Major scales

A scale is a set of notes picked from the full 12, and the most basic, the chromatic scale, contains all 12 notes. The note you start the scale on – called the ‘root’ – gives the scale its name. Fig 1 shows all the notes of the C chromatic scale stacked together on a piano roll, so you can visualise the set of notes (you’d never normally play all the notes like this). The final octave note is included for completeness – there aren’t actually two Cs in the scale.

Making music with the chromatic scale can sound rather, er… experimental. What we really want is a smaller set of notes that ‘play nice’ together, and the most fundamental scale for this is the major scale – like most ‘normal’ scales, it contains seven different notes. We build it by starting on any note and selecting notes using a pattern of semitone (1 note) and tone (2 note) intervals: 2-2-1-2-2-2-1. Check out Fig 2 to see what we mean – the notes we’ve ‘selected’ for the scale are in red, and the ones we haven’t are in white. Fig 3 shows our complete C major scale, CD E F G A B C. The C major scale has no sharp (or flat) notes, and it coincides exactly with the white keys on the keyboard. This is because music theory and keyboards have been designed around the C major scale.

The important thing to remember is that it’s the 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 pattern that creates a major scale, so concentrate on that first – you can learn the notes as you go.

Every scale has its own sound and feeling, and the major scale is upbeat and “happy” in character. There are lots more scales to use, of course, and that’s when things can start to get confusing. To make your life easier, we’ve prepared the CM MIDI Construction Kit within this issue’s Tutorial Files. It’s packed with MIDI scales and chords to guide you – let’s try it now and see what the major scale can do!