Now let's look at scales. A scale is a set of notes that are used in a specific order to create a musical piece. Often when scales are explained to a complete beginner, they seem kind of random and hard to deceiver. Instead of simply telling you all the scales and their rules, let's try to derive them from a logical pattern.
The most basic scale is the chromatic scale, which we already know, since it is simply the complete set of notes in order. The note the scale starts on is called the root note. Let's start with the C note, and then continue with the other notes in order, but we can start with any note as the root note.
The recipe for this scale is simple: go through all notes a half-step at a time. Often the term 'semitone' is used instead of half-step and 'tone' instead of whole step. These are just different names, but mean the same thing. Since each of the twelve notes is a half-step apart, the recipe simply means that we go through the notes in order, one after the other.
The chromatic scale is the basis of all other scales, as it contains all notes. It's not very musical though, as it is not distinctive in how it sounds.
One of the most common scale is the major scale, which consists of seven notes. Even though it's mostly referred to simply as Major scale, it's full name is 'Natural Major Scale'. The simplest major scale is the C-major scale. The C-major scale consists of all natural notes, leaving out the accidental notes. So from all notes...
...we just keep the natural notes. When you spell out (or play) a scale from bottom to top, you normally include the root again at the octave, so the C-major scale is:
If we want to come up with a recipe using steps like we did for the chromatic scale, we would say: From the start, take a full-step, which takes us from C to D, jumping over C♯, another full-step to E, then a half-step to F. Here we can only take a half-step, because there is no accidental note between E and F, and we want the next natural note. Then we take another full-step to G, another full-step to A, one more full-step to B, and finally a half-step to get back to C. Let's use W for whole-step and H for half-step. So the recipe for the C-major scale is:
The recipe is crucial to derive a major scale from any note we choose as the root note. For example, if we want the A-Major scale, we start with the chromatic scale starting at A.
Now we apply the pattern to derive the scale. From A, we take a whole step, jumping to B, another whole step to C♯, a half-step to D, a whole step to E, a whole step to F♯, a whole step to G♯, and finally a half-step back to A.
The A-major scale consists of the notes A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G♯. The pattern is the same for all major scales, regardless of the root note. But depending what note we start on, the resulting notes are different. That's why the A-Major scale is not just a different order of the notes in the C-Major scale, but a different set of notes.
When we covered notes, we saw that all accidentals have two names. In a scale we always use the accidental name that ensures that a note name does not appear twice in the scale. If we would use flat names in the A-Major scale, we would have note names doubled, as A and D appear twice (not counting the octave A), therefore we use the sharp names instead.
On other major scales we have to use flat names, for example in the F-Major scale, where we have B♭ instead of A♯.
When we form all major scales, it's becomes clear that the C-Major scale is the only major scale to only contain natural notes.
There is a rule on how many sharp and flats occur in each scale, but we'll take a look later, when we cover the so called 'Circle of Fifths', which makes it very easy to determine this.