Deryn Cullen Adult Beginners, Adult Learners, Cello, Improvising, Music theory, Teaching the Cello, Tips and Resources for Teaching

Major keys and their scales

I posted a similar article on keys in music some time ago, but since it is now buried under about two years’ worth of posts and several of my students have been in need of a study guide for major scales and keys with more focus on how they apply to the cello, here’s a new and improved version

Firstly, let’s define three important terms which often get confused and are therefore important to be distinguished from each other before exploring how they are related.

  1. Key: a family of notes which belong together and have a distinctive sound or “colour”. A key can be major or minor and is represented by a key signature (see definition 2). Every key has 7 individual notes which are represented in the scale (see definition 3) of the key.
  2. Key signature: a representation of the accidentals found in a key. These are shown at the start of each stave just after the clef and just before the time signature* and greatly reduce the number of accidentals that have to be shown in the main body of the score**. The order of accidentals in a key signature does not always follow the order in which they appear in the scale. Instead, they follow the order in which they appear from one scale to the next.
  3. Scale: a representation of the notes belonging to a key in ascending and/or descending order starting and ending on the key note (i.e. the letter name of the scale). A scale of one octave covers eight steps but since the first and eighth steps are the same note, there are only seven individual notes as mentioned in definition 1. There are 3 main types of scales: major (which represent major keys), harmonic minor and melodic minor (which represent minor keys). Each type follows a specific order of intervals***

* Times signatures, unlike clefs and key signatures, are only shown at the start of the first stave and do not appear again unless there is a change of time signature in the music

** Score: a written or notated representation of music

*** Interval: the pitch distance between 2 consecutive notes (e.g. C – D = a whole tone or major second; C – D-flat = a half tone or minor second)

The structure of Major Scales

All major scales – no matter what note they begin on – follow the same structure. They are made up of a sequence of whole tones and semitones as follows:

Step 1 – 2: whole tone

Step 2 – 3: whole tone

Step 3 – 4: semitone

Step 4 – 5: whole tone

Step 5 – 6: whole tone

Step 6 – 7: whole tone

Step 7 – 8: semitone

If we observe how the scale of C major is played on the piano, and then on the cello, we can actually see the difference between the whole tones and semitones. Let’s look at C major on the piano first:

The red notes indicate the notes played in the scale. Notice that no black notes are played (C major has no sharps or flats), and the whole tones are always between the white notes which have a black note between them. The semitones are between the white notes which do not have a black note between them.

Since the cello does not have a logical linear map of the notes like the piano keyboard has, a video is a better way to demonstrate how the scale of C major “looks” as well as sounds on the instrument. Pay attention to the semitones, which sound closer together and are physically closer together on the cello (in this scale played between the third and fourth fingers on both strings).

Key Signatures

Because the sequence of intervals must always remain the same, no two major scales will ever have an identical set of notes. All major scales except C major have one or more sharps or flats. These are shown in the key signature, which is found at the beginning of each stave. We use key signatures to show what sharps or flats will be present in the score without having to clutter the score itself with an accidental sign in front of each relevant note. For example, if a piece of music is in the key of D major, it will have an F-sharp and a C-sharp in the key signature. This means that whenever you encounter F or C in the score, you must remember that they are actually F-sharp or C-sharp. Why not just write the accidentals into the score? There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, a score with lots of accidentals in it is messy and harder to read. The more accidentals there are in the key, the messier the score would get. Secondly, it would make it much harder to recognise accidentals that don’t belong in the key. When the key signature is used, we recognise notes that don’t belong to the key straight away since they have accidentals in front of them while notes that belong to the key do not.

Key signatures never contain a combination of sharps and flats – only one or the other. With C major as a starting point, if we go a perfect fifth up (tone, tone, semitone, tone or seven semitones up), we find G. The key of G Major has one sharp in its key signature: F-sharp. From here, we go a perfect fifth up to find D. D major has two sharps: F-sharp (retained from the previous key) and C-sharp. A perfect fifth up from D takes us to A. The key of A major has three sharps: F-sharp, C-sharp and G-sharp. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? It’s called the circle of fifths. Not only do we find each new “sharp” key by going up a perfect fifth; the new sharp in each key signature is always a perfect fifth up from the previous new sharp. It is also worth noting that the new sharp in each key is always the seventh step of the scale. For “flat” keys, we return to C as our starting point and go down by a perfect fifth each time. Easy to remember: sharp=up, flat=down.

