Part 2- How Music Works!

Still with me? Excellent! Let's crack on.

Keys and Scales
What is a key? A key in its simplest and perhaps least precise definition is a sequence of 7 notes. This sequence makes up the primary notes that a piece of music will be composed from. There are both major and minor keys- both having a formula to construct them with. As with animals all notes are created equal but once you put them together some are more equal than others- there is a sort of hierarchy between the notes of a scale- meaning that some notes will work "better" in different contexts than others. Hopefully this sounds interesting as I will be writing about it in a subsequent post.

The first thing you need to know is what a semitone (halfstep) is. If you remember from the last episode it is one fret on a guitar-like instrument, an adjacent key on a piano and more of a mystery on a viol family member. A tone (wholestep) is one more fret/key/mystery than a semitone. The difference is the Jaws theme and Frere Jaques.

I include the arrows to emphasise that the (semi)tone is the distance between the notes. These gaps are referred to as "intervals".

So, if you were to start on any note on your instrument and followed the formula above you would be playing a major scale and at the same time sketching out the notes of a key. Keys and scales are almost one and the same. You might want to think of a scale as a tool to make music and a key as a way of describing or describing music if the dualism first strikes you as confusing.

The above is the formula for a minor key.

So, what can you do with this information? Well, most pieces of music most of us are likely to encounter are written in one definite key that might change throughout the piece. If you know what notes make up a key and if you know where the notes of the key fit in on your instrument you are theoretically able to improvise, compose or at the least better understand the music that you are playing or listening to.

So how do you get to learn the keys and by extension their scales? I will elaborate in the next post!

Josh.