What are Guitar scales and Intervals?

 

Scales and Intervals -Why Bother

If you understand the Major Scale, it is the basis of all other scales and chords. An understanding of the Major Scale makes it easier to build scales, chords, understand keys, and how they work, understanding songs and writing your own songs.

Music scales

This is an ordered sequence of notes that may be played ascending or descending. The pitch will correspondingly increase or decrease. This ordered sequence will continue in the order given with the presented intervals. An interval is the difference in pitch (sound) between one note and another. On a guitar the interval is measured by frets, or semitones (one fret = one semitone or half tone, two frets = whole tone). Shown below is a Major scale played on one string of the guitar.

To play a major scale on guitar the sequence of intervals would be W W H W W W H

This may be easier to see on a piano keyboard

If you look at the C major scale, and count up using the pattern, you’ll see that it follows this pattern of steps:

C  (W) D (W) E  (H) F (W) G (W) A  (W)  B (H) C

It should be worth noting that in music there are no whole steps between the B and C and the E and F. Because of this, you can see that the C Major Scale has no sharps or flats (these dictate the scale you are playing at a given time)

Some Music Theory - oh no!!

In western music if you take one note and play the same note one octave higher - look at the C Scale above - there are 12 semitones/notes (12 frets on the guitar) between the first and last (octave) note. This can repeat up and down. So just remember, 8 of these 12 notes would make up the Major Scale. 

The next thing to consider is the concept of whole and half steps, which was described above. Each fret along one string is a half step. Remember, you can go up or down by half and whole steps.

The musical alphabet is like a regular alphabet but it only goes from A through to G i.e. A B C D E F G. Raising a natural note by a half step will sharpen that note, and lowering it by a half step will flatten it. e.g the note A natural when raised a half step becomes A sharp and when lowered becomes A flat

You can see in the diagram Figure 1 and Figure 2, that some notes can have two names. These are called Enharmonic, it is just something that you have to accept. For example an A sharp is also a B flat.

There is a rule that states that B/C and E/F only has a half step between them. All other notes have a whole step. This is probably most easily seen on a piano. The notes on this diagram show that the notes without a black key between them are the B/C and the E/F.

Major scales

With our new found knowledge, how do we work out any major scale? Easy - Right?

Ok so we know the W W H W W W H regime, and we know there are sharps and flats, so we should be able to work out a Major Scale and which sharps and flats are contained within it. Have a look at this:-

Only kidding!!

 

Here is an octave between C - C

            C              D                EF              G                 A                BC etc

   C#/DƄ       D#/EƄ        F#/GƄ       G#/AƄ        A#/BƄ  

 

If we would like to know how many sharps or flats are in a major Scale here’s what we do. Let’s say for example we want to write down the G major scale. Write down each of the letters of the scale, like this:-

 

G A B C D E F G

 

Now place the W W H W W W H formula with in the letters of the scale, thus

   G           A          B C          D         E         F G

           W        W      H                W       W       H     

 

Look at the original description of the placement of sharps and flats in the octave at the top. You can see that there is a whole step between the G and A, also a whole step between the A and B, a half step between the B and C. The D and E is also correct, with a whole step, now there seems to be a problem. There is a whole step in the formula but we know from our rule that E and F only have a half step. But as we are being told by the formula to place a whole step the F must be sharpened to make F#. It cannot be GƄ because we would have to remove an F in the alphabet; also F# is a perfect fifth up from a B note. So in the Key of G the is one sharp. There will be about this in a later post.

Let's try another key – F

F G A B C D E F

 Now place the W W H W W W H formula with in the letters of the scale, thus

   F   G   AB   C   D    EF

  W  W  H  W  W  W  H

F to G – Whole tone – correct

G to A – Whole tone – correct

A to B – Half tone – incorrect

B to C Whole tone – incorrect

C to D – Whole Tone – correct

D to E – Whole tone – correct

E to F – Half tone – correct

What is the correct note?

If we remember back to our original set up of notes, it states that the B/C is a half step and the C to D is a Whole step. Looking at the above set of notes you can see that the B note has been lowered (flattened) toward the note of A, therefore the correct note is now a BƄ (B flat). So in the Key of F, there is one flat.

Scale Keys with Sharps/Flats

As we now know the scale of C has no sharps or flats so another way of finding out the key using sharps or flats is to use the 'Circle of Fifths". If you take the note of C and look at the following illustration:-

The above illustration gives you very important information in a number of ways. if you look at the letter 'C', written in bold writing, and follow the circle clockwise looking at the letters, you will see that 'G' is the next letter, then 'D' etc.

Looking at the scale of C and giving each letter a number - C being 1, D being 2, etc. The fifth letter will be 'G'. If you now take that letter - G, and give each letter in the G scale a number, again as before, G being 1, A being 2, etc., you will find that the fifth letter will be D. You can now continue the letters (scales) round to find the subsequent letter is always a fifth above the starting note (this would be the root or tonic note of the scale). On the outside of the circle, it shows the musical symbol for the associated scale, G has one sharp, D has two sharps, etc

Now, if we look at the circle and move in an anti - clockwise direction, you will see the same thing happening but for scales with flats in the key signature. However, in this case we only count up to four in the system described above. Clever innit?

The final thing I will say about this (I shall go deeper into Scales in further posts), is the other small letter written on the inner circle is the 'relative minor' scale of the associated scale in the larger circle eg. the relative minor scale of G is e minor, th relative minor scale of F is d minor. 

Other Scales

Just briefly to finish off, there are other scales you may have heard of. Scales like the Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor, Pentatonic Major and Minor Scale. As this is a fairly in depth subject that touches on other areas, like modes for example, I will leave things here. Have a look at the following advert and see if you know if it's a song about musical scales?

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