural.
When a sharp (or flat) appears on a line or space in the key signature, all the notes on that line or space are sharp (or flat), and all other notes with the same letter names in other octaves are also sharp (or flat).
Every key belongs to a Key signature.
An example of this would be the key of C. In the key of C there are no (0) sharps or flats.
On the piano keyboard all the white keys (and only the white keys) would be the key of C.
The sharps and flats always appear in the same order.
The key of G major has one sharp and that sharp is always F#. So to play the key of G you would always play the note F as F#. Look at the image below to see what the key of G major looks like.
The order of sharps is: F sharp, C sharp, G sharp, D sharp, A sharp, E sharp, B sharp.
The key of F major has one flat and that flat is always the note Bb. The key of F major looks like this.
The order of flats is the reverse of the order of sharps: B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, C flat, F flat.
So the keys with only one flat (F major and D minor) have a B flat; the keys with two flats (B flat major and G minor) have B flat and E flat; and so on. Bb major would look like this.
If you want to figure out what key a piece of music is remember these two things. If it is sharp, look at the last sharp symbol and move up one half step. Example would be if the last sharp is the note F# then you are in the key of E major. If you were working with flats you would go to the second to last flat and that is your key.
Here is a great image that I found on goggle that explains it.
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