Chromatic & whole tone scales: Important in music theory

Good morning, this is Duane Shinn. Today I would like to talk about Music Theory On Scales & Chords.

You’ll have to excuse my voice today. I have a very bad cold. I was on vacation. We went up to Seattle to take in a game between the Mariners and the Angels and spend some time with family and so on, and when I got back I got a very bad cold. I lost my voice completely so that’s why I haven’t recorded for a couple of weeks. In any case, I’m back and my voice will recover.

Let’s talk about whole tone sales. First of all, a whole tone is a whole step. It’s not a half step like that. That’s a half step, that’s a whole step. Whole tone scales are made out of whole steps. Whole step, whole step. Now, that would be a half step so I can’t go there. I’ve got to go a whole step. Whole step, whole step, whole step.

The C whole tone scale would be like this. It gives kind of a, maybe eerie feeling. You hear a lot of that kind of scale in paranormal kind of movies because it gives that kind of impression. Then you can build chords, of course, out of whole tones. In other words, as a root, third, and fifth made out of a major third and a major third.

You’ve got a whole tone there, whole tone there, whole tone there, whole tone there, whole tone there, and so on. You can build, those are augmented chords by the way. Aren’t they, because it’s a root third and sharp fifth. Those are whole tones. You can improvise on, you can have a lot of fun playing whole tone improvisations.

Now, chromatic is just the opposite. There’s no whole steps at all. It’s all half steps. That’s a chromatic scale, because it climbs right up the scale and doesn’t skip anything. By the way, when you play a chromatic passage, try to use your thumb on white keys, your thumb and second finger, and use your long fingers on the black keys.

It’s only logical because your hand is, your thumb is so much shorter than your longer fingers. Use your longer fingers on the black keys. When you have two white keys in a row, I like to use thumb, second, then long finger, thumb under, long finger, thumb under like so.

That’s chromatic. We have whole tone scales and we’ve got chromatic scales.

Now, a balanced scale is a combination of whole steps and half steps. That’s what major and minor chords are made out of. They’re made out of balanced, a major third and a minor third. In other words, there’s a whole tone interval, and there’s a minor interval because it’s not based on another whole step.

A major chord is balanced. A minor chord is balanced too. That’s why we use major and minor chords way more than we use augmented or diminished triads, because they sound balanced.

It’s a balanced sign. That’s a balanced sign too. That’s unbalanced. You’ll want to get out of that. You can use those chords but they’re usually transition chords. In other words, if I’m playing the C, then the chord is usually something like that. It resolves. You don’t have two augmented chords in a row. You move to some other chord.

Same way with diminished triads. Diminished triads, by the way, are kind of, they’re made out of chromatic passages in a way, because you have a stack of minor thirds. There’s only three different diminished chords. Diminished triad is a three note chord, but a diminished whole chord is made up of four notes. It’s called a diminished seventh actually but, it looks like a sixth, but it’s a seventh.

There’s only those three because if you go any further, you’re just inverting the first chord aren’t you? You don’t live and die with those chords. In other words, a whole piece isn’t made out of those, but you use them as transitions. Again, you see.

You go from major, to maybe diminished, and to a minor chord. That’s the story between whole steps, half steps, and then a balanced scale or a balanced chord made out of both whole steps and half steps.

That’s it for today. If you enjoy these piano tips about music theory and so on, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for a free series of lessons on piano tips.

Thanks and we’ll see you then. Bye bye for now.