The following graphic shows keys and their key signatures, and should make sense if the above two paragraphs made sense.

Each major key has a related minor key which shares its key signature. But minor keys are a little more complex than major keys, and need to be covered in a post of their own.

Deryn Cullen Adult Beginners, Cello, Improvising, Music theory, Teaching the Cello, Tips and Resources for Teaching

A Beginner’s Guide to Keys in Music

Firstly, let’s define three important terms which are easy to get confused and therefore important to be distinguished from each other before exploring how they are related.

1) Key: a family of notes which belong together and have a distinctive sound or “colour”. A key can be major or minor and is represented by a key signature (see definition 2). Every key has 7 individual notes which are represented in the scale (see definition 3) of the key.
2) Key signature: a representation of the accidentals found in a key. These are shown at the start of each stave just after the clef and just before the time signature* and greatly reduce the number of accidentals that have to be shown in the main body of the score**. The order of accidentals in a key signature does not always follow the order in which they appear in the scale. Instead, they follow the order in which they appear from one scale to the next.
3) Scale: a representation of the notes belonging to a key in ascending and descending order starting and ending on the root note of the key. There are 3 main types of scales: major (which represent major keys), harmonic minor and melodic minor (which represent minor keys). Each type follows a specific order of intervals***

* Times signatures, unlike clefs and key signatures, are only shown at the start of the first stave and do not appear again unless there is a change of time signature in the music

** Score: a written or notated representation of music

*** Interval: the pitch distance between 2 consecutive notes (e.g. C – D = a whole tone or major second; C – D-flat = a half tone or minor second)

Understanding major and minor keys and their relationships

The reason there are related major and minor keys is because they share the same key signature. Major keys are easier to understand because they do not deviate from their key signature, and have only 1 scale to represent them. Major scales are based on the following sequence of intervals:

Whole tone; whole tone; half tone; whole tone; whole tone; whole tone; half tone.

So let’s see how that relates to the actual notes of C major:

C – D: whole tone

D – E: whole tone

E – F: half tone

F – G: whole tone

G – A: whole tone

A – B: whole tone

B – C: half tone

Now let’s look at F major:

F – G: whole tone

G – A: whole tone

A – B-flat: half tone

B-flat – C: whole tone

C – D: whole tone

D – E: whole tone

E – F: half tone

So no matter what the key, major scales follow an identical sequence of intervals. This is why they all have different key signatures. In order to follow the same sequence, they have to follow a unique pattern of notes.

Minor keys are more complex than major scales. Every minor key has 2 different types of minor scale as previously mentioned: a harmonic minor scale and a melodic minor scale. Each type of scale deviates from the key signature in a slightly different way.

But let’s forget that confusing fact for a moment and look at how major scales and minor scales relate to each other.  Every key signature relates to both a major key and a minor key. The table below shows 3 ascending major scales. The numbers above the scales relate to the steps of the scales.  The red note in bold print in each scale is the root note of the relative minor.

You’ll notice that it is always the 6th step of the major scale that is the root note of the relative minor key. This is the easiest way to find out which minor key shares the key signature of a major key.

In contemporary rock and pop music, we often come across “natural minor” scales (also known as the aeolian mode). These are minor scales that do not deviate from the key signature and take on the following sequence of intervals:

Whole tone; half tone; whole tone; whole tone; half tone; whole tone; whole tone.

This is a (natural) minor, which is related to C major (as you can see in the table above)

A – B: whole tone

B – C: half tone

C – D: whole tone

D – E: whole tone

E – F: half tone

F – G: whole tone

G – A: whole tone

The next table shows the three natural minor scales related to the major scales above. This time, you’ll notice that the bold print red note, which is the root note of the relative major key, has changed to the third step.

