Major Scales -
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In fact, most vocal instructors would use this scale as a simple vocal warmup, by getting students to sing this simple scale at the start of each lesson, in order to test their pitching and also their rhythm sense.
For those who wish to understand more about how we can keep ourselves in pitch, do refer to my webpage on Pitching Tips and find out about the various points we need to take note of when singing our pitching exercises, in order to train our voice effectively!
The Major Scale is made up of 8 notes, with 7 basic notes and the 8th note being a repeat of the 1st note, but in a higher octave. In solfege notation, the major scale looks like this:
If you were to play this scale on the piano, you would need to know the absolute key you wish to begin the scale on. For example, a Scale in C Major would consist of the following notes:
Playing these notes on the piano would give you these scales that are great pitching exercises too!
Check out the following audio clip to hear a sample of how you should play the piano and sing along in order to be able to train your aural awareness and listening ability, as well as practise your pitching ability too! The scale played is in B flat Major Key:
Here is a list of all the major scales and their notes on the piano, for those piano/keyboard players out there to refer to when practising your pitching exercises:
For those of you who do not have any musical instrument at home, you can practise your pitching exercises using the musical scales that i have played and uploaded on this webpage. Refer to the various musical clips available, follow the instructions listed below, and i hope that they will be useful to you!
Here are some Scales played in various Major Keys for your practice, played in an ascending manner from the lowest note to the highest note, from the low key of G Major to a high key of E Major:
Here are some Scales played in various Major Keys for your practice, played in a descending manner from the highest note to the lowest note, from the low key of G Major to the high key of E Major:
Do make sure that you do your vocal warmups before you practise these pitching exercises, so as to be sure that you keep your voices strong and healthy for a long time to come! You can also practise your vocal warmups by using the practice music available, doing the warmups in the various keys available.
Note: The practice music for B Major as well as A Flat Major is available on
the webpage about scale singing for vocal warmups.
For those who are interested in the structure of the Major Scale and how it is formed, here is a diagram that we can refer to:
Referring to the diagram, a Tone, also called a 'Whole Step', refers to 2 Semitones (also called 'Half Steps'). A Semitone refers to moving left or right to the next immediate note; for example, moving from a B note to a C note - these 2 notes are side by side. Whereas if we were to move from a C note to a D note, we can see from the diagram that there is a black key (C# note) in between these notes, and this means that we have to take 2 'half' steps or a Tone when moving from C to D.
A Major Scale is made up of various Tone and Semitone intervals between notes in the structure illustrated above, i.e. Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semitone.
This means that we can construct scales in any major key that we want, just by following this structure. For example, if we were to wish to construct the scale of D Major, by following the above tone and semitone structure, we would know that this scale would be made up of the following notes:
C# (semitone) D
You can try this with any note and you will be able to construct any major scale you want!
All musical scales have a fixed structure, and if we just remember their structure formula, it is easy to construct the scales that you want to play for your pitching exercises!
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