Musical Scales and Modes:

What are they and what's their origin???

What are musical scales? Much has been said about them. Every instrumentalist and singer spends hours playing or singing them: up, then down, then up, then down. One might easily mistake them for ladders!

Well, aren't they?

After all, the Latin word scala, from which the English word scale derives, does mean ladder!

This -the ladder view- is only one possible view of musical scales. And the most limited one. If you want to use them creatively, either as composer or improviser, or deeply understand the music you interpret, then it's essential to scratch under the surface and take a better look!.

First and foremost, a scale is a cycle. We start on any given tone, go up or down following a specific intervalic pattern -small intervals, usually- and come back to our starting point but one octave away (normally: some scales span 2 or more octaves).

But how do scales work? How were they conceived of -way back then- by the first musically curious human beings?

At best, we man make an educated guess. But if we understand the way sounds are generated -the harmonic series- we will definitely be better positioned to understand scales, in depth -and make our guess. Ultimately, how scales were invented isn't as important as the their internal structure. But taking a look at the past will shed some light on this.

Let's start with the standard pentatonic scales: we can find them in traditional music the world over -Asia, Africa, Europe, and we might guess that in the Americas too. Unfortunately the European colonizers managed to eradicate ancient music from the Americas all but completely.

The ancient Chinese were the first to lay a theoretical foundation for them. They conceived of pentatonic scales as follows: the "perfect fifth"* is the third overtone in the harmonic series, and is expressed by the ratio 3:2 ("Proportio Sesquialtera" in Latin, "Diapente" in Greek).

This harmonic/geometric relationship had a very serious numerological meaning to those ancient Chinese. So, as they also liked number 5 (remember the 5 elements?), they decided to stack five Diapentii (the third overtone) on top of each other: C G D A E.

If we rearrange these notes to make them fit in one octave ("Diapasson Khordon" in Greek), we get C D E G A, a major pentatonic scale. If we start on the last of the 5 tones, we get A C D E G, the minor pentatonic scale.

If, however, we go keep going for 7 Diapentii, we get: C G D A E B F#. Rearranging those tones into one octave gives us C D E F# G A B, what we call the "Lydian mode". So we could consider this our point of departure to calculate the modes. The "Ionian mode" our major scale is thus the 5th mode of the initial 7 tone (heptatonic) scale. The natural minor scale ("Aeolian") is now the 3d mode.

Finally, if we keep going for 12 Diapentii, we get: C G D A E B F# C# G# D# A# F. One more, and we conclude our cycle, coming back to C. Rearranging that tall stack if 5ths into one octave gives us the 12 tone chromatic scale: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B.

There are other relationships within these scales. The diatonic (heptatonic) scales are the most important in the European musical tradition. Most stem from the dual character and geometric qualities of the Proportio Sesquialtera, the perfect 5th.

Knowing this -drawing all the connecting lines, that is- should allow the creative musician to make more intelligent choices when using and exploring the possibilities within the 12 tone tempered system.

*Bracketed because it is only a "fifth" in our diatonic scales. No inherent quality of this interval bears any relation to number 5.

By the way, there are still more ways of understanding musical scales in depth. A full view of musical scales must also integrate chords. One such completely fresh, integrative view will be pulished on this site soon. Use the contact page (link at bottom) to get in touch!!

Guitar Scales: Section Overview