Definition of Musical Scale

The music It has its own language and instead of alphabetic signs it uses notes, which are part of the scale musical, also known as diatonic scale. Notes are sounds and each sound has a name and the staff is used to represent musical notes on a scale, which are five horizontal lines parallel to each other where all the notes and notations related to the piece are written musical. In other words, the music with its different elements is written on the staff, as well as a clef, which is a record musical concrete.

There is a series of natural notes that make up the scale and they are the well-known do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si and do. These notes are presented on a scale or ladder because there are some intervals, which are the distance voiced or height that exists between two sounds (and the Unit measure to use is the tone). Thus, between the notes C and D there is a tone, from D to me there is another tone, but from me to F the distance is smaller and we speak of a semitone. In this way, the diatonic musical scale is made up of 5 tones and two semitones.

Chromatic scale

On the diatonic scale, levels that are presented are not the same size, as there are tones and semitones. However, if all musical levels were the same size on the musical scale, we would be talking about the chromatic scale. In this scale the natural musical notes carry a series of tones and semitones located between them. There are twelve sounds on the chromatic scale, each one semitone apart.

Knowledge of musical scales is the basic foundation for the composition of the melody in a song, to compose and play and, at the same time, to understand the structure of chords.

Alterations

There are some signs whose effect is to alter the height of the natural note and they are sharp and flat. The sustain applied to a note raises it half a tone and the flat applied to a note lowers it half a tone. And between each one of the natural notes that are at a distance of one tone there is a free step and each one of these steps can be named as half a tone higher than the previous note or as half a tone lower than the later.

In this way, the first free step can be named as C sharp or if we raise the C a semitone when applying a sharp or as D flat if we lower half a tone from D by using a flat. In the same way, the step that follows the D can be named as D sharp if we apply a sharp to the D or as E flat if we lower a semitone from the E.

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