A scale starts with the note that names the key. This note is the tonal center of that key, the note where music in that key feels "at rest". It is also called the tonic, and it's the "do" in "do-re-mi". For example, music in the key of A major almost always ends on an A major chord, the chord which most strongly features the note A. It often also begins on that chord, returns to that chord often, and features a melody and a bass line that also return to the note A often enough that listeners will know where the tonal center of the music is, even if they don't realize that they know it. (For more information about the tonic chord and its relationship to other chords in a key, please see Beginning Harmonic Analysis.)

To find the rest of the notes in a major key, start at the tonic and go up following this pattern: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. This will take you to the tonic one octave highter than where you began, and includes all the notes in the key in that octave.

Example 2

These major scales all follow the same pattern of whole steps and half steps. They have different sets of notes because the pattern starts on different notes.

Figure 1

Listen to these major scales.

Exercise 2

For each note below, write a major scale, one octave, ascending (going up), beginning on that note. If you're not sure whether a note should be written as a flat, sharp, or natural, remember that you won't ever skip a line or space, or write two notes of the scale on the same line or space. If you need help keeping track of half steps, use a keyboard, a picture of a keyboard, or the chromatic scale fingerings for your instrument. If you need more information about half steps and whole steps, see Half Steps and Whole Steps.

If you need staff paper for this exercise, you can print out this staff paper PDF file.

Figure 2

Solution

Figure 3

Notice that although they look completely different, the scales of F sharp major and G flat major (numbers 5 and 6) sound exactly the same when played, on a piano as shown here, or on any other instrument.

Figure 4

[ Show Solution ] [ Hide Solution ]

In the examples above, the sharps and flats are written next to the notes. In common notation, the sharps and flats that belong in the key will be written at the beginning of each staff, in the key signature. For more practice identifying keys and writing key signatures, please see Key Signature. For more information about how keys are related to each other, please see The Circle of Fifths.

What difference does key make? Since the major scales all follow the same pattern, they all sound very much alike. Here is a familiar folk tune written in C major and in E flat major.

Figure 5: The same tune looks very different written in two different major keys.

(a) (b)

Listen to this tune in C major and in E flat major. The music may look quite different, but the only difference when you listen is that one sounds higher than the other. So why bother with different keys at all? Before equal temperament became the standard tuning system, major keys sounded more different from each other than they do now. Even now, there are subtle differences between the sound of a piece in one key or another, mostly because of differences in the timbre of various notes on the instruments or voices involved. But today the most common reason to choose a particular key is simply that the music is easiest to sing or play in that key.