Welcome to the Scales Lesson!
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Hi and welcome to the next lesson in your music theory journey!
Today we're going to talk about Major and Minor scales.
A scale is a set of musical played in order from low to high.
A scale is defined by the note that it starts on (its 'root note') and its quality.
Major and Minor are examples of qualities.
Examples of names of possible scales could be: A major, C minor, etc.
The quality of a scale is defined by the distance between each note on the scale.
To form a major scale start at the root note and follow the following sequence of steps (expressed in Whole and Half Steps):
Whole Whole Half Whole Whole Whole Half.
For example if we wanted to form a D major scale we would start at the root note D and proceed as follows:
(D) Whole step (E) Whole step (F#) Half step (G) Whole step (A) Whole step (B) Whole step (C#) Half step (D)
Click to highlight the D major scale on the piano.
Notice that we end at the same note we started on.
To construct a minor scale we do the same as before but we use the following sequence of steps instead:
Whole Half Whole Whole Half Whole Whole
If we wanted to form a C minor Scale:
(C) Whole step (D) Half step (Eb) Whole step (F) Whole step (G) Half step (Ab) Whole step (Bb) Whole step (C)
Click to highlight the C minor scale on the piano.
Once again we end on the note we started on.
Now that we've finished the lesson, go check out the quiz!