What is the major and minor scale?

Answer 1

Technically, there is no such thing as "the major and minor scale". There are a bunch of major and minor scales, such as C major or F minor. When we talk about the major or minor in the abstract, regardless of the specific key, those are technically called "modes". When you apply the abstract mode, like "minor", to a concrete note, like "G", you get a scale: G minor. So a scale is a concrete set of seven notes, whereas a mode is a set of rules for how to *pick* your seven notes, given a starting point. There are actually a lot of ways to pick seven notes from among the 12 that we use in western music, and in the middle ages they used a whole bunch that are seldom used today, with names like the "lydian" mode or the "phrygian" mode. Today, western music generally just uses "major" and "minor". You can think of a mode as a template for building a scale. It defines the *distance* between the notes, but not the actual notes themselves. So once you have a starting note, you can build the scale, by going the appropriate distances away. For instance, let's look at the major mode. It can be defined as: step step half-step step step step half-step. A step is the distance of two pitches, like between C and D, or G and A; a half-step is the distance of one pitch, like betwen C and C#, or G and Ab. Note that our twelve notes contain what are known as the "natural half-steps": there's only a half-step between E and F, for instance (E# *is* F). Notice, for instance, on a piano, that there's no black key between E and F. So if we follow that pattern, and start on C, we'll get the notes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, which is a C major scale. If we follow the *same* pattern, starting on G, we'll get G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G. Notice that the F has to be sharp, since it has to be a full step above the E. So what's the same between a C major scale and a G major scale is the *distance between the notes*; what's different is just which note we start on. You can start on any note, and just follow that pattern, and you'll build yourself a scale on that note. Start on E if you like. You'll get an E major scale: E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#-E. Notice that when you follow this pattern in C, you get no sharps or flats. If you follow it in G, you get that one sharp, F#. This is why the key signature for G always has that one sharp for F. And why the key of E has 4 sharps. Similarly, if you start on F, you get F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E-F. Notice that the B has to be flat, to get that half-step after the A. Hence the key of F has one flat. The minor mode is similar, but a bit more complex, because it comes in three flavors. Let's just talk about the "natural" minor mode. For this, the pattern is: step half-step step step half-step step step step. If you follow this pattern starting on C, for instance, you'll find you end up with three flats. All of this is the core of Music Theory.