I have always preferred, in terms of finding it easier to read, sharps than flats. I don’t know why. At two or three sharps or flats, I don’t really notice the difference, but anything with four or more, I always do much better sightreading, and in the early stages of getting the music into my fingers, when it’s sharps rather than flats. I don’t know why. And for some reason, when there are five in the key signature, I often have a hard time playing Gb correctly when sightreading a new piece. But I never have the same problem sightreading A# in a new piece.
One time I was working on a piece with my piano teacher with five flats, and I think I maybe said something about how I hate reading Gb, and he said with sort of surprise “you prefer sharps? I prefer flats.” That started a discussion about people’s preferences and there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for it.
I thought maybe I prefer sharps because you read to the right in the score, and you move the note up to the right for sharps. That seems like it might make it easier to read, to me. But since other people find flats easier to read, I think maybe that’s not the actual reason.
It’s probably something more mundane, like maybe early on in my piano learning, I maybe learned a few pieces in a row that all had sharps and that made me more comfortable with sharps than flats, and that preference just stayed. I have no memory if that, it’s just a guess.
At this point, I am comfortable in all keys (which is fortunate, because some of my favorite composers tend to write a lot of music with five flats or five sharps, so I find myself switching around in these keys a lot with the pieces I play).
Edited to add: I want to stress that this isn’t about a preference for how any key sounds, I don’t know if I have a favorite key in that regard, although there are pieces where I’m very aware of liking the key that it’s in, if that makes sense. But this post is really about the experience of reading in different keys, and especially sightreading new music.
So do you have a preference for sharps or flats? Do you know why?