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Mini-Course Lesson 4: Understanding Scale Degrees
But firstly, what are scale degrees? If you did a search on the internet, you would find lots of different definitions—some of which would be ridiculously complicated…probably written by some musicologist with 127inch thick glasses who can’t even play guitar! In this section we’ll look at scale degrees in a very simple and easy-to-understand manner.
Scale degrees of the major scale… Check out this table showing the notes of the F major scale… Notice how there are numbers above each of the notes? These numbers are the scale degrees! That’s all they are! Easy huh? Let’s put you on the spot for a second… Let’s imagine someone said to you… “What is the fourth scale degree of the F major scale?”. What would your answer be? If you said Bb you would be 100% right! Just to make sure you’ve totally got it, here is some stuff to do. Please download and fill out the following handout… Scale Degrees Handout 1 (PC Users: Right click link and choose "Save Target As…") And here are the answers… Answers To Scale Degrees Handout 1 (PC Users: Right click link and choose "Save Target As…") How did you get on? Good I hope! You'll find the more you get to know the major scale, the faster you'll get at working scale degrees out. In the next part of this lesson, we'll take a look at scale degrees that aren't part of the major scale…
Scale degrees that aren't part of the major scale… You now know at this stage that the scale degrees of the major scale are… 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7 To work out any other scale degree we have to alter a scale degree from the major scale. For example, to work out a #5 we would need to sharpen the 5 of the major scale. Let’s look at a few examples using the F major scale… Example One: b6 Example Two: #4 Example Three: b5 Example Four: #2 Get the idea? We are working out the new scale degrees by altering the scale degree from the major scale. Please download and fill out the following handout. I've included the answers on the same handout…so try not to cheat :-)… Scale Degrees Handout 2 (PC Users: Right click link and choose "Save Target As…") All done? Great!
An example… Did you know that EVERY single scale type has a unique combination of scale degrees? You already know that the major scale has the scale degrees 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7. But all other scales has their own scale degrees that no other scale shares. To see what I mean, let's take a look at an example using a really common scale… The Minor Pentatonic Scale: The minor pentatonic has the following combination of scale degrees… 1 b3 4 5 b7 Some musicians call this the musical spelling of the minor pentatonic… So what does the musical spelling mean? It tells us what we need to do to the major scale, in order to create the minor pentatonic scale. To make this clearer, let's go through an example… Let's work out the notes of the G minor pentatonic scale… Step 1: Write out the notes of the G major scale. This gives us… Step 2: Because the musical spelling of the minor pentatonic scale doesn’t include a 2 or 6, we need to remove these from the G major scale. So this would give us… Step 3: Because the musical spelling of the minor pentatonic scale has a b3 and a b7, we need to flatten the 3 and 7 of the G major scale. This would result in… These are the notes of the G minor pentatonic scale. It's a pretty easy process isn't it? Let's give you a few to work out for yourself. I'll give you the answers in the next lesson)… ACTION STEP: Please work out the notes in the following ten scales. Notice that for each one I have given you its musical spelling…
Some Final Thoughts... Understanding scale degrees is such a vital thing. Please make sure that you totally understand this lesson. It would be really valuable to go through the lesson again. Repetition is the mother of memory and skill. :-) Anyway, good luck with this lesson. I'll be sending you the next lesson in two days time. I'll be letting you know what the scales are the most essential ones to learn first. All the best, Craig Bassett | ||
Copyright 2009 by Craig Bassett. All Rights Reserved.
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