In today’s video, we will be discussing scales.
Scales are extremely important because this is going to be the center of every beat or song that revolves around it.
Anytime you’re picking out a note in the melody you’re following a specific scale, anytime you’re writing chord progress you’re also following a specific scale as your framework and your guideline.
Now there are a lot of scales but we don’t need to go over every single of them, simply because we only utilize a handful of scales when making Hip Hop, RnB, etc.
First, we will be going over the Major Scale and the Minor Scale.
There are a couple of variations of the Minor Scale and we will get into that later on, but first, we will be focusing on the Natural Minor Scale.
The Major and Minor scales consists of 7 notes, 8 if you count the Octaves.
Scales are basically a sequence of whole steps and half steps.
Half Step (H) - 1 Semitone
Whole Step (W) - 2 Semitones
Let's get into the Major scale, first, we will start on C, the first note of the scale will be referred to as the “Root note”
Starting at the Root, we have a whole step, whole step, half step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step. (R-W-W-H-W-W-W-H)
Now it's easy to visualize this on a C Major scale because C Major only utilizes white keys on the keyboard.
I will now show you how to create a minor scale so that you can see the difference.
Starting from the Root, we go Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step. (R-W-H-W-W-H-W-W)
The most popular minor key the A Minor scale because just like the C Major scale it only utilizes white keys, making it easy to remember.
So I just showed you how to memorize the scale in terms of Whole Steps and Half Steps but you can also memorize them by using intervals.
Major Scale (Intervals)
Root
Major 2nd
Major 3rd
Perfect 4th
Perfect 5th
Major 6th
Major 7th
Octave
Minor Scale (Intervals)
Root
Major 2nd
Minor 3rd
Perfect 4th
Perfect 5th
Minor 6th
Minor 7th
Octave
One way for you to learn your scales quickly is by picking a random note on the key and following the Steps that I laid above and building a Major and Minor Scale.
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