Scales and keys: music symbols explained

38 symbols and terms, each explained in a sentence or two — the same dictionary the free Artform score reader uses when you tap a marking on a real score.

Major scale

Tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semitone. The pattern is the whole thing: start it anywhere and you have that key.

Natural minor

The major scale with its third, sixth and seventh flattened. The same notes as its relative major, started in a different place.

Harmonic minor

Natural minor with the seventh raised, so the scale has a leading note that pulls home. The raised seventh leaves a gap of three semitones you can hear.

Melodic minor

Sixth and seventh raised going up, both dropped again coming down. It exists to smooth over the gap harmonic minor leaves.

Chromatic scale

Every semitone in order. Not in a key at all: it is the twelve notes, one after another.

Pentatonic

Five notes, with the semitones taken out. The black keys are one, which is why nothing you play on them clashes.

Whole tone scale

Six notes, every step a tone. No semitones means no leading note and no home: Debussy uses it exactly for that feeling of floating.

Blues scale

The minor pentatonic with a flattened fifth added. That extra note is the blue one.

Tonic

The home note, and the chord built on it. Degree one, where a piece is at rest.

Dominant

Degree five, and the chord built on it. The strongest pull back to the tonic in all of tonal music.

Subdominant

Degree four. A step to the other side of the tonic from the dominant, and the plagal amen chord.

Leading note

Degree seven, a semitone below the tonic. It leans upward so strongly that harmonic minor exists to create one.

Circle of fifths

The keys arranged by fifths, so each step adds one sharp or removes one flat. Neighbours on the circle share almost all their notes, which is why music moves between them.

Relative minor

The minor key with the SAME key signature, three semitones below the major. A major and A minor share no signature; C major and A minor do.

Parallel minor

The minor key with the same TONIC. C major to C minor: same home note, three notes flattened, a completely different colour.

Modulation

Changing key mid-piece and meaning it. Usually to the dominant or the relative minor, and usually announced by an accidental that keeps reappearing.

Transposition

Moving the whole piece up or down by a fixed interval. Every note shifts, so nothing about the tune changes except its pitch.

Enharmonic

Two names for one key on the piano: F sharp and G flat. Which name you use depends on the key you are in, not on the sound.

Mode

A scale that starts on a different degree of the major scale. Dorian is the major scale from its second note, and it is minor with a raised sixth.

Dorian

Minor with a raised sixth. Scarborough Fair, and half of modal jazz.

Mixolydian

Major with a flattened seventh. The rock and folk major: it never quite pulls home the way a real major does.

Lydian

Major with a raised fourth. Brighter than major, and the sound of film music looking up at something.

Aeolian

The natural minor, spoken of as a mode. Degree six of the major scale.

Phrygian

Minor with a flattened SECOND. That semitone at the bottom is the sound of Spain in a great deal of guitar music.

Locrian

The mode on the seventh degree, with a flattened fifth. It has no stable home chord, which is why nobody writes in it.

Phrygian dominant

Phrygian with a major third: a flat second and a major third together. Klezmer, flamenco and every film cue set east of Vienna.

Octatonic scale

Eight notes alternating tone and semitone. Symmetrical, unsettled, and Stravinsky's default colour.

Tetrachord

Four notes filling a perfect fourth. A major scale is two identical tetrachords a tone apart, which is the tidiest way to learn the pattern.

Supertonic

Degree two, one step above the tonic. Its chord is minor in a major key, and it leads to the dominant.

Mediant

Degree three, halfway between tonic and dominant. It shares two notes with the tonic chord, which is why it can substitute for it.

Submediant

Degree six, and the root of the relative minor. The chord that makes a deceptive cadence deceptive.

Subtonic

A flattened seventh, a whole tone below the tonic. Natural minor has one; harmonic minor raises it into a leading note.

Scale degree

The number of a note within its key: one is the tonic, five the dominant. Written with a caret over the number, and the reason theory can talk about a tune in any key at once.

Key relationship

How near two keys are: neighbours on the circle of fifths share all but one note, so a piece can move there and back without an announcement.

Pivot chord

A chord that belongs to both keys, used to slip from one into the other unnoticed. The commonest way a modulation is made.

Tonicization

Treating a chord as a temporary tonic for a bar or two, without really leaving the key. A modulation that changes its mind.

Atonality

Music that avoids having a home note at all. Not the absence of rules: the absence of a tonic.

Twelve-tone

Composing from an ordered row of all twelve notes, so that no pitch is more important than another. Schoenberg's answer to what comes after tonality.

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