Keyboard Harmony: Major Scales - Fundamental Terms

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Greetings everyone! This is the start of a series playlist on musical harmony, from the perspective of the piano-keyboard. It complements the videos on Harmony, Musical Elements, and Fundamentals, because knowing how to actually play and transpose your theory and counterpoint exercises at the piano will make them much easier to grasp and apply in the real world. We hope you get something of value out of these.

Let’s begin by defining a few terms:
Scale Degree – Each horizontal line, leger line, and space between any two adjacent lines of the written staff, regardless of clef and key signature.
Interval – Distance between any two keys of the piano-keyboard.
Semitone – On the piano-keyboard, the closest, smallest interval between adjacent keys; there’s no key between two keys a semitone apart.

Semitones may be Diatonic – naming two adjacent scale degrees, i.e. C to D-flat – or Chromatic – naming the same scale degree twice, i.e., C to C-sharp. In our work here with Major Scales, only Diatonic Semitones will be used, never Chromatic Semitones.

Whole-tone – two semitones. Naming a whole-tone on the piano requires two adjacent scale degrees in the name; there is always one key between the two keys of a whole-tone.
Tetrachord – Sets of four successive tones – notes – forming a Major or Minor scale. Intervals between successive notes of a Tetrachord are semitones and/or whole-tones. All these terms may be searched online for more details: Scale Degree, Interval, Semitone, Whole-tone, Tetrachord and Major Scale.

Now, for the Practical Work of the Week – Repeat the following 20 Times in one week (or approximately Three Times Daily). Whatever works. The point is to DO IT!)

On your piano-keyboard, Find and play the following keys: Middle C, D, E, F, G, A, B. [play and name]

Next, Find, Play, and Name the keys that are a Diatonic Semitone above those keys: Middle C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Remember, DIATONIC, not chromatic. [play]

We always name two adjacent Degrees on the staff, two successive letters of the musical alphabet, because these are Diatonic Semitones, not Chromatic. Continuing ...

Find, Play, and Name the keys a semitone above the sharp keys C#, D#, F#, G#, A#. [play]

Now from the Flat side; Find, Play, and Name: Eb, and Bb. [play]

Find, Play and Name the keys that are a semitone above those keys; remember, diatonic, not chromatic.

Now for the whole-tones – two semitones. Remember, there is always one key between the two notes of a whole-tone.

Go back to C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Find, Play, and Name the key that is a Whole-Tone above those notes. [play]

How about from the sharp keys, from C#, D#, F#, G#, A#? [play]

Finally, from the flat keys Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, and Bb [play]

Got it? Good. Now for the Scale: Using just three fingers and a thumb of each hand; no fingers 5, play the two tetrachords: [play, name up/down]

Repeat, naming the sol-fa. What are the intervals between the keys of the first tetrachord? C-D/DO-RE, D-E/RE-MI, E-F/MI-FA [say/play]

And of the second tetrachord? [say/play] G-A/SOL-LA. A-B/LA-TI. B-C/TI-DO.

Notice that both tetrachords have the same combination of intervals: W, W, S.

And between the two tetrachords? F-G/FA-SOL [say/play]

And that, friends, is the definition of the Major Scale! Two sets of four tones in the precise configuration of W W S, the two sets separated by a W.

Today, we found, played and named all the keys of the C Major Scale. Then we found, played and named the notes a diatonic semitone, and a diatonic whole-tone, ABOVE each of the keys of the piano, including sharp and flat keys.

Finally, we deconstructed the tetrachords of the Major scale. You may have noticed that today, we did not use the “standard fingering” order of C Major scale. That is because in this video we approached the keyboard, NOT from the standpoint of performance technique, but of harmony study, of learning how to transpose.

You should still learn to play scales with standard fingerings, and there are videos on the channel to show you how to do that. The C Major Scale video is linked below, so, consult that, the playlists, and read Art Levine’s substantial article on Movable DO, all listed in the Description.

Do the 20-times-per-week or 3-times-daily practice for a week, whichever works for you, and Have a good one! Thank you for watching! If you like the video, please upvote, share, resteem, post a question in a comment, and follow for updates!

LINKS, CREDITS, AND WORKS CONSULTED
For an informative comparison study on the benefits and practicality of ear-training according to the “movable do” system of solfège, opted for in this series of presentations, download or read online the following paper by educator Art Levine: http://www.artlevine.com/wp-content/uploads/ear_training/movabledo.pdf

Heuermann-Hamilton, Anna. Preliminary Studies in Keyboard Harmony and Transposition. Chicago: Summy, 1916. Evidently not In Copyright. For more information, see the Internet Archive, at <archive.org>.

Practice C Major Scale at the Piano (VIDEO):

Piano Beginnings (PLAYLIST): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr9RYCj11MSxPncb7aKgf90hnckKuiEhb

Music Fundamentals (PLAYLIST): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr9RYCj11MSxs91JeTfDvKtilJnOWw6JP

Elements of Music (PLAYLIST): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr9RYCj11MSycDV5jr07-Sl60ymZyadET

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