In classical music, minor scales are altered in 2 different ways. This gives minor keys a more distinct and defined sound, and distinguishes them from major keys. The first alteration is the harmonic minor scale, in which the 7th step is always raised up by a half tone as shown in a harmonic minor below:

A – B: whole tone

B – C: half tone

C – D: whole tone

D – E: whole tone

E – F: half tone

F – G#: augmented second

G# – A: half tone

The augmented second is the largest interval you’ll find in any classical scale, and is only found in the harmonic minor. Play and listen to the scale several times to hear its distinct sound.  The table below shows 3 examples of harmonic minor scales. The altered 7th steps are in bold italic.

Now for the melodic minor scale, which I like to call the chameleon scale because it changes its colours on the way down.  Melodic minor scales raise the 6th and 7th steps by a half tone in the ascending half and lower them back down by a half step in the descending half. This means that the scale has a different sequence of intervals in its ascending and descending halves as shown in a melodic minor:

Ascending

A – B: whole tone

B – C: half tone

C – D: whole tone

D – E: whole tone

E – F#: whole tone

F# – G#: whole tone

G# – A: half tone

Descending

A – G: whole tone

G – F: whole tone

F – E: half tone

E – D: whole tone

D – C: whole tone

C – B: half tone

B – A: whole tone

Note also that the descending melodic minor scale is a natural minor which follows the key signature.  Play and listen to the scale, and be sure to hear the difference between the melodic minor and the harmonic minor. The table below shows 3 examples of melodic minor scales. The relative majors are once again marked in bold red; the altered notes in the ascending scale are shown in bold italic green, and the lowered notes in the descending scale are shown in bold italic blue:

The altered notes in harmonic and melodic minor scales are always shown as accidentals within the score, and not in the key signature.

So how do we know whether a piece of music is in a minor key or a major key? First look at the key signature and make sure that you know which major and minor key it belongs to. Then look at about the first 8 bars of the music. If you see any accidentals within the score (not, the key signature – you’ve already looked at that) check what they are. If they happen to be the 6th and/ or 7th step of the minor key, then you can be certain that the music is in a minor key and not a major key.  If you see no accidentals within the score, or accidentals that are not the 6th or 7th steps of the minor key, you can be certain of it being a major key.

© D C Cello Studio

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Deryn Cullen Cello, Improvising, Teaching the Cello, Tips and Resources for Teaching

Basic Improvisation for Classical Musicians

For those of us with classical music training the concept of improvising often inspires feelings ranging from uneasiness to abject terror. We spend so much of our time bound to complex scores laden with incredibly specific instructions that the concept of making it up on the spot is foreign and frightening. Depending on what you do as a musician, you may never be confronted with a situation that requires you to improvise and therefore never feel the need to explore this avenue of music. If this is the case, you may be missing out on an enriching and satisfying experience.

I took it upon myself to develop my improvisation skills over a decade ago whilst at Music College. I was approached by an experimental poetry performance group from the local drama school (every bit as pretentious as it sounds) who were looking for a musician to provide incidental music for their tortured performances. I was intrigued by the idea and suggested playing excerpts from the Bach Solo Suites, which met with rolled eyes and long-suffering sighs – clearly everyone they’d already asked to do this had made the same or similar suggestions. What they wanted was someone who could provide a musical interpretation of their words and actions in real time – no rehearsals, no preparation and no sheet music. Just turn up and play. Up until this point, my musical experience had been nothing but intense preparation – whether it was for exams, competitions, recitals or orchestra rehearsals, the idea of “winging it” was out of the question. I agreed to turn up for their next performance, partly out of curiosity and partly because my bank balance was always in dire need of resuscitation. A day before the performance date I began to panic about what I had agreed to do. With the exception of playing a few pop tunes by ear on the piano in my school days and exploring a few chord progressions in the privacy of my practise room, I had never done anything like this before – especially not on the cello. I seriously considered cancelling on the grounds of a phantom flu bug or similar. I hadn’t told anyone about this particular gig because although I had no solid grounds to base this on, I assumed it would meet with disapproval from my fellow students and tutors. After much internal agonising, my curiosity and poverty came out on top and I decided to give it a go. After all, if it didn’t work out I simply wouldn’t do it again.

