Essential Music Theory How to build musical scales

Lesson Objectives

Introduce scales and intervals and develop the understanding of how scales are created using sequences of intervals.
Understand the creation of major and minor scales, including natural (relative), harmonic, melodic minor scales.
Introduce further scales including pentatonic and blues scales.

What are musical scales?

There are 7 natural notes in western music. These are called:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G

All scales start and end on the same note. In Lesson 2 of the Essential Keyboard Skills course you played the scale of A. You started the scale on A and finished an octave higher on an A. An octave is an interval of 8 notes (including the top note and the bottom note). The note name of the top note is the same as that of the bottom note.

Figure 1. The scale of A major (Enlarge)

Next: Introducing intervals