Theory Thursday: Your First Scale!

Recap

From last week, we learned that tones are the most basic unit of musical sound and there are 12 unique tones that are the building blocks for music. We also learned that the "♭" symbol is pronounced flat and it means lower than, and also that the "♯" symbol is pronounced sharp and it means higher than.

Scales

We're still just barely scratching the surface here, but we're going to dive right in to the deep end by learning our first scale. But first, what the heck is a scale?

A scale is a collection of tones.

The first scale we're going to learn is called the chromatic scale. This scale is simply the collection of all 12 tones. You don't need to memorize the individual tones in the chromatic scale (not yet anyway), but I do want you to memorize the term "chromatic scale", and that it means all 12 musical tones.

The following exercise will help you to hear what the chromatic scale sounds like. If you are unfamiliar with tablature notation, please see last week's lesson that explains how to read this notation. After you play this exercise as written, try playing the same thing on each of the strings on your instrument. Even though you're starting from different strings, you should notice that the chromatic scale sounds very similar on every string.

Exercise 1A: Play the chromatic scale (click to enlarge).

Now the reality is that the chromatic scale isn't terribly useful. It's literally the entire set of tones! Normally, a piece of music will use a smaller collection of tones -- anywhere from 5 to 8 tones. We'll start looking at more musical scales starting next week.

Review

• What is a tone?
• How do you pronounce "G♭"?
• How do you pronounce "D♯"?
• How many tones are there in total?
• What is a scale?
• What is the chromatic scale?
• How many tones are in the chromatic scale?
• Play the chromatic scale on your instrument, starting from an open string.