Of course, I couldn’t resist attempting a bit of preparation. I sat down with my cello, thinking I could perhaps come up with a few melodic ideas to store up my sleeve, but everything I tried sounded suspiciously like a medley of the repertoire I was studying at the time. The harder I tried to sound original, the less original I sounded. For fear of allowing my nerves to get the better of me again, I gave up the prep work for a bad job and hoped it would be all right on the night. It was better than all right. The actual performance (or what I can remember of it) was unbelievably over the top with painted faces, nudity, screaming and gratuitous profanity. I’m certain that had I recorded my playing I would cringe listening back to it. But I discovered my ability to let go of my classical paranoia, ignore the little voice that bawled at me when notes weren’t pitch or rhythm perfect and express my inner musicality on my instrument of choice. I continued to work with the tortured poets for the rest of my college days and thus began my fascination with an age-old musical discipline.

So if improvisation is about letting go of the rigidity imposed on us by classical music is it right to call it a discipline? Perhaps not if we’re talking about my first dabbling where I had no other musical lines to mesh with harmonically and simply tried my best to reflect what was going on around me. Compare this to the dazzling performances of well-trained jazz musicians however and you might as well compare a child taking its first steps with an Olympic athlete. After 12 years of developing my improvisation skills and putting them to the test in a variety of different musical settings, I’m no jazz improviser because jazz is not a genre I have had any exposure to other than listening to it. But I have learned to improvise confidently over traditional western diatonic and modal harmony, making my skill applicable to a wide range of styles and genres and ultimately making me a better rounded musician on numerous levels. Developing this ability has been a long road of trial and error and depended on two key ingredients: listening and following my instincts. Many believe that the ability to improvise cannot be taught and is based purely on musical instinct and aural ability. Whilst I can’t disagree that high aural aptitude makes improvising easier, I also know from my experience as a teacher that anyone capable of basic pitch recognition can develop that skill to recognise intervals, chords and modulations – the very same skills required to improvise. Most classical musicians get a good dose of theoretical and aural training to complement the study of their instrument, and all of these skills can be put to work to practise and improve our ability to improvise freely.

So where to begin? As previously mentioned my education in this discipline has been pretty haphazard and is by no means an ideal template to follow. After my early attempts at improvising on my own, I began to wonder how I would fare playing with other musicians. An opportunity arose to do a few jam sessions with a local blues band and I eagerly (if nervously) took it. I had a whale of a time, quickly learning the blues format and adjusting my style of playing to blend with the sounds of the lead guitar and the vocalist. It was probably fortunate that for the first few sessions there was no microphone available for me, and my cello was drowned out by the amplified guitars, bass and drums. This gave me the freedom to hit bum notes, misjudge chord progressions and generally make mistakes without upsetting the well-rehearsed harmony of the band. By the time a microphone was placed in front of my instrument I had become more familiar and thus comfortable with the style of the music and format of the songs and even felt confident enough to play a few solos when the opportunity arose. Having been given a confidence boost by doing the poetry performances, this was a brilliant start to my education and I would recommend it to anyone keen to try improvising on their instrument. Of course I realise there are a few flaws in this recommendation: not everybody lives in an area where such jam sessions might take place, not everybody likes the idea of playing along to a loud blues band and many, no matter how keen to try, do not feel confident enough to attempt improvising with other musicians when they’ve never tried it before. So here are my suggestions for getting started.

Many of us improvise without even realising it. Take the cacophony of an orchestra at the start of a rehearsal before tuning up. If you were to go around and listen to each individual player you would hear their own tailor-made warm-up routine which normally consists of a combination of scales, chromatic runs and arpeggios seamlessly running into each other. Sort of like a “best of” scales and arpeggios number, not methodically going through one scale after another in a cycle of 5ths but skipping from one to another. Everyone is doing their own thing, no-one is listening or appraising, and so if you were to record some of the individual warm-up routines, you’d probably hear some interesting and refreshing musical ideas that would surprise the players themselves. Anyone who has played in an orchestra will probably have done this to some extent. Next time you sit down to practise, give this a try. Instead of using a methodical list of scales or technical exercises to warm up, try creating your own routine with a mixture of scales, arpeggios, diminished 7ths, etc in different keys and tempi. The trick is to not think too hard about what you’re doing – pick a comfortable key and range to begin in and see where it takes you. Don’t be put off by notes that sound “wrong” or out of place and don’t be surprised if what you’re playing ends up sounding a lot less like scales and a lot more like a melody line. Don’t be despondent if the melody line resembles whatever repertoire you’re might be working on. Improvisation is also about being able to mimic a style, and you’re most likely to be able to mimic the style of the music you listen to the most.

