Creating Major & Minor Scales

Honestly... just as easy as singing "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music :)

What we will cover...

1) Reviewing the Musical Alphabet

2) Formula for creating major & minor scales

3) Getting down and dirty, creating major & minor scale examples

1) Reviewing the Musical Alphabet

What is the musical alphabet and what does it consist of?

The musical alphabet are the letters we use to read music and consists of the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Easy peasy, just the first seven letters of the English/Spanish alphabet.

How do these letters play a role in learning music?

These letters, just like in the English or Spanish language help us create words and sentences, in music, these letters help us create scales and chords. Scales help us create beautiful melodies and chords help us support those beautiful melodies we create and it all starts with the musical alphabet.

2) Formula for creating major & minor scales

Formula for major scale = w w h w w w h

Formula for minor scale = w h w w h w w

You: Ok.. great... what do all these mumbo-jumbo w's and h's mean?!

Me: The 'w' stands for a whole tone and the 'h' stands for a half tone.

You: I still don't get it...

Let's visualize a board game with a board piece similar to that of Monopoly. In this particular board game in order to get one point you have to take two steps forward, taking only one step forward in the board will only give you half a point.

That's basically how we create a whole and half tones in music.

Whole tone = 2 steps forward (or backwards)

Half tone = 1 step forward (or backwards)

Let's see how this looks on a piano...

3) Getting down and dirty, creating major & minor scale examples

Let's start off by trying to create a major scale, starting at C.

Formula for Major scale = w w h w w w h

(On the piano you will stumble upon black keys at the top, in between two notes. If you happen to see a black key, those count as a step as well so don't skip them!)

If we are at C, we want to take two steps forward to create a whole tone. This means from C we will go up to the black key labeled C#/Db, making this one step, and now from C#/Db down to D to make our second step. We now have created the first whole tone in our scale.

So what does our scale look like so far...

C D . . . . . . ok, let's keep going.

The formula calls for another whole tone, so now we are going to move from D up to D#/Eb to make one step and from D#/Eb to make our second step, we are now on E.

C D E . . . . .

Our formula now calls for a half step which means we only take one step forward. Moving forward from E we have no black keys above so we move one step forward to the F, which creates our half tone.

C D E F . . . .

Moving along, our formula now calls for a whole tone again so we move from F one step forward to the F#/Gb and from the F#/Gb down to the G in order to make two steps which creates our whole tone.

C D E F G . . .

We have another whole tone which will take us from G --> G#/Ab --> A.

C D E F G A

Another whole tone, A --> A#/Bb --> B

C D E F G A B .

Lastly, it asks us for a half step. After B we don't have any black keys so when we take one step forward we come to C and that's where we stop.

C D E F G A B C

We have now created our first major scale! That was easy right?

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For our last example we are now going to create a minor scale starting at E.

Formula for minor scale: w h w w h w w

To make a whole tone from E we need to take two steps forward. Our first step from E will take us to the F, and our second step will take us up to the F#/Gb.

Wait, so what do we use, the F# or the Gb? Since we are going alphabetically, E is followed by F and since our whole tone lead us to F#/Gb we use the F with the # in front of it. We now have

E F# . . . . . .

From the F#, we now need to make a half tone which means we only move one step forward so this will take us from the F# down to the G.

E F# G . . . . .

We now move up a whole tone from G --> G#/Ab --> A

E F# G A . . . .

Another whole tone from A --> A#/Bb --> B

E F# G A B . . .

Now a half step... B --> C

E F# G A B C . .

Another whole tone... C --> C#/Db --> D

E F# G A B C D .

Finally, one last whole tone... D --> D#/Eb --> E

E F# G A B C D E

We have now created our first minor scale.

Wait... one more thing...

Homework time! That's right. The only way to get better at building scales is by practicing. So for your homework you are going to construct the A and D major scales and the A and B minor scales.

Write your answers in the comments below.

Have fun scaling around! :)