Scales
The importance of scales with respect to creating our music, is that they are sets of notes that will work well when played together. If you look at a piano keyboard, you will see that there is a pattern of keys that repeats itself every 12 keys. This is because western music (as in western civilization) has twelve notes. Start at any key on a piano, count up (or down) 12 keys and you will return to the same note, only an octave higher(or lower). If you play each of those notes, it is a called a chromatic scale. So a chromatic scale is just starting on a note and playing each consecutive note up or down until you reach the same note again. The notes are named for letters A-G. You might have observed that's only seven letters, but twelve notes. Well, some of the letters have notes in between called flats (b) or sharps (#). These correspond to the black keys on the piano. You can think of sharp as meaning one note above, and flat as meaning one note lower. Notice that the black keys all have two names for the same note. The name is relative to which direction you approach it from, but whichever you call it, the note is the same.
| In the example to the left, if you were to play only the white keys in consecutive order starting and ending on "C", you might recognize the melody as Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.
This is a Major scale.... and because we started at C, it is the C major scale. Note the pattern of notes included in the major scale, with (*) representing the unplayed notes. [C * D * E F] * [ G * A * B C] Can you guess how a D major scale might look? Well, the interval between the played and unplayed notes remains the same, but now some black keys are played. [D * E * F# G] * [A * B * C# D] Also note that the eighth note of the scale is the same as the starting note, only an Octave higher. Does it seem confusing to memorize all the notes in 12 scales? To simplify this a bit, many musicians tend to think in terms of the interval between the notes rather than the actual note names. Each note of the major scale is assigned a Roman Numeral. C-- C#--D----D#----E------F---F#---G---G#--A- --A#---B----C I-II# - II --II#-- III -- IV-- IV#- V-- V#-- VI --VI- VII-- I Then when we start a scale on a different note, we don't need to care what the notes are called, we simply think in numbers, and play the same intervals. C#--D--D#----E----F----F#---G---G#--A- ---A#--B----C --C# I-II#- II --II#-- III-- IV-- IV#- V-- V#-- VI --VI- VII-- I See how in the C# scale (above) the names of the notes change because we are starting on C# instead of C....But the Roman Numerals, and intervals between them stay the same. So in playing a major scale, the notes may change depending on your starting place, but the intervals, and the Roman Numerals will stay the same. Major scales are very common, and the combination of notes sounds pleasing and correct to our ears. There are however, many other scales, each a slight variation from the major scale. For instance a Minor scale would be played using the following numerals: I- I#- II -IIIb- III- IV- IV#- V -VIb -VI- VIIb- VII -I This Minor scale the same as the Major scale, except that we have flatted (b) the III, VI and VII notes. (Remember that the II# is the same as IIIb) Here is a Blues scale: I--IIIb--IV --Vb V--VIIb II To simplify things, I have left out the unplayed notes. You have the first or root note, followed by a flatted third, fourth, flatted fifth, fifth, flatted seventh, and back to the first. Once we have decided on a key and scale, we have narrowed down which notes we will be working with. We can then take these notes and improvise with them to create a melody.