Chords are built from scales so understanding them is very important to learning music. The major scale is a good place to start as it can be used to construct all basic chords. Music is made up of 12 notes which repeat themselves continuously. Below we can see the notes from C onwards.
Note that the symbol # means sharp and the symbol b means flat.
Any note without a symbol (neither sharp nor flat) is called a natural note.
| C | C# | D | D# | E | F | F# | G | G# | A | A# | B | C |
| C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C |
Before you learn the major scale there are a few things you should understand.
Every note is a half step away from each other.
C# is a half step away from C and D is a half step away from C#.
A whole step is two note interval.
D is a whole step away from E and G is a whole step away from F
The corresponding columns in the above table of notes are equivalent.
C# is the same as Db and D# is the same as Eb
The reason for this is that sharp is just a way of saying a half step higher and flat is just a way of saying a half step lower. So C# is just saying a half step higher than C, just as Db is saying a half step lower than D which you can see above are equivalent.
The major scale is made up of 7 repeating notes.
The starting note is called the root note.
The other notes in the scale are derived from this formula.
| Root Note | Whole Step | Whole Step | Half Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Whole Step |
So if we wanted to work out the scale of C Major from the notes below
| C | C# | D | D# | E | F | F# | G | G# | A | A# | B | C |
we would start out with our root note C.
Move a whole step which would be D.
Move another whole step to arrive at E.
Then move a half step to F.
A whole step to G.
Another whole step to A.
Yet another whole step to B.
We would have the seven notes of the C major scale ( C D E F G A B )
| C | D | E | F | G | A | B |
As mentioned before the notes of the scale repeat themselves. Each set of 7 notes is called an octave as shown below
| C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | A | B |
| Lower octave | Higher octave | ||||||||||||
All scales (even the sharps and flats) can be derived from the above rules.
It just takes a bit of practice to learn.
Once you understand the major scale you can use it in chord construction