| In music, a scale is a group of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work. The distance between two successive notes in a scale is called a "scale step." Composers often transform musical patterns by moving every note in the pattern by a constant number of scale steps: thus, in the C major scale, the pattern C-D-E might be shifted up a single scale step to become D-E-F. This process is called scalar transposition. Scales are typically listed from low to high. A scale is octave-repeating when every pitch in the scale appears in every possible octave. An octave-repeating scale can be represented as a circular arrangement of pitch classes, ordered by increasing (or decreasing) pitch class. For instance, the increasing C major scale is, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-[C], with the bracket indicating that the last note is an octave higher than the first note. Or C-B-A-G-F-E-D-[C], with the bracket indicating an octave lower than the first note in the scale. |
Learn the C major scale Learn the F major scale Learn the G major scale |
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