FREE ONILNE LESSONS (Major and Minor Scales)

A scale is a group of notes. When you form a scale, you are actually selecting certain notes, limiting the total number of possible notes. With every melody composed using the notes in a scale, improvisation becomes much easier. Major scales give us the familiar tune we all know. If you can sing, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do, you already know what is a major scale. Notice that there are only 7 different notes, and most songs do not use more than the 7 notes in the scale. C major scale is the easiest scale to play because it has no sharps or flats. They are simply all the white keys on the keyboard.

Although there are only seven letters used for notes in music: (C D E F G A B), there are actually a total of 12 different notes in music.

A group of all 12 different notes form the chromatic scale:

The interval between any two notes along the chromatic scale is called a semi-tone. For example, between C to C# and E to F.

The interval between any three notes along the chromatic scale is called a whole-tone. For example, between C to D and E to F#.

Now, examine the intervals between the notes in C major scale.

Using the whole-tone & half-tone formula (taken from the C major scale), you are able to form any of the other major scales!

Try forming B major scale using the above formula. And this is what you should get... 
B major scale:

Great. And now, these are the 12 different major scales!

Similar to a major scale, a minor scale is also group of seven different notes. However, it gives us a darker' feel and it sounds like:

To form any minor scale, use the following whole-tone & half-tone formula: (which is different from the major scale formula you have learned previously)

Now, analyze A minor scale. Though all the notes fall on white keys, the interval relationship between the notes are very different from C major scale.

For every major scale, there is a relative minor scale. The relative minor scale of C major scale is A minor scale because both C major scale and A minor share the same group of notes.

These are the 12 different minor scales: