Lesson 3: Building the Major Scale

You now know notes, the octave, and intervals - the individual pieces. A scale is what happens when you arrange a specific sequence of intervals in order, starting from one note called the tonic. The most common scale in Western music is the major scale, and once you know how it's built, most of the rest of music theory is really just describing relationships to it.

The major scale's interval pattern, measured in half and whole steps from Lesson 1, is: whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. Starting on C: C to D is a whole step, D to E is a whole step, E to F is a half step, F to G is a whole step, G to A is a whole step, A to B is a whole step, and B back to C is a half step. That gives you C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C - the C major scale.

Each note in the scale gets a number called a scale degree, counted from the tonic: C is degree 1, D is 2, E is 3, F is 4, G is 5, A is 6, and B is 7. Scale degrees are how musicians talk about a note's role without naming a specific pitch - degree 5 works the same way whether you're in the key of C or the key of F.

Every one of the 12 notes has its own major scale built the exact same way, just transposed to start on a different tonic - same whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half pattern, different starting note.

Open the C Major Scale page above and look at its Related tab - you'll find seven modes listed there, one built starting from each degree of this same scale. That's a topic for a later lesson, but it's worth knowing now: everything from here on connects back to this one seven-note pattern.