Tetrachords – the little pieces to a rather large puzzle A
couple of years ago, a colleague told me that she teaches major
scales to young students using tetrachords. This approach was
eye opening for me and prompted me to try teaching this method
to my 2nd level class for a couple of years. At the time it
didn’t seem any more useful for that age group than relentlessly
practicing scales over and over, until a few years later that
group of kids, now in my advanced level, were learning more than
just major scales. I got the idea to re-introduce them to
tetrachords again and I started looking at all scales in a whole
new way… First of all, what’s a tetrachord? Simply put it’s 4
notes in a row. Keeping things simple, let’s look at 2
tetrachords: Major and Minor The Major Tetrachord is the first 4
notes of the major scale. Looking at it in terms of intervals:
Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step or WWH. When we combine these
Major Tetrachords we get major scales. C Major Tetrachord + G
Major Tetrachord = C Major Sca