Major Keys and Key Signatures

From the very first article we had raised the question of "WHAT IS A SCALE?" and wel.. congrats !! now you will know.
In the most simplest words, a scale is just a group of notes that sound amazing together.
In the music convention a scale usually contains 8 notes, and thereby forms an octave. The first and the last note of a scale are the same and it is called the "doh" or the "tonic" of that scale and the scale is also named after that.
Broadly, scales are divided as MAJOR scales and MINOR scales, but for the beginner level, we're only going to read about some major scales, namely - C major, G major and F major.

The C major scale
the most simplest of the major scales is the C major scale because it contains all natural notes (no notes with any accidentals), and is very easy to remember and can also be used to derive the pattern for figuring out other major scales.
                                                    1         2        3          4        5      6        7          8(1)

                                    C  D E F G A B C 
                                            T   T       S T   T     T  S

Over here T = tone and S = semitone, basically when writing any major scale, they all follow the same pattern of
T-T-S-T-T-T-S from the first tonic to form an octave and hence a major scale. (Basically, in a major scale, you will find a semitone gap between the 3rd & 4th notes AND the 7th and 8th notes.).Each note of any scale is calle a degree of the scale, like C= 1st degree;  D = 2nd degree; E = 3rd degree etc.
Here's the C-major scale in one register on the stave :(IGNORE THE TIME SIGNATURE HERE)

in this figure, the highlighted notes are the tonic or the doh that is "C" of the C major scale.

The G major and F major scales
from the pattern that we have now derived we can easily find out the G major and the F major Scale .
The G major Scale:
                               1         2      3         4      5      6           7      8(1) 
G   A   B   C D  E F# G
                                                  T        T        S       T      T        T       S
Here's the G-major scale on the stave :

The F major Scale:
                              1         2        3      4         5         6        7        8(1)
                    F   G   A   Bb   C   D   E    F
                                                                  T         T        S         T       T        T        S

In this figure the highlighted notes are F which is the tonic or the doh.

A question you might ask is why can't we write B flat as C sharp in the case of the F major scale. And well, it is for the reason that we tend to have unique key signatures for each major scale which is determined by the number of flat or sharp notes in the scale. So if we only represent the notes as sharp or flat then the signature for various scales will be the same. Like both the F major scale and G major scale will have 1 sharp note.

Key Signatures

when we are writing a piece of music or the theme song for a sitcom, we usually tend to keep all the notes from the same scale, cuz obviously they sound beautiful together.
Key signatures are symbols that we put on the stave before the piece to make writing the sheet music more simpler by cancelling out the redundancy created by continuously having to use accidentals before the required notes of a certain scale.

Didn't understand didya?, no problem !!! examples are here for the rescue.

and now you have somethin to remember :) ,, here ya go -

A question that might have arose in your mind is that, why don't we put the sign on the other places of the stave that also signify that note. Like, why don't we put the sharp symbol on the first empty space of the treble clef for the G major scale. Well it has no special reason, just by convention we follow to put the sharp or flat symbol in those places.

And that’s All for this article ! To quench your intrigue and clear the plot holes that we created in this lesson do check out our other articles .

PEACE ! 🎼 👈 that’s a treble clef btw :)