How Scales Are Made (Lesson #2)
The focus of this 3 minute lesson is on learning how scales are made. This knowledge becomes especially important when we discuss chords in later lessons.
Learning to play the piano can be easy. The information in this video helps you learn how scales are made on the piano keyboard. Starting from a beginner level, these series of videos advance in difficulty. Follow these simple steps to learn how to play the piano. You will be playing your favorite song, using chords or scales in no time.
A quick, fast, and easy guide to helping you learn to play the piano. Learn to play your favorite song like a pro!
Learn how scales are made and how to use scales when you play the piano.
Any updated version of this lesson, with the background music adjusted is available here: • How Scales Are Made (Lesson #2)
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Video Transcription:
Hey everybody, this is Aaron Whitehead. Welcome to Learn to Play the Piano. This is lesson two in a series of short lessons. In this video we will focus on how scales are made. Knowing about scales will become essential in our conversations in later lessons about chords. First thing we're going to talk about are half steps and whole steps. Now, the piano is laid out in a series of keys and each key represents a half step. So between the key C and C sharp is a half step. From C sharp up to D is a half step. From D to D sharp is a half step. From D sharp to E is a half step. And from E to F is a half step. Now, just like in math, if you take two halves and put them together you get a whole. So on a piano keyboard, two half steps equal a whole step. So, from C to C sharp is a half step. And another half step from C sharp to D. So from C to D is a whole step. And likewise if you start on the key of E and go a half step up you get to F and another half step gives you F sharp so from E to F sharp is a whole step. Now a scale is series of seven notes made up of whole steps and half steps. And a Major scale uses the formula whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. So let's take a look at an example of what that looks like. If we start on the note C and go up a whole step we get the note D. From D if we go up another whole step we get E. Now we go up a half step from E and get F. From F we go up a whole step and get G. From G we go up another whole step and get A. From A we go up a whole step and we get B. And from B we go up a half step and we're back at C again. This makes the C Major scale. Now again the formula for a Major scale is whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. In case you can't ever remember what the formula is, or you don't remember how many whole steps there are before you get to a half step, just look at the piano keyboard. You have two black keys and three black keys. The two black keys can represent the two whole steps and then a half step and then you have the three black keys represent the three whole steps and then a half step. So using this formula we can build a Major scale off of any key on the piano keyboard. So using this information let's take a look at building a scale off the note D. We start on D, we go a whole step up from D to E, another whole step up from E to F sharp, from F sharp we go up a half step to G, from G we go up a whole step to A, from A we go up a whole step to B, from B we go up another whole step to C sharp. And from C sharp we go up a half step to the note D, and that completes our D Major scale. We hope you enjoyed lesson number two. All of this information and more is available in our book, A Piano Chord Book You Can Actually Use! which can be purchased from our website thepianochordbook.com and please check out lesson number three where we will discuss chords. Thanks! God bless, and see you next time!