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Ableton Tutorials
Ableton Tutorials
Pitch
Pitch
What is Pitch?
What is Pitch?
Pitch is the "highness" or "lowness" of sound.
Drag in the field to explore pitch.
Some pitches (or notes) have specific names. Here are five common pitches. These particular five notes have the names A, C, D, E, and G.
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Patterns with Pitch
Patterns with Pitch
Make some patterns using pitches, just like you did with drums.
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Keys and Scales
Keys and Scales
Most music is in a particular key.
If we say that a song is "in the key of C," this means that the pitch C sounds like the most stable “home note” (or tonic) for the song.
Likewise, most songs use notes within a particular scale — a collection of notes in order from low to high.
Major Scales
Major Scales
Here is the C major scale:
(The little dots show where these notes can be found on a piano keyboard.)
Most people tend to hear major scales as "happy" or "bright."
Make some patterns with the notes in the C major scale (the tonics are highlighted):
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You can think of a scale as something like an artist's palette of paint.
It's a subset of all available notes, chosen because of the way they relate to each other. Each type of scale has a distinct sound, and many people have particular emotional associations with particular scales.
You can build scales by adding more notes at specific distances (or intervals) above the tonic. The two most common types (or qualities) of scales are major and minor.
Minor Scales
Minor Scales
Minor scales are built from a different collection of intervals.
Here is the C minor scale.
Most people tend to hear minor scales as "sad" or "dark."
(Notes with the ♭ (flat) symbols correspond to the black keys on a piano. “B♭” is read as “B flat.”)
Make some patterns with the notes in the C minor scale:
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Chromatic Scales
Chromatic Scales
This is all of the note names that are commonly used (plus an additional C an octave higher).
(The black keys on the piano can also be represented with the ♯ (sharp) symbol. "A♯/B♭" is read as "A sharp" or "B flat.")
Try making some music with all 12 pitches (note that the chromatic scale has no notion of a central tonic, so no notes are highlighted).
When working with all 12 notes, you might have found that it's easy to make patterns that sound unusual or "wrong." Most music makes use of only smaller subsets of these 12 notes (such as the seven notes of the major or minor scales), and we're used to hearing music with this smaller number of pitches.
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Play with Notes and Scales
Play with Notes and Scales
Now that you've learned a bit about notes and scales, spend some time creating your own patterns.
You can try out how your patterns sound with different collections of notes by changing the Tonic and Scale settings.
You can also create beats that will play in sync with your note patterns.
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Advanced Tutorials
Advanced Tutorials
Modes
Modes
The C major scale corresponds to the white keys on a piano keyboard, beginning with the note C.
But you can use this same collection of notes to create seven more scales (called modes), simply by starting in a different place.
But starting on D instead of C gives you the Dorian mode.
The pitches and intervals are always in the same order, but the different starting positions give each mode a unique musical character. You can think of the modes as being "rotations" of each other.
Experiment with different combinations of starting notes and modes:
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All Modes
Here are the seven modes that can be derived from the pitches of the C major scale:
C Ionian (major) — CDEFGABC
(intervals: Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Whole - Half)
D Dorian — DEFGABCD
(intervals: Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole)
E Phrygian — EFGABCDE
(intervals: Half - Whole - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole)
F Lydian — FGABCDEF
(intervals: Whole - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Half)
G Mixolydian — GABCDEFG
(intervals: Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole)
A Aeolian (minor) — ABCDEFGA
(intervals: Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole)
B Locrian — BCDEFGAB
(intervals: Half - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Whole)
Pentatonic Scale
Pentatonic Scale
The pentatonic scale is a five note scale that is common in many types of music from a variety of cultures.
This particular flavor of pentatonic is called the minor pentatonic, and can be constructed by removing the second and sixth notes from the minor scale.
If you've ever played piano, you may have discovered the minor pentatonic by accident: you can build the scale using only the black keys, starting on D♯/Eb.
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Whole Tone Scale
Whole Tone Scale
The whole tone scale is a six note scale in which there are only whole steps between adjacent notes. It is difficult to establish a clear tonic pitch when using the whole tone scale; music that uses this scale tends to sound "blurry" or "wandering." The whole tone scale is somewhat uncommon, and is often only used for short sections of music.
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Octatonic/Diminshed Scale
Octatonic/Diminshed Scale
The octatonic or diminished scale is an eight note scale in which the intervals alternate between whole and half steps. This scale is sometimes used in jazz.
Similarly to the whole tone scale, octatonic scales don't imply a particular central pitch.
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Pelog Scale
Pelog Scale
Pelog is a seven-note scale found in Indonesian music. Unlike Western scales, both the intervals and the specific pitches vary widely.
There is no association with the 12 notes available in Western music; these pitches are "between the cracks."
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19 Tone Scale
19 Tone Scale
The chromatic scale is created by dividing an octave into 12 equal parts. But there is no reason why the octave can't be divided in other ways.
Some musicians have experimented with dividing the octave into 19 notes, and have written music using this 19-tone scale.
The notes labeled 1 are identical to Cs in the conventional chromatic scale and are exactly an octave apart. All of the other notes are between the cracks of the notes in the chromatic scale.
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