If you don't remember what a major scale is, we suggest you go back toThe Scale to refresh your memory. So, you may be wonderingwhy we decided to revisit the major scale. The reason is that there were some importantthings that we purposely didn't mention in Lesson 3 because they were a little tooadvanced at that point. Now, though, we all know enough to fully understand themajor scale revisited! The Major Scale RevisitedAudio Clip (MIDI): 'C' Major Scale by us. Simple major So what is a major scale? In Lesson 3, we talked about some of the uses of majorscales, but we didn't really go into too much depth on what a major scale is. Let'slook again at the C Major Scale. Now, in What are Intervals?,we discussed how any two notes in music are separated by a certain number of wholesteps and half steps. Major scales also follow this rule. Let's take a look at this 'C' Major Scale graphic. Here, we've shown you whereall the half steps and whole steps are by putting the letter 'H' where the notesare a half step apart and the letter 'W' where the notes are a whole step apart. No matter what note the scale starts on, this set of whole steps and half stepsremains constant. So, as we said in Lesson 6, musicians can easily describe intervalsby just saying the number of notes in the major scale that it would take to fillthat interval. For example a whole step would just be a "second" because the firsttwo notes in the major scale are equal to a whole step. A "third" would be two wholesteps because the distance between the first note in the major scale and the thirdnote is two whole steps. A "fourth" would be two whole steps and a half step sincethe distance between the first note in the major scale and the fourth note is twowhole steps and one half step. OK, this seems pretty simple now. But what happens if a musician wants one wholestep and one half step? Suddenly, our system fails because there is no note in themajor scale that is one and a half whole steps away from the first note. This noteis in between the second and third notes in the major scale. Again, musicians have devised a solution to this problem. When a note fits perfectlyon the major scale, musicians call the note a major interval. Forexample, two whole steps would be a major third. However, if theinterval is a 4th or a 5th, the interval is called a perfect interval. For example, two and a half whole steps would be called a perfect fourth. So, back to the problem of the note that is one and a half whole steps away fromthe first note in the scale. Musicians can lower the width of the interval by ahalf step by saying the word minor. So, a note that is one wholestep and one half step away is a minor third. Most popular music gamesPiano and guitar online gamesGuitar online gamesMusic games for kidsMetronomes and fork