What Scales Are, Musically, and Why We Practice Them ??

What Scales Are, Musically, and Why We Practice Them ??

Musically speaking, a scale is simply a series of notes, following one after the other. The really important thing about any scale is the SPACE between the notes, and by space, I mean the space in terms of PITCH. It is the distance in pitch between two notes that contains the EMOTIONAL CONTENT of music. This is one of the most important concepts that any musician can know, and most do know it, if only on an intuitive level. For those wishing to develop an understanding of music theory, this concept should be pursued and understood. I cannot go into it in the depth it deserves in this essay, but I will lay out the essence of it, and you should pursue it with your teacher, and in books.

If I play a note on the guitar, and then play the same note again, there is no distance in pitch between the two notes. If I play a note, and then play the note on the very next fret, the distance in PITCH, (which is the "highness" or "lowness" of a sound), between those two notes is called a half step. If I play a note, and then play the note two frets away (a note on the first fret, then the third), that is called a whole step, and the effect is very different than a half step. If I play a note and then the note three frets away, that distance is called a minor third.

All of these different spacings in pitch between notes are called INTERVALS in music theory. In the interval of a minor third mentioned above, you can really hear what I mean by the "emotional content" of the interval. The minor third interval is contained in the minor chord, and this particular "spacing" between notes is what gives a minor chord it’s dark, minor sound. When you play a blues scale, it is the sound made by the first two notes, and gives the blues scale it’s bluesy feeling (or at least contributes to it, as do some other intervals).

That is as far as I want to go with Intervals for now. I just want you to know they exist, and that they carry the "emotion" of music. I want you to know that every scale not only contains notes, but that the SPACES, or Intervals between the notes are what is really important. Scales come in different "types", major, minor, diminished, etc.. Each type of scale has its own peculiar spacings between the notes, and these spacings give each type of scale its unique emotional feeling or "color". You will see later that players of different styles use different types of scales in their playing. A lifelong blues/rock player may never need to play a major scale.

Because each type of scale has the same intervals between notes, each type of scale has the same "feeling", even if it has a different letter name. In other words, if you play a C major scale, or a D major scale, or a G major scale, they will all have the same pattern of spaces, or intervals between each of the notes, as well as each containing the same number of notes, so, they will all sound "the same" in terms of the "emotional content" or feeling of the scale. In fact, you could say they all have the same "color". Minor scales have a different spacing between the notes than major scales, and it gives them a "dark" color.

Using this analogy, you could think of a scale as a palette of colors. If a composer wants to write a sad piece, he will pull out a minor scale, and use those notes to write it. In this sense, we could say scales are the building blocks of music.