Working out Major Scales
Lesson 4 from: Music Theory for Electronic ProducersTomas George
Working out Major Scales
Lesson 4 from: Music Theory for Electronic ProducersTomas George
Lesson Info
4. Working out Major Scales
Lessons
Introduction
00:58 2Basic Music Theory Terms
08:07 3Keyboard Layout and Octaves
06:19 4Working out Major Scales
08:58 5Perfect 5ths
06:42 63rds - Part 1
08:05 73rds - Part 2
07:39 8Perfect 4ths
04:36Chords and Inversions - Part 1
10:05 10Chords and Inversions - Part 2
09:13 11Chord Progressions - Part 1
10:22 12Chord Progressions - Part 2
08:26 13Inversions
08:53 147th Chords
09:48 15Chord Extensions
08:09 16Suspended Chords
02:40 17The Circle of 5ths
04:30 18Minor Scales
08:09 19Chords in the Natural Minor scale
09:56 20Harmonic and Melodic Minor
09:30 21Write the Chords, then the Melody
09:03 22Write the Melody, then the Chords
18:01 23Arpeggios
08:00 24Writing Bass Parts
11:35 25Writing Bass Riffs and Adapting Melodies
14:10 26Song Analysis - Chords, Part 1
10:17 27Song Analysis - Chords, Part 2
05:58 28Song Analysis - Melody
08:55 29Song Analysis - Arrangement
07:30 30Song 2 Analysis - Arrangement
05:04 31Song 2 Analysis - Chords
08:55 32Song 2 Analysis - Melodies
06:34 33Song 3 Analysis - Chords
11:41 34Song 3 Analysis - Melodies and Arrangement
06:55 35Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 1
10:22 36Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 2
18:47 37Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 3
18:49 38Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
08:21 39Create a Song from a Chord Progression - Part 1
08:16 40Create a Song from a Chord Progression - Part 2
08:07 41Create a Song from a Melody - Part 1
07:27 42Create a Song from a Melody - Part 2
09:05 43Modes Intro
04:10 44Ionian
00:43 45Dorian
04:31 46Phrygian
02:09 47Lydian
01:35 48Mixolydian
02:13 49Aeolian
00:39 50Locrian
01:50 51Dorian Mode Example
09:12 52Pentatonic Scales
12:27Lesson Info
Working out Major Scales
Hello and welcome to this lecture in this lecture. We're going to be looking at major scales and playing in key. You may have heard this term. Are you playing in scale? Are you playing in key a few times? And what it basically means is there's a structure of music and western music anyway, of playing in the 12 tones or 12 notes of the scale. So if we look at the keyboard and we count from C to C 123456789, 12, there's 12 of these notes including the black notes and each one of these has a separate key at the moment, we're just going to look at major scales and later on, we'll have a look at minor scales. So we have 12 of these notes here and we can actually work at a major scale for each one of these notes. So if you're just starting off, I recommend just sticking in the key or sticking in the major scale for now. And when you get more advanced, you can try minor scales and also changing scales and changing key throughout your song. But for now let's just start with major scales. And ...
the way we do this, the way we work it out is by using this pattern here, TT ST tt s, you might be thinking what, what's TT ST tt s and TT ST tt S is tone tone semitone, tone, tone, tone semitone, a tone is two notes. So if we look at C here, two notes above C, so we go up one and that's C# or D flat, but let's call it C# now. So we go up one C# and we go up two. It's D. So that is a tone above. So D is a tone above C and a semi to, is just up one. So C# is a semitone above C. So each one of these will give us the name of the note that we have in our scale. So if we go up tone tone, semitone, tone tone tone semitone, it will, we can go through these notes and actually work out what notes we need to use in our major scale. This only works for major scales. We will look at minor scales later on, but let's just stick with major scales for now. So let's open up a word document and let's work out. First of all, let's do C major. OK. So we start with C, then we go up a tone. So it's remember to count to 12. And now we've got D OK. So we've got di as a second note and now we need to go up another tone. 12 and we've got E, so, so far we've got CD and E by just going up two tones. So let's write this down. E then going along, we need to go up a semitone. So a semitone from E is just one note you'll notice there's no black note here. So it just goes to F and then we need to go along a to this tone here. This T 12 that's G got another tone here. 12 A, then we have another tone here. 12 B and then a semitone and there's no black note between B and C. So it just goes straight to C so you can make a little document like this just so you know what's actually going on. So C major scale from working that out goes CD efgab, we can even go on to our digital audio workstation and just type this in. You'll be able to hear a major scale and you do need to trend your ears to recognize what a major scale sounds like. So C let's put it here, D A F J A and the B and we finish with the C as well just to finish it off. So it sounds nice and we can play this and this is a major scale and this is all just from this pattern of tone tone semitone, tone, tone, tone semitone. You do have to go through and work this out for yourself. It's one thing me saying it, saying it, but you really have to just train your ear and realize what a major scale actually is. We, we don't have to just do c we could start on defgab or even these sharps and flats in between. So now let's go up to D, so let's go up a tone, remember? So 12, so a tone is counting two semitones or two notes. So we've got D and then we've got a, then we've got another tone. So 12 and the sharp. So remember we have to count the black notes as well. So we've got de and now F sharp and now we have to count a semitone. So F sharp and G and now we have to count a tone which is a, another tone which is B another tone. So it's two of these. 12. So we go up to the C# here and now a semitone which is D. So go through that again. So count 1212 for the first tone, 12, for the second tone, one for the semitone here, 12 for the semi for the tone, 12 for the tone, 12 up to the sharp for the tone and then one semitone to finish back down to D. So you can write this in our word document, write in D major if you remember it was D then A then F we can use a sharp as kind of a, a, hashtag we can use a flat as a B as well. A little B it went G A bay, it was ac shop and then it finished on ad if you want to write D or you can just leave it on the last note, you can also go into our digital audio workstation and just type this in or an even easier way if you want to be really cheeky. So we can just grab it all and just move it up a tone because the pattern is the same for every single major scale. So if you look on here def sharp, G ABC sharp. So the notes have changed and the pattern actually fits exactly what we had by dragging it up. Or alternatively, we can go in and actually just draw this in. But let's have a listen to this. I'm going to add the D on the end just to kind of finish it off. So it sounds like a scale. So that's the D major scale. You can go through all the keys here to work this out just by using this pattern. Tt ST tt S one little cheeky thing you can do is you can just put in one scale on your digital audio workstation. For example, this is the pattern of a major scale. We can drag this down, say to it A B you might not know what A B major scale is. But now you will, it's got A B A C# ad sharp, A ef sharp, A G sharp, an A sharp and A B. But I do recommend going through and working this out just so your brain will kind of remember the different notes of the scale. But if you ever get stuck and you don't know what notes will fit in the scale and it's a major scale. Remember use the pattern tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semitone. This works on the black notes as well as the white notes. So every single note or in this 12 tone scale, this is basically the Western music, 12 tones, of course, Indian music and other world musics do use different types of tones and scales. But for this, we're just going to be looking at the Western 12 tones, it's called 12 tones because there's 123456789, 1011, 12 notes in an octave. So from C to C, there's 12 notes there and this is the pattern we use to work out a major scale. So just try and remember this tt ST tt s so two Ts S3 TSS tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semitone. And that way you can work out all the notes in a major scale. I hope this helps and remember if you've just started out writing music, I would just stick to the notes in the key. When you get more advanced or when you continue through these lectures, you can start to use more unusual notes, more unusual chords, but to start with, just stick with the notes in the scale. So thank you for watching. I hope you found this useful and I'll see you in the next lecture.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Student Work
Related Classes
Electronic Music Production