MUSIC 101 With Bro Dave

Hello, everyone. Thank you for your interest in this series of beginner music theory lessons.

LESSON 1: Like English, music has an alphabet. Ironically, it uses the first 7 letters of the English alphabet:ABCDEFG. There is no H or K or Z note. :) There are 12 notes in the western scale. There are seven natural notes and five sharps/flats. The sharps/flats are the black keys on the piano/keyboard. We will only look at the natural notes today.

The seven natural notes are:ABCDEFG. If we start this sequence at A, we will start all over again at A since G is the highest natural note.When we go from one natural note to the next natural note of the same letter, we have an octave.

 I mentioned that there are 12 notes in western music. The five sharps/flats and the seven natural notes combined are called the Chromatic scale. The scale we use the most, the major scale, is made up of seven notes and comes from the Chromatic scale. It is what we know as the Do Re Mi scale.

Okay so far?

Let's look at the major scale. If you look at the piano/keyboard, you will see 7 white and 5 black keys together and this sequence is repeated across the keyboard. The white keys are the seven natural notes and the black keys are the sharp/flat notes.

We will use the C major scale since it uses only white keys. C major is made up of the notes C D E F G A B. When we go from one C to the next, it's called an octave. There is a formula to make the major scale: WWHWWWH. That means a series of whole steps and half steps. The W is a whole step ( 2 piano keys) and the H is a half step (1 piano key). You can build any major scale using this formula.

 So, C to D is a W, D to E is a W, E to F is an H, F to G is a W, G to A is a W, A to B is a W and B to C is an H: CDEFGABC
WWHWWWH. OKAY?

We will stop there for today. Thanks for your time and patience and respect. GREAT start!
Your homework is to use the major scale formula to find the major scales for all 12 keys. Be careful with F#, it can be a bit tricky.
Thanks, everyone. Be safe!