What are Scales?

prettiwiki

prettiwiki

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Hey,

I'm just wondering what on Earth are Scales? The importance of them? And Where I can go to learn them.

Just that I see people talking about them and Get lost .

Thank you for your time
 
prettiwiki said:
Hey, I'm just wondering what on Earth are Scales? The importance of them? And Where I can go to learn them.
Click to expand...

So scales are the notes that proceed from low tone to high tone starting with one note & proceeding upward to the next occurence of that same note - an "octave" higher. If you've ever heard (or sung along with) the song from the movie "The Sound of Music" known for its first line; "Do a dear, a female deer..." you've heard one example of how a scale sounds. Each of the lines of that song moves up an "interval" defined by the scale.

Its importance is hard to underestimate as scales are simply the notes that comprise what we hear, play, & jive to on our ukes, though skillfully (or less skillfully by some of us!) woven into melodies that make us smile.

Just one man's take... and I'll leave it to others to add or elaborate & point out the best sources for you to learn more. In the meantime, Aloha & enjoy your uke!
 
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Aloha Prettiwiki,
Check on the main page, under tips, tricks, and technique...
On the top blue listings....I hope it helps....Good Luck!!
Was going to say the fish one, but that was too easy...MM Stan..
 
Others have said it better so I'm just gonna say Welcome to UU, you'll love it here lots of very informative people and keep enjoying your Uke!
 
Um... The foundation of western music...

Scales you should know:

Ionic (major) scale - responsible for most chords (derived from the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and sometimes 7th degree of the scale).
ex: C D E F G A B C (R - 2frets - 2frets - 1fret - 2frets - 2frets - 2frets - 1fret)

Blues scale - very good for soloing over blues
ex: C D# F F# G A# C (R - 3frets - 2frets - 1fret - 1fret - 3frets - 2frets)

Aeolian (or Melodic Minor) - the tonal scale for anything in a minor key
ex: C D D# F G G# A# C (R- 2frets - 1fret - 2frets - 2frets -1fret - 2frets - 2frets)

Major Pentatonic (or five note) - great for soloing over rock and roll
ex: C D E G A C

Minor Pentatonic - another good bluesy sounding scale
ex: C D# F G A# C

That is seriously a stripped down course. If you really want to learn more search around on google (www.Jazzguitar.be has some great resources as it applies to jazz guitar). But, above is as much as I would go into without knowing how much you know about music theory.

~DB
 
Here's the way I look at it: Think of all available notes as different-colored crayons in one of those giant Crayola boxes (with the built-in sharpener).

Now, if you wanted to make a drawing, you wouldn't use every single crayon in the box, would you? You'd probably choose a primary palette of five to eight colors or so, and stick to them for most, if not all, of a particular piece of artwork. Another drawing might use a different collection of crayons out of the big box.

Think of that palette of colors as your "scale". It's the smaller box of 8 selected crayons that you can buy instead of the big box. Songs are likewise made up mostly of a collection of just a handful of notes. Everything in the song--the notes in the chords, the melody, the harmony to the melody, is built mostly (and sometimes exclusively) from the notes (crayons) in the scale (collection of notes/crayons).

So if you learn a scale, you can more easily play songs that use that scale. You can also more easily make up impromptu solos to play along with that song. You can understand the chords in the song easier. You can even more easily change the key of a song, because that's really shifting from one scale to another, like redrawing a pink picture as a blue picture.

The good news is that even though there are theoretically a gazillion combinations of notes (scales) you could make out of all the available notes, in the real world most music only use a small number of them. So learning scales isn't quite as daunting as it might seem!

JJ
 
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Ukulele JJ said:
Here's the way I look at it: Think of all available notes as different-colored crayons in one of those giant Crayola boxes (with the built-in sharpener).

Now, if you wanted to make a drawing, you wouldn't use every single crayon in the box, would you? You'd probably choose a primary palette of five to eight colors or so, and stick to them for most, if not all, of a particular piece of artwork. Another drawing might use a different collection of crayons out of the big box.

