Hey Friend,

Yesterday, we established that there are only twelve notes used in Western music. Those notes are:

And let me clarify - if a note is sharp (#), it is also a flat (b) note. So an A# note is the same as a Bb note when it comes to pitch. What makes it sharp or flat depends on which direction you're moving in the scale. Go up in pitch (ascend a scale), it's a sharp note. Move down in pitch (descend in the scale) and it's a flat note.

As we start getting into chords, we're going to spend a lot of time focused on either major or minor keys. The scales that come from these keys will be either major scales or minor scales. 

These scales are different than the chromatic scale because a major key and its scale will NOT use all twelve possible notes. We will only use seven notes for a key/scale.

Furthermore, each of the notes we use for a scale will be a very specific distance from the root note (AKA the tonic note). These distances are called intervals.

Intervals are simple to understand, because all they do is define the amount of space between two notes. Since we're all guitar players here, I'm going to make sure to describe each interval with the number of frets between two notes - easy enough, right?

Each interval has a special name, and I will familiarize you with both the formal names and the easier notation we can use as musicians. In fact, once you see it, you'll recognize that I've already used it quite a bit with you. Let's start looking at those now.

I want you to think about a concept called resolution. Resolution in music means that a note or chord is moving from a dissonant sound to a consonant sound. In other words, moving from an unstable sound to a stable sound.

Musical notes are all trying to get home to the root note of the key. Each of the twelve note possibilities feel more unstable the further away from that first note that they get. Once they reach the center point between the first note and the 13th note (remember, we start over once we reach that twelfth note?), notes start to sound like they're on their way back to the starting point.

It's kind of like a pendulum. Or a swing on a swing set. When it's hanging still and at rest, it is content to sit there forever. Then one of us comes along, sits down and starts swinging. The swing just wants to hang there motionless (it's gravity and physics, yo!), and the further we push the swing from that starting point, the faster it wants to get back to dead center. 

Notes in a key are basically the same - they always are trying to get back to that root note of the key because it sounds the most perfect for that key. That's why the key is named after that note. And when we make a chord, the chord gets that letter name as well - because its root note is the one that has the strongest sound.

The Tonic is your root note of a key. It's the beginning and the end note where all resolution happens for a key. We can also call it the first scale degree - the one note. Every other note in the scale is trying to get back to this note.

More tomorrow...

Peace~

Dave