Let's pick right back up where we left off. With every major key, there is a certain pattern that is followed in terms of half and whole steps. Taking a look at a C Major scale—we will start with this key because it has no sharps or flats to confuse one with—we can see how many half and whole steps there are in between each note. Starting at one C and going up C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C by applying this simple formula that every aspiring musician should memorize, we can tell how many half and whole tones are in this scale, and therefore knowing how many frets between each note so one can play the scale effortlessly. Here is our “magic formula”—it may not make much sense at first, but will come in handy later—W W H W W W H.

What this means in plain English is whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. What this means in even plainer English is that in the C major scale, the intervals between each note is as follows: between C and D there is a whole step, (because there is a C# or Db between them), between D and E there is a whole step, (because of the D# or Eb between them), between E and F there is only a half step, (because there is no such thing as an E# or Fb; notice on a piano how there seems to be a black key missing), between F and G there is a whole step, and so on and so forth.

C D E F G A B C

W W H W W W H

Now when you see any major scale, you can know that if you start at the root or tonic note (if it's an E major scale the tonic note would be E), there are two whole steps, then a half step, three more whole steps, and then a final half step. How does this help us now? Using something called “the circle of fifths” we can find out every major key and the notes that are in it.

Starting again with C Major, there are no sharps or flats, so it would be from one C to the next knowing the intervals between each note. Now, we go to the fifth note in our C Major scale, which is G. Now we write out G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G and we can see that it follows our previous W-W-H-W-W-W-H formula except at one point. We need to have a whole step between E and F, and a half step between F and G. The rest of the scale is in line with the formula. So to do this, the simplest way of remembering this is when we find the fifth note of C (which is G), and then write out that note's scale, we put a sharp (#) on the second last (or seventh note), which is the F. This would fix our problem by making the interval between E and the new F# a whole step, and the interval between F# and G a half step.

From there, we keep following our previous step, by taking the fifth note of our newly created G Major scale—which is a D—and writing out the letters from D to D again, but this time, we keep our F# from our previous scale. So the D Major Scale looks like this: D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D. Notice how the second last note—the C—is sharpened to fix our problem we had before, and the F is still sharp. Now we go on again. Try it yourself, take the fifth note of the newly made D Major scale (hint: A), write from A to A, keeping our F# and C# as before, and sharpening the second last note (it's going to be the G this time.) Next lesson will deal further with our “circle of fifths” and I will show you which chords you can play in each key to start your own chord progressions—the base of every song.