Think of that palette of colors as your "scale". It's the smaller box of 8 selected crayons that you can buy instead of the big box. Songs are likewise made up mostly of a collection of just a handful of notes. Everything in the song--the notes in the chords, the melody, the harmony to the melody, is built mostly (and sometimes exclusively) from the notes (crayons) in the scale (collection of notes/crayons).

So if you learn a scale, you can more easily play songs that use that scale. You can also more easily make up impromptu solos to play along with that song. You can understand the chords in the song easier. You can even more easily change the key of a song, because that's really shifting from one scale to another, like redrawing a pink picture as a blue picture.

The good news is that even though there are theoretically a gazillion combinations of notes (scales) you could make out of all the available notes, in the real world most music only use a small number of them. So learning scales isn't quite as daunting as it might seem!

JJ
Click to expand...

I think you really put it into perspective for me as a Teenager/Adult.

Really good way of looking at it

Thank you very much. Though one question.

Is a scale a combination of chords or a combination of picking that go into chords?
 
prettiwiki said:
Is a scale a combination of chords or a combination of picking that go into chords?
Click to expand...

Interesting question. The answer is "both", but that's confusing. :)

A scale is a collection of notes. The scale determines the key. "Key" and "scale" are pretty much the same thing. They both basically mean "the collection of notes from which most of the stuff in this song is drawn."

So the melody is (usually) made up of notes that are in the scale (in the collection).

The chords that underlie that melody are made up of multiple notes stacked on top of each other. For example, the C major chord is made up of three notes: C, E, and G. Usually, the notes in the chords in a song are all taken from the collection of notes that make up the scale/key of the song.

I'll repeat that another way, because it's important. The chords in a song are (usually) made up of notes chosen from the same scale that makes up everything else in the song.

So, since the chords are made up of the notes from the scale, you can also look at it from the other direction and say that the notes in the chords are the same as the scale. It works either way. It's all one big collection of notes.

Here's a specific example. The C major scale is C D E F G A B.

A melody in the key of C will probably use some or all of the same notes: C D E F G A B.

Common chords used for songs in the key of C are the C major chord, the F major chord, and the G major chord.

The notes in the C major chord are C, E, and G. The notes in the F major chord are F, A, and C. The notes in a G major chord are G, B, and D.

If you pile up all the notes in those three chords and put them in order, what do you get? You guessed it: C, D, E, F, G, A, B... The C major scale.

JJ


P.S. It's not a hard and fast rule that melodies and chords always come from the scale/key of the song. Sometimes a song will go outside the scale/key for part of the melody and/or for notes in a chord, just for the heck of it. You can think of this as a sort of temporary key change, or a quick "borrowing" of notes from a different scale. It can sound really cool when this happens.
 
Go to the UKE TALK Forum - the Thread ON LINE UKULELE TUNER started by "savethecheerleader" and click on his link or go directly to his site www.ukuleletricks.com. His new post "Ukulele Scales Explained for Beginners" is the most concise, clear answer to your question. I'm sure you'll find it helpful.

Sorry, Gmoney already gave this info in post #11.
 
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Ukulele JJ said:
Here's the way I look at it: Think of all available notes as different-colored crayons in one of those giant Crayola boxes (with the built-in sharpener).

Now, if you wanted to make a drawing, you wouldn't use every single crayon in the box, would you? You'd probably choose a primary palette of five to eight colors or so, and stick to them for most, if not all, of a particular piece of artwork. Another drawing might use a different collection of crayons out of the big box.

Think of that palette of colors as your "scale". It's the smaller box of 8 selected crayons that you can buy instead of the big box. Songs are likewise made up mostly of a collection of just a handful of notes. Everything in the song--the notes in the chords, the melody, the harmony to the melody, is built mostly (and sometimes exclusively) from the notes (crayons) in the scale (collection of notes/crayons).
Click to expand...

That a great analogy!
 
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