Notesets Walkthrough

An introduction to notesets

A guided introduction to scales — the root, scale degrees, and notesets — and how they look on your instrument. Takes ~2 minutes.

Takeaways

  • Most music uses just 7 of the 12 notes — that's a scale

  • A root anchors it; each other note sits a fixed interval above, shown by a color and a number — its scale degree, with its own sound and role

  • Shift every note together → same scale, new root

  • Shift non-root notes → a different scale type, or a smaller subset (like a pentatonic, or triad)

  • Same notes, different root → different scale, different root, but modes of one another

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