Musical Scales – How Many Are There?

Good morning. This is Duane, and we’re doing a series on music theory called “Good Stuff You Really Ought to Know About Music.” We’ve covered a lot of different areas but we got a lot of different areas yet to go. Today I’d like to briefly cover the five main types of musical scales. Within those main types there’s subdivisions. I’ve done specialized videos on those subdivisions before, so you can look those up on YouTube if you’d like, but I’d just like to cover the five basic types today.

The first kind of scale is major. That’s a familiar sound to you. If you’ve taken piano lessons you’ve had to do that endlessly, of course. This is the C scale, and it’s based on a formula of whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. If you started on D flat, for example, you’d go up a whole step, and then another whole step, and then a half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. The D flat major scale would be like this. Therefore the D flat scale has five flats in it. If you play in the key of D flat you’d have five flats; whereas if you play in the key of C you would have no sharps or flats.

If you start on B, a whole step above B is C sharp, whole step above that is D sharp, half step is E, whole step is F sharp, whole step is G sharp, whole step up is A sharp, and a half step up is B. There’s a B major scale. It has five sharps, doesn’t it? You can see why the key of B has five sharps in it, because it’s based on that scale. There’s 12 different major scales you can play in, so there’s 12 different major keys you can play in.

Likewise, there’s 12 minor keys you can play in. Every major key has a relative minor. You find that relative minor by going down a step and a half from the major key. For example, if you are in the key of C and you want to know what the relative minor is to C major you go down a step and a half, so the scale of A minor would be from A to A using the C scale. That’s called a natural minor.

There’s three variety of minor scales. I won’t get into that because, like I said, we have other YouTube videos that teach that, the three varieties. That’s a natural minor scale. Then there’s the harmonic minor scale that raises the 7th degree of the scale. There’s a melodic minor that raises the 6th and 7th on the way up, that lowers them on the way down. That’s a different subject. There’s three subdivisions to minor scales.

Then the third type of scale after major and minor is a chromatic scale. A chromatic scale of course is it skips no notes. It’s just all the notes. It’s all half steps. That’s all you need to know. Incidentally, fingerings is logical you use your thumb whenever you can on white keys because your thumb’s shorter obviously. Then you use a long finger on the black keys. I like to do this: thumb, 3rd, thumb, 3rd, thumb. Now we have two white keys together so I use my 2nd finger, then back to 3rd, thumb, 3rd, thumb, 3rd, thumb, 2nd. That’s a chromatic scale.

We have major scales, minor scales, chromatic scales. Then there’s the whole tone scale. Whole tone scale is what it says; it’s all whole steps. Whole step, whole step, whole step, whole step, whole step, whole step. If you build the chords on it it sounds like that, kind of a otherwordly kind of sound. That’s the 4th kind.

Then the 5th kind of scale are called the modes or the church modes. I won’t get into those because I have a separate YouTube video on that. The Dorian scale, you’ve heard of that, and the Aeolian scale and the Lydian scale and the Mixolydian scale and so on. There’s varieties to that, subdivisions to the modal scales. The five basic types of scales you remember are major, minor, chromatic, whole tone scales, and the modes. That’s it for today. If you enjoy these little educational videos, come on over to PlayPiano and sign up for them. They’re all free. Hope to see you there. Bye bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHXxJe6ISkg&feature=youtu.be

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