All western music branches out from the Major Scale

NorioDS

On Gray's request, I'm going to explain my understanding of music. Feel free to expand on what I've said or correct me.

Basics

All western music, in some form or another, comes from the major scale. My feeling on this is that someone tried to find all the notes that went "best" together, resulting in the sweetest sounding collection of notes and that became the major scale.

The notes are: A B C D E F G

You also have "incidentals" which are the sharps and flats between the above notes. On a keyboard, these are the black keys while the "naturals" (above) are the white keys, resulting in...

A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G#

You'll notice, then, that there are 12 notes. B goes straight to C and E goes straight to F. No incidentals in between them

(The above is NOT the major scale, simply all the notes we have available to us to make music from)

C Major

In the C Major scale, you simply take all the naturals from C to C and play them through. On the keyboard, this is exceptionally easy as you simply play all the white keys starting from C (say, middle-c) to the next C.

EG: C D E F G A B C

Major Scale Formula

Using the C Major scale as an example, again, we could "calculate" which notes are in the C Major scale by taking all the notes available to us (see above) and applying the major scale formula to that.

The formula: T-T-S-T-T-T-S // -or- // W-W-H-W-W-W-H

T = Tone
S = Semi-tone

W = Whole-tone
H = Half-tone

T is the same as W. S is the same as H. Different people use different notation. Get used to it ?

Doing the calculation...

We start on C and then, to find the next note in the C Major scale, we need to move one tone ahead. Now that means "skip a note" or, at least, that's the easiest way I can describe it to you.

C D

So we skipped 'C#' to get to 'D'.

Now we need to do that again.

C D E

So we skipped 'D#' to get to 'E'.

Now we need to move ahead a halftone or semitone. This means we don't skip anything, we simply select the next note.

C D E F

Because there are no incidentals between 'E' and 'F', we're now on 'F'.

At this point, you should understand the process and how to get to the Major Scale using the Major Scale Formula and the notes available to us.

You simply need to do this until you reach your next 'C'. Called the 'octave' because it's the eighth note of the scale and the exact same note as the root note, ie: C.

I hope this wasn't too confusing. Now I'll let someone else continue the theory lesson while I go do some work ?

Enjoy!

NorioDS

Graeme, I've split your post off here.

I'd like to reserve this thread for actual lessons so it can eventually be an almost all-encompassing topic on music.

We have a lot of great resources on this thread and I'd really love to see some contributions from our members.

Renesongs

To expand a bit on the origions of the Major scale we need to look to the science of acoustics. In short different sounds or notes consists of air being vibrated at different rates. "A3" on a piano vibrates at 220 times a second "A4" (an octive higher) at 440 times a second (hertz hz). All materials capable of producing sound when struck, plucked or blown in a certain way produce what's known as an overtone (another pitch higher than the origional). Example take a a piece of copper pipe, purse your lips and blow you wil get a tone say "A" (220hz) blow a little harder and you may get a higher but softer tone "E" (approx 330hz). The predominant overtone is always 1 and a half times the origional frequency in all materials and atmospheres.

All music not only western (or even eathling) is built on this overtone property of sound. Start this time with "C" its overtone is "G", "G"'s overtone is "D", follow this pattern and you will end up with C G D A E !
Arrange these notes into the same octive and you ge C D E G A. Wow lookie here I got me the pentatonic major scale, now is it the Chinees/Hebrew/Irish/Scotish/(fill in your own nationality) pentatonic or what.

Okay you still reading this so I have'nt put you to sleep yet. Start this time with "F" it's overtone is "C" carry on untill you get F C G D A E B. Rearrance into the same octave and you get C D E F G A B, voi-la the "Classical" major scale. Now for good measure allow a bunch of depressed medievil monks to decide the correct and Godly order of the notes and you get A B C D E F G - known as the "natural" minor scale some which also happens to be the Aeolian mode of C major.

You still not sleeping - Well let me try your caffine levels a little further. Starting again from "F" take a voyage passed "B" in the spirit of the Baroque ignoring threats of excomminacation and the fact that the monks won't give you any more letters except the Germans who are allowed to use "H". Your overtone series now looks like this. F C G D A E B F# C# G# D# A# and back to F - Yeah the whole nine yards, 12 notes of the now western chromatic scale C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B.

I doubt that anyone is still reading this so I can say what I like here. The tuning (tempering) of the western chromatic in fact does not exactly match the overtone series but that is another story for another time