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In here i will assume that you have the basic knowledge of chord construction; the major and minor chords. The other thing you have to know is tones and semitones/Halftones. I will explain these to just help someone out there.
A Halftone is the difference between two notes following each other consecutively on a keyboard or a fretboard for guitar players e.g C and C# are a Halftone apart, B and C are a Halftone apart, same to E and F . As semi stands for half, so by now you can guess that a tone would comprise of 2 Halftones or Semitones, thus from C to D is a tone, from E to F# same to B and C# and so forth.
Having that as my introduction, i would love to present a very basic foundation for most of the music being played around the world.
It is a the major scale. Some of us call it the sol-fa ladder. It is basically one and the same thing. Most of the other scales are derived from this one.
The major scale is made up of eight notes as follows;
Doh Reh Mi Fah Soh Lah Ti Doh'
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Basically the notes #1 and #8 have the same name, just an octave apart. They are the root note of our home key, the key that our song lies on.
Now working with tones (shown as T) and semitones (shown as ST), these notes are spread on the keyboard or fretboard as follows;
Doh Reh Mi Fah Soh Lah Ti Doh'
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
T T ST T T T ST
Now, using the above spread, this is how the major scale on C look like;
Doh Reh Mi Fah Soh Lah Ti Doh'
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
T T ST T T T ST
C D E F G A B C
ON C#
Doh Reh Mi Fah Soh Lah Ti Doh'
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
T T ST T T T ST
C# D# F F# G# Bb C C#
Now, to answer the questions what, how and why;
1. What? This is the Major Scale.
2. How? we have answered how its structure looks like and have given the examples of C and C#.
3. Why? With the understanding we gain from the above examples we can be able to play every note that is needed on the major scale of any key. It frees us from hitting the transpose button every time there is a key change in the music!
More major scales;
Challenge:
Take time to identify the notes as displayed above and make sure they sound right in the sol-fa notation too.
