Five conventional signs are referred to both as accidentals, and as inflections.
These five signs are easily extended to seven, by introducing triple sharps and triple flats. The idea of triple signs is not new; for example, Georg Philipp Telemann used them in his treatise of 1743.
Two traditional names for these signs, accidentals and the somewhat less common inflections, may be used to employ signs in two distinct ways. First, they may be used in combination with letters as labels for staff positions, in which case they are called accidentals. Second, they may be used as chromatic alterations to notes on the staff, in which case they are called inflections.
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