Hi, i’ve been trying to learn music theory and there is a lot of things I don’t get.
Is a scale all the notes that sound good together? If so, why do some of them played together in the scame scale sound bad/dissonant? It makes no sense to me. Also, what is a key? Is it a group of notes/chords that sound good together? How do I start writing my own fingerstyle tabs?
In: 35
A scale is a set of notes, within an octave, in order. That’s it. You can pick any number of notes in between two of the same notes an octave apart and call it a scale. Some scales sound nicer than others, and have thus been standardized. The two main ones are major and minor. These are respectively:
Tonic – Major Second – Major Third – Perfect Fourth – Perfect Fifth – Major Sixth – Major Seventh – Octave
Tonic – Major Second – *Minor* Third – Perfect Fourth – Perfect Fifth – *Minor* Sixth – *Minor* Seventh – Octave
Not all scales have to have 7 notes. The three scales most used outside of these two are the Major and Minor Pentatonic, which as the name suggests, have 5 notes instead of 7, and the blues scale, which has 6 instead of 7. They are
Tonic – Major Second – Major Third – Perfect Fifth – Major Sixth – Octave
Tonic – Minor Third – Perfect Fourth – Perfect Fifth – Minor Seventh – Octave
Tonic – Minor Third – Perfect Fourth – Diminished Fifth – Perfect Fifth – Minor Seventh – Octave
By the way, we don’t count the Octave as a distinct note, we just include it for the sake of completeness. The blues scale has 6 notes, plus the octave, since the octave is just the first note of the same blues scale an octave up.
A key is just a scale (usually major or minor) with a defined Tonic. Notice how I didn’t use any letter names? That’s because the tonic can be *any* note. If you start on a C and play a major scale from there, you played a C major scale. Start on F, and you’ll play a different collection of notes called F major. More specifically, a key is the collection of *chords* that can be assembled from these keys. Play the Tonic, Major Third, and Perfect Fifth together, you’ve played a tonic major chord. Move up and play the Perfect Fourth, Major Sixth, and Octave together, you’ve played the IV chord in that key. These chords are called triads, because they have three notes, and are the main chords used in popular music since the ’40s.
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