Major Scales: Why they're special and how we can use them
What’s so special about major scales?
The major scale, the bane of every young music student’s existence and seemingly the top priority amongst music educators. This seven note pattern can be so monotonous and tedious, what could possibly be so interesting about this do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do pattern? I’m gonna dive in a little deeper on how these seven notes can significantly improve your life.
They’re Everywhere
If you’ve ever been in some kind of musical context, you’ve probably heard someone ask “what key is this in?” or if you’re in an improvisational setting, a bandleader might have said “let’s play around in A for a little bit.” This sort of thing is the lifeblood of jam bands. Most popular songs in Western music revolve around some sort of key center. Even more harmonically complex songs like John Coltrane’s Giant Steps weave in and out of 3 different key centers. Scales are essentially an organized way of viewing all possibilities within a key.
How do we use them?
There’s a few things about learning scales that I think are extremely important, but I’m gonna start from the very beginning. In the musical alphabet, we go from A to G, with notes in the middle that are called “accidentals” which are essentially the same thing as black keys on the piano. There’s something called a “sharp” (looks like this: #. Not a hashtag) and essentially it raises a note. If you play a C on the piano, C# would be the next adjacent black key on the piano, one over to the right. There’s also something called a “flat” (looks like this: ♭) and essentially it lowers a note. If you play a D on the piano, Db would be the next adjacent black key on the piano, one over to the left. Now, you may be wondering “wait, Db is the same thing as C#.” If you’re wondering that, you’re correct and that’s what’s called an Enharmonic Equivalent. All that means is a different name for the same note. There’s a sharp and a flat between every note in music, except in between E and F, and B and C. That’s also the only region where there’s no black key on a piano. That brings us to a total of 12 notes, which are the following:
A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab - A (and so on)
In music, we measure distance in two main ways: whole steps and half steps. A half step would be something like A to A#, on the guitar it would be one fret away and on piano it would be the next adjacent key. A whole step would be something like C to D, on the guitar two frets away, on piano it would be skipping a black or white key - depending on the note.
How do we spell a major scale?
Major scales are essentially a collection of whole steps and half steps. If you’ve ever played piano, you’ve probably at some point played C D E F G A B C. That’s what’s known as C major scale and it’s a great point of reference, we don’t have to use any sharps or flats so it’s pretty simple to find out. Now, if we take a look at the whole and half steps within that, we see a certain pattern: C (W) D (W) E (h) F (W) G (W) A (W) B (h) C (W being whole steps, and h being half steps). If you want to further complicate it, here’s an example of E major: E (W) F# (W) G# (h) A (W) B (W) C# (W) D# (h) E. If this confuses you in any way, you can use the above written guide to all the notes and count step by step. But this is essentially the process of getting the major scale. So that being said, what do we do with this creation?
Intervals
Intervals are the distance between the notes and used for larger distances. They’re also where chords come from. For example, a major chord is built with a root, a major 3rd, and a perfect 5th. To find out the intervals, we can take a major scale and take a look at the relationship of each note in relation to the root note, so if we take C major:
C -> D is a Major 2nd (or 1 whole step)
C -> E is a Major 3rd (or 2 whole steps)
C -> F is a Perfect 4h (or 2 whole + 1 half step)
C -> G is a Perfect 5th (or 3 whole + 1 half step [or a power chord, if you play guitar])
C -> A is a Major 6th (or 4 whole + 1 half step, or count 1 whole + 1 half step down)
C -> B is a Major 7th (or 5 whole + 1 half step, or count 1 half step down)
So if we take what I said earlier (a major chord is built with a root, a major 3rd, and a perfect 5th), we can use said intervals to figure that out. C major would be C E and G (because those notes and intervals are presented above), and if we took something like D major the process would look like this:
Major chord : Root - Major 3rd - Perfect 5th
D major : D (root) - F# (Major 3rd, or 2 whole steps above) - A (Perfect 5th, 3 whole + 1 half)
Now this gives us the intervals in a major scale, but what about the other notes? To find the rest of the intervals, all we must do is alter the major intervals. The only notes we didn’t touch are: Db (or C#), Eb (or D#), F# (or Gb), Ab (or G#) and Bb (or A#). So those would look like this:
C -> Db is a Minor 2nd (or 1 half step)
C -> Eb is a Minor 3rd (or 1 whole + 1 half step)
C -> F# is a Tritone/Augmented 4th (3 whole steps, hence Tritone)
C -> Gb is a Tritone/Diminished 5th (3 whole steps, hence Tritone)
C -> G# is an Augmented 5th (4 whole steps, or 2 whole steps below)
C -> Ab is a Minor 6th (4 whole steps, or 2 whole steps below)
C -> Bb is a Minor 7th (5 whole steps, or 1 whole step below)
***Both G# and Ab/F# and Gb are the same note but the context in which you use them would be different Now we get into the real meat of the major scales.
Chords
There’s four main types of three note chords, which are commonly referred to as triads. Those four types are:
Major : Root - Major 3rd - Perfect 5th
Minor : Root - Minor 3rd - Perfect 5th
Diminished : Root - Minor 3rd - Diminished 5th
Augmented : Root - Major 3rd - Augmented 5th
Given that, there’s actually chords embedded into the major scale. If we take a look at the key of C major, and we build triads off of every note only using the notes within the scale, we get:
C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, and B diminished.
If you backtrack and spell out each of the chords, you’ll find no sharps or flats in any of the above chords, and you’ll find all of the notes in C major.
How do we use this?
Music is a really daunting thing to create and it seems like the possibilities are endless. On a full scale piano, you have 88 keys, on a full size electric guitar you have 6 strings and more or less than 22 frets (132 notes total), and that can be pretty daunting. You also have 12 distinct notes, 4 main chord qualities, and the choice of using single notes, intervals, or triads. That’s a lot of options for the new songwriter/composer.
With the major scale, we pair it down to a language we’re familiar with. Unless you grew up on Schoenberg’s 12 tone row music (entirely possible), if you’ve listened to any sort of mainstream music genre you’ve probably been exposed to songs within a key, like I said earlier. Choosing a scale/key, finding the chords/intervals/notes within it, breaks this down into just 7 notes and 7 chords. It narrows down our scope to the notes we’re familiar with and notes that are guaranteed to sound good next to one another (with exceptions of course, but generally speaking if you play any two chords within a scale it will sound some degree of good, I think). If you’re reading this and thinking “I don’t want to just play what other people have played, I want to innovate!” I love your enthusiasm! But in order to break free from tradition and change the game, you have to learn the game first. How are you going to break free from scales and key-centric music if you don’t already know what it is? Once you learn the major scale, and all of the juicy inner workings of it, you’ll then have the facility to decide, “I’m gonna use an F minor in the key of C because it creates a nice chromatic voice leading line in between F major and C major.” And although I usually don’t condone cop-outs, if you’re in a hurry and need some chords to compliment your beat, you can pick any chords from any key and you’ll know they sound good.
Enjoy!
-Nick
P.S. Here’s the video version of this if you like these kinds of things