Hey Friend,

Did you read yesterday’s message? Were you confused? Does it appear that…

I CAN’T COUNT?!?

Actually, I can, but the way I talked about numbering major and minor intervals may have been too much like new math. You know, the kind that your kid comes home with for homework saying this is how the teacher taught us how to multiply and divide. Something about matrices, or lattices, or some such thing.

What’s wrong with multiplication tables and long division? I managed to get through college calculus with those old school math techniques, thank you very much.

Anyhoo, the perfect octave IS the thirteenth semitone (or half step) in a chromatic scale, but when it comes to major and minor scales, it’s number 8. You’ll remember that’s because there are five intervals that are considered minor:

So you have minor intervals and major/perfect intervals, and of course, there are exceptions, so you have to remember which ones have major and minored which don’t…

Argh!

I wish I could say there was some easy way to keep them straight besides straight-up memorization, but I haven’t found it. I guess if you consider that it’s only thirteen semitones, and we can remember phone numbers pretty easily, it’s not a stretch to say "just suck it up and memorize it.”

Take a quick look at the example below. Here are the notes laid out with the numbers for a C major chromatic scale:

Looks a little busy, but when you consider that most of the time you’ll only be dealing with seven of the thirteen pitches, it’s not too bad.

Something that helps me is to remember that there are no spaces between B and C, and no spaces between E and F. 

Never. Ever. 

If you keep them as a frame of reference, they’ll help keep you on the path.

Does that make better sense? Do I seem a little more coherent now? I’m sorry if you spent any time scratching your head trying to figure out what the heck I was talking about.

Please, send me your questions if it isn’t clicking. Happy Friday!

Peace~

Dave