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All About The Major and Minor Scales

Scales make up the building blocks from which melodies, harmonies and chords are constructed. A scale can be defined as a sequence of musical notes in an ascending or descending order. The most fundamental scale known in Western music is the Major Scale.

The Major Scale:

 The Major Scale is the most commonly used scale known for its happy, uplifting sound. In this post you will learn all about the Major and Minor Scales; how to make them, the differences between them, and how they sound..

 

We can start with the easiest one which is C major. It consists of all the white keys on your piano. Now I bet you’re asking, how did you come up with that? 

The formula for finding the Major Scale is as follows:

                                                                W-W-H-W-W-W-H

 The W stands for “Whole Steps” while H stands for “Half Steps”

And a whole step is the distance between 2 notes whereas a half step is the distance from 1 note.

Moving 1 Key = Half Step

Moving 2 Keys = Whole Step

 

 

Identifying the difference between whole steps and half steps in music

The distance between C and D is a whole step, one note counting the black key and then the next note up to D. The same goes for the distance from D to E. 

Now, the distance between the E and and F is only 1 key so we’ll call that a half step. There are 2 half steps in the Major Scale, E-F and B-C, take note on where these half steps are

 

A good way to memorize this formula is to start on Middle C on the piano. Now while playing each note in the scale, simply repeat the formula out loud, “whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half” until you reach the next C note.  

 

 

Here is an example of a C Major Scale:    

 

The Major Scale laid out on a piano showing the whole steps and half steps

Take a listen to the audio file below and listen to the relationships between each of the notes, especially between the half steps:

Note: you can use this formula to figure out the major scale of any key. Just start on your root note  and use the formula of whole steps and half steps to figure out the rest of the notes in that key. 

 

For example, if you wanted to find out the notes of the G Major Scale:

The G Major scale shown on a piano along with it's whole step and half step formula

The Minor Scale:

From this scale we can make the Minor Scale

All we have to do is shift our root now down 3 steps and use all the white keys again. 

Once again there’s a special formula for figuring out the minor scale and here it is:

                                                                W-H-W-W-H-W-W

 

Here is an example of a A Minor Scale:  

The A Minor Scale laid out on a piano showing the whole steps and half steps

Take a listen to the audio file below, this time with the minor scale and listen to the relationships between each of the notes, especially between those half steps:

Let’s take what we’ve learned and starting on C, create the C minor scale.

The C Minor Scale laid out on a piano showing the whole steps and half steps

Using the formulas laid out above you are now able to figure out any Major or Minor Scale from any of the 12 possible keys!

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