Naming SCALES

Scales are named by their tonic and type. For instance, the C major scale has the note name C for its tonic i.e. it starts with this note name. Also, it belongs to major scales.

Types of scales

Many types of scales exist but the most important are major scales and minor scales. Scales that come from traditional folk music or western church music are not described in this book since they are not important for compositions from the common practice period. The common practice period is the period of classical music that spans the Baroque, Classical and Romantic era when tonal music prevailed.

A type of scale determines its structure. The structure of a scale can be imagined as a list of the intervals between the adjacent notes of a written scale. When we know the type of a scale, we can write a scale for any arbitrarily chosen tonic. The following describes the procedure: 

• We take the first interval from the list and apply it to the tonic to obtain the second scale degree. 

• We apply the second interval from the list to the second scale degree to obtain the third scale degree.

• We apply the third interval from the list to the third scale degree to obtain the fourth scale degree and so on.