Tag: scale degree names

Basic Music Theory Part 2: Course Outline

Description

This course is part 2 of a two-part course in basic music theory and includes elements of notation and musicianship.

Part 2 is made up of 21 lessons of about 30 minutes duration. This amounts to one semester at one lesson per week or a 6-week course at one lesson every two days.

Although each lesson is self-contained, the lessons are designed to run in numerical order.

Lessons are grouped in modules of just a few lessons. You don’t need to commit to the full course; just work though one module at a time.

Requirements

Part 2 assumes that you have completed Part 1 of this course or have an equivalent understanding of the following:

  • basic music notation
  • counting in bars and beats
  • simple time
  • scales, keys and key signatures
  • major, minor and perfect intervals 

Although Part 2 includes music notation, like Part 1, musicians who play by ear are well catered for with plenty of audio, video, text and illustrations.

Recommended Additional Resources 

This is primarily a music theory course. The notation exercises included are far from comprehensive and may be supplemented by music reading, beginner music theory workbooks and transcription exercises.

The musicianship/ear training exercises in this course are also far from comprehensive. I have focused on the most generally useful skills for this course. There are a number of dedicated musicianship courses available to further develop these skills.

Outcomes

An Understanding Of The Following Musical Concepts

  • Syncopation in simple time
  • Compound time
  • Triplets in simple time
  • Swing notation
  • Anacrusis (upbeat)
  • Harmonic minor scale
  • Melodic minor scale
  • Augmented and diminished intervals
  • Inversion of intervals
  • Major and minor triads
  • Modal (open/power) chords
  • Inversions of triads
  • Doubling
  • Relative chord names
  • The chords of the major scale
  • Dominant 7th chords

Musicianship Skills

  • Tap or play syncopated rhythms in simple time down to semiquavers
  • Tap or play simple rhythms in compound time down to semiquavers
  • Count in for an anacrusis
  • Sing major and minor triads in all inversions
  • Recognise and name major and minor triads in all inversions
  • Recognise notes that belong to a major or minor chord and sing them in your octave

Notation

  • Triplets
  • Time signatures in compound time
  • Swing notation
  • Octave up/down
  • Anacrusis 
  • Basic chord symbols 
  • Relative chord names and symbols

START HERE

PART 2 CONTENTS

B13. Degrees Of A Scale: Relative Note Names

This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.

Scale Degrees

As we’ve seen in 10. How To Find The Notes Of A Scale, we can name the notes of a scale by using the interval pattern of its mode to find the right notes.

If we want to look at scales in a more general way, we can replace the actual note names by degree names; numbers representing the position of each note in the scale, such as 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. The exception is the root note, which is either called the root note (RN for short) or tonic.

Interval Names As Scale Degrees

Further, we can distinguish notes in the major from the parallel minor by thinking of each degree as an interval above the root note and include the quality in the name.

For instance, 

  • the 3rd note of a major scale is called the major 3rd
  • the 6th note of a minor scale is called the minor 6th
  • the 4th note of both major and minor scales is called the perfect 4th

Interval names as scale degrees allow us to describe scale notes in relative terms, so we can look at an example in one key and apply what we notice to any key. 

Degree Names Quick Tip

For major and natural minor scales,

  • the 3rd, 6th and 7th are major or minor, as per the scale
  • the 2nd is always major
  • the 4th and 5th are always perfect 

Note: we don’t use a quality for the 1st/octave.

The harmonic minor has a major 7th. The rest of the notes have the same degree names as the natural minor.

Why use degree names when we already have note names?

Degree names are a great analysis and learning tool.

As mentioned earlier, degree names make it easy to apply something we noticed in a particular key to any other key. This could be in the melody but it applies equally to chords.

Degree names are particularly useful for understanding chords: notes in a chord are also described as intervals above the root note.

Try These…

The first note in each exercise is the root note/tonic.

  • Use the key signature to work out if the key is major or minor.
  • Name the key.
  • Name the following notes as scale degrees.
    Don’t forget to include the interval quality in the degree name, as described above.

Example

Note: if you prefer text to music notation, the exercises are written as text here.

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Answers at the end of this post.

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NEXT LESSON: B14. Chords 1: Major/Minor Triads And Modal Chords

PART 2 CONTENTS: Basic Music Theory Course Contents

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Answers To Try These…

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Try These… (Text Version)

(text version of exercises)

  • D major: D, E, F#, A
  • B minor: B, E, F#, A
  • Eb major: Eb, Bb, C
  • C minor: C, Ab, Eb

To view the answers, click here.