The Diatonic Scale

A Diatonic Scale is made up of tones and semitones, also known as whole steps and half steps. A tone is the distance of 2 frets (eg G to A) and a semitone is the distance of 1 fret (eg B to C).

The 'sound' of this scale type is well-known all over the world and most people would be able to tell if a wrong note was being played while listening to it.

Most of the scales heard in music are just variations of this one, which I like to think of as the 'master scale'.

By themselves, the notes of a scale do not have a lot of meaning, they are just tools that can be used to create musical phrases and compositions, just as the alphabet is a tool used to create sentences and stories.

There are 2 types of Diatonic Scale, Major and Minor, which can be obtained from the same group of notes, here's how:

These are the notes used to make up the Scales of C major and/or A minor:

C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F- etc.

This is very easy to visualise on a keyboard, as it is simply made up of all the white notes. On a guitar it is more difficult as you must know the names of the notes you are playing. Go here for help on naming notes.

If you play through these notes in order from one C to the next C, then the scale sounds final on C (the Root Note, aka the Tonic) meaning that you are in the key of C major.

If you play through these same notes in order from one A to the next A, you will hear that A now sounds final, meaning that you are now in the key of A minor.

So you can see that the keys of C major and A minor use exactly the same notes.

The following diagrams show 2 octaves of each scale type, starting and ending with the root note.

Major Roots are Red, Minor Roots Blue

Diatonic Major Scale

Diatonic Minor Scale

The next picture shows the Root Notes for both C major and A minor:

Every note shown is valid for a solo in either of the 2 keys.

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