Scale Theory

Around the 11th century Western music began to become standardized. Music around this period was created using the Church Modes which took their names from the tribes of Ancient Greece.
  • Ionian (the Greeks who settled on the coast of modern day Turkey)
  • Dorian (the Greeks who settled on Crete, Sparta and Corinth)
  • Phrygian (the Greeks who moved further inland in Turkey to settle Anatolia)
  • Lydian (a Greek tribe also from the Anatolia region of Turkey)
  • Mixolydian (the Mixolydian mode was invented by Sappho, the 7th century B.C. poet and musician)
  • Aeolian (originally Greeks from Thesally who spread to the Greek islands and Asia-minor)
  • Locrian (inhabitants of the ancient region of Locris in Central Greece)

This connection to Ancient Greece comes from the fact that the Ancient Greeks laid the foundation for the study of music and intervals in a way that has defined Western music ever since.
These Church Modes formed the basis for Gregorian chant and the secular music of the medieval period. As instruments and forms evolved, some of the Church Modes became redundant as musicians found that those modes did not suffice for their musical needs. A few of the Church Modes went on to form the basis of our "major-minor" system and it is from these modes that Baroque musicians created the harmonic theory that has dominated music right up to the twentieth century. The earlier Ionian mode is now called the Major scale. The keyboard layout became standardized on instruments in the 15th century, it was tuned to play the C major scale. By the time the piano was invented in the 17th century, the C major scale had become the firm foundation on which all teaching of music theory is built upon or related to.
Since the keyboard has been such a dominating force in music, a complete study of guitar scales must make some reference to it. Thus, it is best to first look at the piano keyboard and then compare it to the guitar fretboard.

Before you begin it is good idea to familiarise yourself with the notes of the C major scale. Note that it is the convention to use roman numerals to label scale degrees

StageIIIIIIIVVVIVII
NoteCDEFGAB

A piano keyboard showing the C major scale. Note that all the notes of the C major scale are on the white keys.

If you played each key up the keyboard, you would play the 12 tone chromatic scale, which means that you are playing all the notes available. The keyboard on a piano is setup for that when you play the C major scale, you only use the white keys. This is because the C major scale uses no sharps (#'s)or flats (b's), which would be played on black keys.

It is important to recognize that the distance between two adjacent white keys is not always the same. For example, between the C and D keys is a black key which plays an intermediate semitone, but between E and F keys there is no black key and this is also the case for the notes B and C. If you count the number of keys between each note in the C major scale, the pattern would be 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 (another way of saying this is "tone-tone-semtione-tone-tone-tone-semitone" or "t-t-s-t-t-t-s".

In general the pianist will depress notes to form chords that are derived from the scale of the key. Since we know that the scale of C major uses only white keys it follows that the chords to be played are formed using only the white keys. The most basic chord you can play is a triad which cosists of three notes. The simplicity of the keyboard layout means that a piano student will be asked by their tutor to play the seven chords in the key of C major almost immediately. Once they form the shape of the basic C major triad (C-E-G) on the piano it is only a case of moving the shape up through the scale keeping the same fingering and naming the chords appropiately. This is why guitarists sometimes lag behind pianists in understanding harmony because their is no easy visualization of triads. Another area is the quick location of the E-F and B-C intervals. These intervals are easily located on the keyboard by the absence of a black key. The guitar offers no easy visualization. The best approach would be to learn where all the E-F and B-C intervals are in the first position (first four frets). A beginner on the piano will learn where these intervals are within minutes but a guitarist will have to put in a little more time. C major and its relative minor are the only keys in Western music that use only the white keys. All other scales contain either a sharp(s) or flat(s). It is this fact that makes C major the key that all instrumentalists use to learn and analyze harmony.

Structure of the Major Scale


The major scale (derived from the Medieval Ionian Church mode) is the main scale currently used in music. It is made up of seven notes, plus an eighth which duplicates the first an octave higher. The Italian music system "solfeggio" (a system that has been used for centuries in Italy and is still in use today) where each note is sung using a syllable - "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, (Do)" may help in illustating this concept. The interval pattern for any major scale is 2-2-1-2-2-2-1, meaning that the difference from the first note to the second is 2 frets, from the second to the third is 1 fret, etc. The difference in notes can also be called steps, 2 notes being a whole step, and 1 note being a half step. This pattern in steps can be shown as W-W-H-W-W-W-H.

Major scale in the key of C

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C

Two Octaves Of C Major:

C major two octaves ascending at the seventh position

This shape is moveable, and the fingering is shown below
        7th
e:---x---|---x---|-------|-------|
B:-------|---x---|-------|---x---|
G:---x---|-------|---x---|---x---|
D:---x---|-------|---x---|---x---|
A:---x---|---x---|-------|---x---|
E:-------|---x---|-------|---x---|

Structure of the Minor scale


Natural minor
The natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) is one of the diatonic scales along with the major scale. The word "diatonic" in a modern sense refers only to the major and natural minor scales. In the key of A minor the Harmonic form would be called "non-diatonic" because it doesn't use all the white keys. Natural minor scales can be created for any key using the formula W-H-W-W-H-W-W.

Minor scale in the key of C

C - D - Eb - F - G - Ab - Bb - C

Two Octaves Of C Minor:


C natural minor two octaves ascending at the seventh position

This shape is moveable, and the fingering is shown below
        7th
e:-------|---x---|-------|-------|-------|
B:-------|---x---|---x---|-------|---x---|
G:---x---|---x---|-------|---x---|-------|
D:-------|---x---|-------|---x---|-------|
A:-------|---x---|-------|---x---|---x---|
E:-------|---x---|-------|---x---|---x---|