Descriptions of Some Musical Scales. Part 1

M2M plays many pieces in unusual, minor, exotic sounding scales. In order to understand the differences among, say, Klezmer scales or Andalucian scales, and Major scales, we’ll look at how they are constructed, beginning with Major and proceeding to the more exotic.


My opinion is that keeping track of the "semi-tones" between intervals is easier than learning all the scales by rote, or whether or not the 3rd and whatever steps are flatted. If you are serious, you should learn both the semi-tone and flatted interval methods.

M2M plays many pieces in unusual, minor, exotic sounding scales. In order to understand the differences among, say, Klezmer scales or Andalucian scales, and Major scales, we’ll look at how they are constructed, beginning with Major and proceeding to the more exotic. We’ll stick to musical scales based on western ideas of 12-tone chromatic scales (no micro-tones).

Major Scale The familiar Major scale ascends and descends using the same notes. Starting on C, playing only the white keys on the piano, these would be C,D,E,F,G,A,B,(c). Starting on D, these would be D,E,F#,G,A,B,c#,(d). We’ll put “interval” numbers on them as 1 to 8 and look at the number of semi-tones between them. A semi-tone is the smallest separation between notes on the piano. I’ll also use part of the convention that upper case letters signify a lower octave and lower case letters signify a higher octave. See pianoscales.org

C Major Scale:     C,     D,     E,     F,     G,     A,     B,    (c).
Interval:                1,     2,      3,     4,      5,     6,      7,    8
Semi-tones:              2       2      1       2      2      2      1.

Another example:

D Major Scale:     D,     E,    F#,    G,     A,     B,     c#,    (d).
Interval:                1,      2,    3,      4,      5,     6,      7,      8
Semi-tones:              2       2      1       2      2      2       1.

Natural Minor Scale The familiar natural minor scale ascends and descends using the same notes as its “relative” major scale, but starts at a different place in the sequence. For instance, A Natural uses only the white piano keys but starts and ends on A. (A is the 6th or VIth step of the relative Cmajor scale – see the diagram above). You will also see this described as “the same notes as Amajor with the 3rd, 6th, AND 7th flatted”. (That's what the b means in the diagram below.)  See pianoscales.org/minor.html#natural

A natural minor:           A,     B,     c,      d,     e,     f,      g,     (a).
Interval(rel to AMaj)     1,    2,      b3,    4,     5,     b6,    b7,    8
Semi-tones:                     2,     1,       2,     2,     1,      2,      2

Notice that the semi-tone sequence has just been rotated (last became first, first became second, etc.), because we played the same notes in the same sequence but started in a different place.

In Part 2, we’ll get into other types of scales that are heard less frequently in western music, but which are central to exotic sounding music.