by Eric Halloran

Created on: February 26, 2009

Scales are the building blocks of music. In the tradition of music of the western world, the most common scale is referred to as the major diatonic scale. Children learn this scale using the sound vocabulary: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. It is easily reproduced on the piano by playing the white keys and starting on any white key that is directly to the left of a group of two black keys. This scale begins with C and progresses through seven notes to return to C (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and back to C). Careful observation of the piano keyboard reveals that there are more than just seven notes between C and the C that is one octave higher. The five notes represented by the black keys are not played in the C Major Diatonic scale. If you did play each and every note starting with C and ending with high C, you would be playing the C chromatic scale. If you have access to a keyboard or instrument, try playing a chromatic run - a succession of notes adjacent to each other. This sounds quite different from the do, re, mi diatonic scale, but you might recognize it if you listen for this pattern in popular music, especially jazz. In the chromatic scale every note is considered one-half step from the next. But, let's get back to the Major diatonic scale. You might have already recognized that many of the notes in the C Major scale are separated by a black key. They are considered a whole step apart. The major scale can be described by the steps between successive notes. The pattern of the major scale is very obvious on the keyboard and holds true for every major scale. C - whole step - D - whole step - E - half step - F - whole step - G - whole step - A - whole step - B - half step - C (high). If you take this pattern of two whole steps and then a half step followed by three whole steps and a half step and start with a note other than C you can construct a different major scale. For example, begin with g as follows: G - whole step - A - whole step - B - half step - C - whole step - D - whole step - E - whole step - F# - half step - G. The C Major scale is all you need to play the melody to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". It is just a matter of playing adjacent notes in the scale beginning with e - like this e e f g g f e d c c d e e, e d and so on. Similarly "Joy to the World" is the major scale played in the descending direction. To play it in the key of C, start with high c and play c b a g f e d c. You can recognize parts of the major scale in music - on the staff you can

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