seven intervals, eight notes going from the tonic to the major 2nd,
to the major 3rd, to the perfect 4th, perfect 5th,
major 6th, major 7th, and back to the octave.
So any scale defines the intervals
over an octave that are used by a composer,
by a player, to generate music in a way that he or
she wants to generate it, wants to play it, likes to hear it.
And all scales are different and we'll come to this momentarily.
All scales are different in that the intervals that they use are not the same.
These are not the 12 equal intervals of the chromatic scale,
the semitone intervals each being 100 cents.
These are intervals that vary, so these intervals are from here to here,
two semitones, two more semitones, but
here to here, from the major 3rd to the perfect 4th, is just one semitone.
From the perfect 4th to the perfect 5th, another whole tone,
another whole tone, another whole tone, and another semitone interval.
So depending on the arrangement of those intervals, whole tone,
semitone, they don't have to be just whole tones or semitones.
But the way you arrange the steps between those intervals has everything to do,
as we'll see, with the nature of that scale, the quality that it generates,
and this leads me to the complicated idea of modes.
So scales are referred to as modes when
the arrangement of the scale, and this is music history, it's not really logic.
But scales are referred to as modes when they are used, or
when the scale that's being used has a religious or
a ritualistic context of some sort, and we'll talk about this
more when we come to talk about the emotions that different scales generate.
But in general, modes, complicated term,
if you look it up on Wikipedia, you'll find sort of a difficult
music history explanation of what this word means and
how it's used and it's by no means simple, but in general modes,
refer to the context of music being religious or ritualistic in some way.
And the emphasis is not strictly on major and minor,
which we're going to talk about in the last of these modules.
So again, all this may seem hopelessly complex.
Well that's the nature of the beast, it is complex, the history is complex.