The Major Scales EXPLAINED

[Music] hi guys welcome back in this lesson we're going to be looking at the major scale scales of the foundation of all musical harmony and learning all 12 major scales is very important for anyone who wants to understand music theory sight-read learn how to improvise or play more complex styles of music such as jazz when we play a piece of music we quite often just play notes within a specific scale and this scale tells us what key we are playing in so for example if we're playing a song that just consisted of notes from within the C major scale we would say that we're playing in the key of C all major scales consist of seven notes and I think the best way to practice them in all twelve Keys is to use the circle of fifths if you're not familiar with the circle of fifths then go and check out my lesson explaining what they are and how to use them if we start at the top of the circle on C there are no flats or sharps so we just play white notes from C to C [Music] moving clockwise around the circle we get to the fifth note of C which is G and this major scale contains one sharp which is f sharp so again we play white notes between G and G but this time we just sharpen the F [Music] so next up is Dee and to play this major scale we add a second sharp C sharp so to play the scale we need to sharpen F and the C if you haven't noticed the pattern yet each time we add a new sharp we're sharpening the seventh note of the new scale so for the D major we just played one two three four five six seven that was the note we had to sharpen to get C sharp moving on we come to a and again we add one more sharp to what we had before which is a G sharp the 7th of a so now we need to sharpen F C and G you next up is emajor which has four sharps and this time the new sharp is d sharp so these are all the sharpened notes we have in this scale and the scale should look like this [Music] next is B major and this time we add an a sharp so we have a C sharp d sharp F sharp G sharp and a sharp [Music] moving on again clockwise around the circle we get to the bottom F sharp and just like before we only need to add one more sharp to the previous scale and this time it's an e sharp now if we sharpen an e it looks like the note F but in this context it's called an e sharp because the note F is technically not within the scale so the scale of F sharp major should look like this so now we've got to the bottom of the circle of fifths we need to start again at the top but this time go around anti-clockwise so to get from C to F we start with a C major again and when we go anti-clockwise we get to the fourth note of C which is F and this time we'll be adding flats instead of sharps so F major has just one flat which is B flat so to play the scale we would just play the white notes between F and F and flatten the B [Music] so if we go to the fourth note of our F major we get to the next scale and our circle B flat and it's always the fourth note which is flattened as well so this time one spray it down here one two three four we need to flatten the e so altogether we have a B flat and an E flat and the scale should look like this [Music] next up is a flat which has three flats and they are a flat a flat and B flat [Music] moving up a fourth again we have a flat a flat has four flats an a-flat b-flat a d-flat and an e-flat and this is how the scale should look we'll bring it down an octave you moving up a fourth again we have D flat the scale has five flats there D flat E flat G flat a flat and F flat [Music] moving to our final scale G flat G flat has six flats and we have the same as before plus a C flat so the scale for G flat major is so that's all the 12 major scales and the thing to remember when practicing these scales is that when we move around the circle of fifths either clockwise or anti-clockwise only one note is changed from the previous scale this is what makes adjacent keys so closely related to each other one other thing to note is the f-sharp major and G flat major are in harmonic keys and this means that they contain the same notes and sound exactly the same but the notes are notated differently we do this to make things such as composing and reading music easier in certain situations but for now we just have to accept that is the same scale but with two different names so if you head over to piano peaks resources section you can download a copy of the circle of fifths and also a document which has all 12 major scales written out along with the finger in the free scale I hope that helped and if you have any questions just leave them in the comment box below thanks for watching the video if you enjoyed it make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already if you want even more videos resources backing tracks and more then head over to our website piano peak com see you there

Channel: PianoPig

Views: 374,870

Keywords: piano scales, major scale, beginner, how to play, major, 12 keys, music scales, scale, piano, learn piano scales, circle of fifths, piano pig

Id: pF4DegadNYs

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2017