Skip to main content

Music Scales: Subsets of the Alphabet



Music scales are a set of notes that we choose to use for a particular song. These notes are chosen because they sound good together. Different cultures have different scales that they use more. The most common to most of us is the major scale.

To form a scale, we proceed through the alphabet choosing notes that go together to achieve a particular sounding set. Most of the time we do this by putting together 'whole steps' and 'half steps'.



To read more on this, let's start with major scales.


Major Scales

In this lesson we cover how to put together scales by starting with the simplest one, the major scale. A major scale is put together using whole steps and half steps in a particular regular pattern.


Minor Scales

Minor scales are different than major scales in the fact that there is no one "right" minor scale. Minor refers to the fact that the 3rd degree (or 3rd note in the scale) is a half step lower than it is in the major scale. The other members of this scale can change to get different effects while still maintaining a "minor" sound.


Pentatonic Scales

In this lesson we'll cover the infamous pentatonic scales. Pentatonic is a word that comes from the Greek 'penta' meaning five and 'tonic' referring to tone. Quite literally, a pentatonic scale is one that is made of only five notes. There are two main forms of pentatonics: minor and major.


Piano Scales - www.play-the-piano.org

"An introduction to piano scales. Learn how to find many different music scales easily on the piano, and more!"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Transpose Chords to Play Any Song in Any Key

One trick that is essential for musicians is knowing how to transpose chords. Transposing is the process of changing a section of music to another key. Sometimes this is done to make it more comfortable for the singer, sometimes it is done for ease of playability, and sometimes it is just for personal tone preference. As with a lot of things in music, there is more than one way to do this. The first way is to count the distance from the starting key to the destination key. This is easier than the alternative at first, but it is time consuming and not necessary once you learn the other way. The other way is to convert everything to numbers. While this soundsharder and more time consuming, it is eventually more efficient. We'll start with the counting. Let's say that you are playing a song in C and your friend wants to play it in A. You first pick whether you want to transpose up or down. (Usually one way or the other is easier depending on the instrument and what to
Post a Comment
Read more

Intermediate Music : Beyond the Basics

So by now, you already have a handle on how music works for the most part. If not, check out the ELEMENTARY section again. Intermediate music theory can be lots of fun as you learn more and use your own creativity to explore the different possibilities. Once you have control of the building blocks, you get to be the architect! There are certain components of this level of study that are pretty much essential for learning beyond this point. These things are all interrelated, and each one is necessary in understanding another. Intervals Here's a slightly more advanced sequel to the Basic article on intervals. Discover what major, minor, augmented, diminished, and perfect are and how they relate to different kinds of intervals. Diatonic Chords Diatonic chords are the chords that naturally fit into a particular scale because they were built from it. Almost all of the chords you hear in today's music are diatonic. Nashville Number System The Nashville
Post a Comment
Read more

Looking for a Good Pentatonic Scale Lesson? Look No Further.

And why do you need a pentatonic scale lesson? Because pentatonic scales are VERY useful in learning music theory, writing or arranging music, and ESPECIALLY improvising. The word "pentatonic" comes from the Greek "pente" meaning 5 and the Latin "tonicus" meaning tone. So a pentatonic scale is a scale with only 5 tones. there are two standard pentatonic scales: major and minor. They actually are the same scale, just inverted (flipped) differently as I'll explain in a minute. We'll start with the major pentatonic. As with most scales, we will be working with their scale degrees. A major pentatonic scale consists of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. So it is basically a major scale with the 4 and 7 left out. Ex. C D E F G A B C C D E G A Ex. F# G# A# B C# D# E# F# F# G# A# C# D# With a minor pentatonic, we use 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7. So it is basically a minor scale with the 2 and 6 left out. Ex. A B C D E F G A A C D E G
Post a Comment
Read more