A little scale theory

Description

Today I thought I'd post some theory about the major scale.
I saw this stuff posted on this site before, and to my surprise, it was wrong. Its the major scale, how hard can it be? Anyway, this is right, and you can never know too much theory, so let's get going.

Before I say anything else, it's important that were all clear on the terms for the distance between notes. When you talk scales, you'll hear the terms whole steps and half steps.(or tones and semi-tones, they're the same thing) A half step is the distance from one note to the next, like F to F# or B to C. Each fret on your guitar is a half step, or semi-tone apart. A whole step, or tone, is the difference between two notes, or two frets on your guitar, like F to G orB to C#. All clear on that? Cool.

Scales are very important. You use them in improvising or writing solos, they can tell you what key you're in and what chords to use, all sorts of neat stuff like that. The major scale is a type of diatonic scale. A diatonic scale is a scale with seven different notes. The major scale, like all other scales, followes a pattern of whole steps and half steps. This pattern is whole step-whole step-half step-whole step-whole step-whole step-half step. You can remeber this with a little phrase; Two wholes, half, three wholes, half.

If you take this pattern and start on a note, say C for example, we'll get a certain ordering of notes; C D E F G A B C. Observe. If we look at a C chromatic scale and apply this pattern we can see how the scale is formed. A chromatic scale is simple. Its just all twelve notes between an octave(you'll learn what an octave is an just a sec)

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C

These notes are all a half step apart. Count up one note for every half step(eg;C to C#) and two for every whole step(eg; C to D). Now look what happens when we only show the notes that fit the major scale pattern.

C D E F G A B C


This is the C major scale. I said the major scale is a diatonic scale (seven notes) and there are eight notes here. If you look you'll see that there are only 7 different notes, the first and last are the same. We call these eight notes in a scale an octave, and we call the first note of the scale the keynote. This same pattern can start and end on other notes, giving you different major scales.

In the example below is a C major scale with a perfect cadence. A perfect cadece is a two chord progression played after a scale that consists of the V and I chords in that scale( I'll talk about that on another day) The chords for a perfect cadence played after a C major scale are G7(V) and C(I) major. Each chord is held for two beats and each note in this scale is a quarter note. (one beat each) The other example is a guitar fretboard going up to the 12 fret for those who dont already know the notes on their fretboards. # is a sharp and b is a flat. Remember, notes like F# and Gb are the exact same notes, so dont get confused. Apply the major scale pattern to the other notes on the fretboard and see what different notes you get in your scales. This fretboard is also cool to study to learn your notes. All the notes after the 12 fret just repeat at a higher pitch,(one octave higher) so don't worry about that either.


That's all then. I'll post more about scales and key signatures later. Bye for now then.