The Major and Minor Scale

Seven of the twelve notes, chosen so that no two neighbors are more than a whole step apart and only two pairs are a semitone apart: that is the major scale, and almost everything in Western music is made of it or of one of its rotations. The minor scale is the same seven from a different home. Above is C major on the guitar, every note of it across the whole neck, labeled by degree; the capsule switches to minor, the root chip changes the key, the picker the instrument. The figure follows the text from here.

Seven notes, two semitones

The major scale: two half steps, five whole

Round the wheel the major scale is the pattern whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half — the half steps between 3 and 4 and between 7 and 8. Those two semitones are what give the scale a shape: every other step is the same size, so the two small ones are how the ear knows where it is. On the instrument they are the two places the pattern bunches up — two notes on adjacent frets, two white keys with no black key between them. Find the semitones and you have found the scale.

Every key, the same shape

Set the root chip to G and the whole pattern moves; to E♭ and it moves again. The degrees keep their colors and the semitones keep their places — between 3–4 and 7–8 — because the scale is a pattern of distances, and a key is that pattern started on a note. On a string instrument that is literally true: a shape moved up the neck is the same scale in a new key. On a keyboard the shape changes with the key — C major is the white keys, G major has one black — but the distances don't, and the distances are what you hear.

Minor: the same seven, another home

Major to minor: three notes move

Start the same seven notes on the sixth degree and you have the natural minor scale: A minor is C major's notes with A as 1. The figure shows what that means on the instrument — nothing moves, only the numbers — and the wheel shows what it means from a fixed root: three notes a semitone lower, the 3, the 6 and the 7, all flat. Both pictures are true; the first is the relative minor, the second the parallel one, and which you use depends on whether you are changing home or changing color.

Relative and parallel

Every major key has a relative minor three semitones down that shares all seven notes and every chord — C major and A minor, G major and E minor — and a parallel minor on the same root that shares the root and the fifth and flattens the rest — C major and C minor. A song "goes to the relative minor" without changing a note; it "goes to the parallel minor" and the whole color changes. Chords in a key lists both for every key.

The pentatonic inside

Drop the 4 and 7 — the major pentatonic

Take the two notes that make the semitones — the 4 and the 7 — out of the major scale and five remain: the major pentatonic, the scale with no half steps in it, which is why it fits over almost anything. The minor pentatonic is the same trick on the minor scale, dropping its 2 and ♭6. Pentatonics is the page for them; here the point is only that the five are inside the seven, and a scale position on your instrument holds both.

Positions

On a string instrument a scale across the whole neck is too much to play; a hand takes four or five frets of it, a position, and the whole scale is a handful of positions that tile the neck. On a guitar there are five, each sitting on a CAGED shape — the scale positions page has them one by one. A keyboard has no positions: a scale is a fingering, thumb under at the same place in every octave.

On the guitar

C major on the guitar: five positions, three notes per string in the wider ones, two in the tighter, the two semitones falling on adjacent frets. The minor scale in the same position is the same shape with a different note called 1.

On the piano

C major on the piano is the white keys; every other major key is a pattern of black and white that the hand learns as a shape. The semitones are where two white keys touch — E–F and B–C — and every key's pattern is those two touches moved.

On the ukulele

C major on the ukulele, where the high G string puts the lowest note on the C string and a scale runs across the strings more than along them. Two octaves fit inside twelve frets.

On the bass

C major on the bass: tuned in fourths throughout, so a major scale position is the same shape on every string pair — two frets, two frets, one, whatever the key.

On the mandolin

C major on the mandolin: tuned in fifths, a scale takes four notes per course and the hand stretches farther; the pattern is a violinist's.

Hearing the scale

The app plays a phrase from the scale and you play it back, the root moving each round; the instrument on screen shows the degrees, never the names. Range Shifting on the major scale is that game in the browser, no mic; the minor scale the same. The walkthrough Notes, intervals and scales builds the scale a degree at a time, sounded.