How to Build a Music Scale
It is important to practice music scales. They can help you with proper finger techniques and hand synchronization. Additionally, they also can be useful in helping you develop timing, dexterity, and muscle memory. The benefits of learning music scales are not just limited to how you play, but it can also enhance your abilities such as ear training and sight reading when you become familiar with how scales may look and sound. Saying there is a lot of scales may be a bit of an understatement, luckily you don’t have to memorize them or even know what they are called to be able to play them!
You don’t have to sit there and learn all the scales one by one (particular the major and minor scales), in fact, you can build scales without ever knowing the official name of the scale. Building a major or minor scale is relatively simple. You can build any scale you want just by applying and following the correct scale pattern. A scale pattern is defined as the combination of whole steps and half steps.
Let’s first look at how to build a major scale. You can start at any note you want This first note is called ‘tonic’ so after you select your tonic you move one whole note away. This whole note you will have ended up is the second note in the scale. You then move another whole steps away from the second note, this will be the third note in your scale. The next note will be a half note away from the previous note. The following three notes in the scale are whole notes away from each other before moving another half step.
Like the major scale, the minor scale has a pattern as well, though it’s a little different. Following a pattern of tonic, whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. In music and in life there exist many patterns. The world’s answers and mysteries begin to unravel before your eyes when those patterns are discovered.