This brings me to one of my earlier mentioned key ingredients: listening. Pick a style you think you’d most enjoy improvising to and listen to it intently and frequently. Start your own jam sessions – hum along to the music and see if you can develop an alternate melody line or harmonise with it. If you can vocalise your musical ideas, you should be able to play them on your instrument. If singing is really not your thing, go straight to your instrument and try playing along. Don’t be tempted to cheat by looking for sheet music even as a basic reference. It is up to you to use your listening skills to determine what key it’s in and what chord progressions it follows. Because this exercise is all about listening and not looking (at a score), try closing your eyes while playing along. Shutting out the world and its many distractions can’t hinder and may help to enhance how you listen and what complementary sounds you hear in your head. If you’re undecided on what genre to play along with, try blues. Even if it’s not a style you’ve ever paid much attention to, it’s an excellent place to start as it follows an easily recognisable format and chord progression. Try learning a few blues scales to complement your jam sessions and build up your musical ideas.

For developing your improvisation skills over conventional Western harmony, harmonised scales are an excellent place to start. Follow this link  to download play-along scale recordings and chord sheets. You’ll find three separate exercises covering scales in major, harmonic minor and melodic minor keys respectively. Each exercise consists of 1 octave scales working chromatically through all 12 keys and a corresponding chord sheet. It is useful to print out and follow the chord sheet when doing these exercises, as it will help to develop your chord recognition. Instead of providing the actual chords for each scale in every key, there is one series of chord symbols which apply to every scale and key in the exercise. You can begin improvising a melody over the chords straight away if you’re feeling bold, or (and I recommend this) you can start slowly and just play the scales at first, making sure that you read and take in each chord as you play each note. The scales are deliberately slow to give you time to listen to and take in each chord and later on to put in interesting passing notes and/ or chord extensions to make your improvisation sound more interesting. This is where instinct comes in. Whilst it is very useful and often necessary to understand and recognise the chord progressions you’re working with, it is equally important to be able to stop thinking about the theory and trust your musical gut. After all, you’ve been listening to and playing music for years. We all store up the parts we like the most or find the most distinctive from music we come into contact with and improvisation is a wonderful way of expressing those preferences. This, like interpretation of great classical works, is personal and once you have guidelines to get your creative juices flowing, cannot be taught.

Once you’ve spent sufficient time working on the scales and growing your confidence in your ability to create on the fly, it is probably time for you to seek out other musicians to work with. Again, the type of musicians you look for will be entirely up to your taste and aspirations. You may just be trying out improvisation to see whether you can do it or not, to broaden your musical horizons. If this is the case, you may feel that there is no real need to go outside the privacy of your bedroom, but I’m willing to bet you’ll find it more satisfying jamming with others, exploring each other’s musical styles, comparing notes and encouraging each other. If your aim is to take your improvisation to the stage you absolutely have to find others to develop your skill with first. It’s all very well being able to play pleasing melodies over a predictable chord progression, but the next step is to put yourself into a much less comfortable setting and learn to listen to and predict what others in your group will do. This may sound daunting, but in all likelihood you’ll start by agreeing on a basic chord progression to get warmed up and your jam session will evolve organically from there. You’ll probably be surprised at how far the music eventually wanders from your originally agreed structure and how once you’ve become more used to each other’s musical styles and ideas; you literally seem to be able to read each other’s minds.

Most who try this wonderfully liberating practice will derive something useful from it even if only to break away from the inherent fetters of classical music. As a cellist, learning to improvise has improved every aspect of my playing and musicality. The more I have explored and practised it, the more I believe that it should be incorporated into classical music training.

© D C Cello Studio