Scale Player Online

How the Scale Player works

Scale player online: how it works

A scale is the raw material of melody and harmony. Nearly every tune in Western music, from a nursery rhyme to a jazz solo, draws its notes from one scale or a mix of a few, so knowing how scales are built, and what each one sounds like, speeds up everything else: learning songs by ear, improvising, writing a bass line or working out why a chord sounds wrong. This player spells each scale out on a keyboard and plays it, so you can see and hear the pattern at the same time.

How the scale player builds a scale

A scale is a pattern of intervals counted up from a root note. On a piano every adjacent key, black or white, is a half step (H, a semitone), and two half steps make a whole step (W). The major scale is W W H W W W H. Start that pattern on C and you land only on white keys; start it on D and you need F# and C#, which is exactly what the key select does. The notes change, the pattern stays the same, and that is why a song can be moved to a new key without changing its character.

The Step pattern in the results spells out the formula for the chosen scale. A few scales need a third symbol: W+H, the augmented second of three half steps, which gives harmonic minor its exotic, Middle Eastern leap between the sixth and seventh notes.

The seven modes

The modes are the major scale started from each of its seven degrees, keeping the same notes but moving the home note. Played from a single root they become easy to tell apart:

• Ionian is the major scale: bright and settled.
• Dorian is minor with a raised sixth. It is the sound of "Scarborough Fair", "Oye Como Va" and a lot of funk.
• Phrygian is minor with a flattened second. It sounds dark and Spanish, and is heavily used in flamenco and metal.
• Lydian is major with a raised fourth. It sounds floating and dreamlike, and is a favourite of film composers.
• Mixolydian is major with a flattened seventh, the sound of rock, blues and folk tunes such as "Norwegian Wood".
• Aeolian is the natural minor.
• Locrian has a flattened second and fifth. Its home chord is diminished, so it is unstable and rarely used as a key.

The quickest way to learn them is to leave the key on C and step through the modes in order. Each one differs from its neighbour by a single note, and the lit keys show which.

Minor scales, pentatonics and the rest

There are three common minor scales. The natural minor is the Aeolian mode. Harmonic minor raises the seventh so the scale has a leading note pulling up to the root, which is what gives classical minor-key music its strong cadences. Melodic minor raises the sixth as well to smooth out the awkward leap. In classical theory it is played with those raised notes going up and the natural minor coming down; jazz players use the raised form both ways, which is what this player does.

The pentatonic scales keep five of the seven notes and drop the two that form half steps. With no semitone clashes, almost any order of their notes sounds acceptable, which is why they are the first scales guitarists improvise with and why they turn up in folk music from Scotland to China. The blues scale is the minor pentatonic with the flattened fifth, the "blue note", added. The whole tone scale has only whole steps, six notes and no pull towards a home note, a sound Debussy used for its vagueness. The chromatic scale is all twelve notes.

How to read the result

• Notes is how many different notes the scale has per octave: 7 for the major, minor and modes, 5 for pentatonics, 6 for blues and whole tone, 12 for chromatic. The player adds the root an octave up to finish the run, so you hear one more note than this count.
• Step pattern is the interval formula. Compare two scales by their patterns to see exactly where they differ; Dorian and natural minor differ in only one step.
• Ascending takes is how long one pass lasts at the current tempo: notes played × 60 ÷ tempo. At 120 notes per minute an eight-note major run takes 4 seconds.

Practice tips

• Slow down first. Set the tempo low enough to play every note cleanly, then raise it by 5 to 10 notes per minute at a time. Speed built on mistakes stays full of mistakes.
• Loop and play along. Loop repeats the run so you can match it on your own instrument without stopping. For a steady click alongside, use the metronome.
• Practise both directions. Descending scales are harder for most singers and players, so switch to Down or Up and down once the ascending form is secure.
• Choose the right octave. Octave 2 reaches bass guitar territory; octave 3 suits low male voices and cello; octave 4 is the middle of the piano; octave 5 sits in the flute and violin range.
• Sing the notes. Singing along trains your ear faster than listening. Clicking a single key plays one note, so you can check a pitch you are unsure of.

Common pitfalls

Spelling is simplified: the key list uses flats such as Db and Bb, while the keyboard names every black key as a sharp, so F major shows A# where theory would write Bb. The sound is identical on a piano. Blues and pentatonic scales are not modes of each other in the same way the church modes are, so switching between them changes the note count. The player uses equal temperament, the standard tuning of pianos and fretted instruments, with A4 at 440 Hz.

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