home \ courses \ music theory \ page 5

Major and Minor are related!

We covered the two most important scales: major and minor. We used the simplest scales for this: C major and A minor. Both scales consist of only root notes, no sharps or flats.

Wait a minute, the scale of C and A consist of the same tones!. The only difference is the root note:

Well spotted! If you play a major scale from the sixth note (or rather: if you make the sixth note of a major scale the root note / tonic), then you have a minor scale from that new root note.

And vice versa: If you play a minor scale from the third note (… if you make the third note of a minor scale the root note), then you have a major scale from that new root note.

So: C major and A minor consist of the same notes, but the tonic/root note is different.
In this way, every major scale has a minor brother or sister, and vice versa.

Key signatures

If you want to start major and minor scales on different notes, the same rules apply: each note gets its own letter, and the distances between the tones are W-W-H-W-W-W-H (major) or W-H-W-W-H-W-W (minor). Before we look at how to exactly make scales that start on other tones,we'll have to look at something else first: key signatures.

Songs (or more formally “compositions”) consist roughly of a melody, rhythm and accompaniment. The signature key (just "key" in short), is about the melody and melodic or harmonic accompaniment only. Rhythm is not part of the "key".

The melody and accompaniment are made up of notes. The melody (this can also be a solo!) is a sequence of notes, accompaniment is mostly done with chords (several notes at the same time).

The notes of the melody and the chords originate in the same scale. The melody goes up and down, in all kinds of variations, via the notes of the scale. The chords are built using notes from that same scale.

The melody finds a resting point in the root note of the scale. The chord that has the root note as its basis also offers a kind of static rest. All other notes of the scale provide a bit of tension. We do say that notes and chords want to “resolve” to the root note. Only when you play the root note in a melody or accompaniment, you feel you are “home”, with both feet on the ground.

This is an example of a melody and chords that do not resolve to the ground tone. Because it doesn't "come home", it feels like it is not finished:

Next, the same melody and chords that do resolve to the ground tone:

The fragments are from the composition "Greensleeves", composed by Francis Cutting, somewhere around 1580.

<<< Previous page   |   Next page >>>