Count Off
Hey Friend,
Like I said yesterday, you don’t need to memorize the interval names to be a good musician. While they are kind of weird, you should at least be familiar with them so when they work their way into a conversation, you’ll be like, “Oh yeah, that shift from the tonic to the minor fifth is the bomb!"
And all this talk of whole steps and half steps should sound familiar - they’re part of the scale patterns used for the key and building chords. Remember these?
W W H W W W H
And…
W H W W H W W
These are the patterns for the major and minor scales (and keys) we’ve been talking about. They indicate what the spaces between the notes should be in the scale.
A ‘W’ tells us it will be "whole step,” which is two frets above the previous note. An ‘H’ is a "half step,” or one fret above the previous note.
So how do these patterns line up to the intervals that we named yesterday?
When you talk about a scale, you usually start with the first note. I like to give the notes numbers because it makes it easier to keep track of the notes when you have to construct a chord.
1 Perfect Unison (Tonic)
2m Minor Second
2 Major Second
3m Minor Third
3 Major Third
4 Perfect Fourth
5m Tritone
5 Perfect Fifth
6m Minor Sixth
6 Major Sixth
7m Minor Seventh
7 Major Seventh
8 Perfect Octave
Each of these notes is equal to one fret.
When you play each of these intervals in a successive pattern, it’s called a chromatic scale. When we start putting spaces between notes (effectively skipping over some along the way), that’s when we start hearing the various major and minor scale patterns we use to create melodies and chords.
As we work through these lessons, I’ll try to keep my references consistent. When I am talking about the distance between two notes that aren’t next to each other, I’m going to call the interval by its name.
If the notes are beside each other, I’ll refer to the interval as a half step or whole step.
And..
I’m outta time. We’ll have to continue tomorrow. Y’all have a great one!
Peace~
Dave
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