Author Archives: songtive

A Melody that Fits into a Chord Progression

Posted on March 20, 2016 by songtive

This time we are reviewing one of the most interesting topics regarding music theory that you can use right now: how to make a melody that fits into the chord progression. One of the things that puzzled me when I was new to composing is how can I deliberately know – not by ear only – which notes are “right” or “wrong” when it comes to guitar solos, piano solos, melodies for my voice and such stuff. I just went to play any scale formula I knew over the chord progression and hoped it to run alright…which not always did, obviously!

A Trip Down to Memory Lane

Remember when we talked about the chord tones for every scale? For each scale, you can build a chord over each note via overlapping thirds in it. Let’s take a look at it in C major:

G       A       B       C     D     E        F        G
E       F       G       A     B     C        D        E
C       D       E       F     G     A        B        C 
I      IIm     IIIm     IV    V    VIm     VIIdim     I

Also each note (and chord) will be called tonal degree in order to know their position among the given scale.

Once you know what notes belong to what chords, it will be easier to determine which notes are appropriate to put in, see where I am going here?

The Chord-Melody Theory

The Chord-Melody Theory is a musical resource that relies on the chord tones to make a choice when it comes to what notes are “right”! The process is quite simple, and I’m sure you will find it helpful:

Make sure you got the chord progression right and break it down into chord tones
“Right” notes for a melody will be those that are also a chord tone
“Wrong” notes for a melody will be those that are not a chord tone, creating an effect called dissonance
Passing tones are “wrong” notes placed beside a chord tone, thus bypassing the dissonance they create!

This way, we can realize how fairly easy is to create a melody or guitar solo if you master your chords and chord tones, so make it a no-brainer for yourself taking a time to practice and learn the chords of every major and minor key and the chord tones they are made of!

Let’s Practice!

Have a good listen to Kansas’ famous classic Dust in the Wind, which is also in C major, for our lesson:

Now let’s take the chord progression for the first line of the verse – 0:20 to 0:30 – and analyze it through the Chord-Melody Theory:

1.- Get the chord progression

2.- Let’s break it down into chord tones:

C major: C – E – G
G major: G – B – D
A minor: A – C – E

Songtive helps you to do that by highlighting chord notes in the Melody editor as shown below:

Moment’s gone: D and E notes for the melody. D does not belong to A minor chord tones, but E note does! And since D is placed besides, it will be considered as a passing tone…making it sounds good!

How can I use it?

Well, it is time to get to the Songtive app and use our lesson!

Enter the Songtive.com and start a new song (or for better sound quality use our iPhone/iPad/Android app)
At the Song preferences tab select a key – I’m using C major for discussion purpose – select a time signature and sidescroll the metronome for setting the beat.
In the line below just input any C major progression you like
Go the Melody icon and start to select your notes for each chord!
Keep in mind the Chord-Melody Theory when choosing your melody notes
Experiment all around it so you can come up with a new song!

Tutorial 3 – Explore New World Of Music with Scale Spelling

Posted on March 18, 2016 by songtive

In our previous posts (Tutorial 1 – Note Names, Placement and Major Scale and Tutorial 2 – Minor Scale Construction and Introduction to “Circle Of Fifths”) we were talking about a method of constructing Major and Minor scales, as well as we’ve introduced a very handy music tool – “Circle of Fifths”. Today, we are going to introduce another very important music concept – “Scale Spelling”. With a help of that we will discover the whole new world of music scales which is far wider than Minor and Major.

As everyone already knows, all notes in a scale have letters. We also know that there are 8 notes in a scale, with 7 distinct ones. Now, all notes/letters from the scale also have a corresponding number. These numbers are referred to as “scale spelling”. Please open a “Piano Companion” application and choose “Scales Dictionary”.

By the application default settings, the first scale that you see is a Major scale. Just have a look at the numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) – this exactly what we call a “Scale Spelling”.

Let’s choose “Aeolian” (Minor) scale from the list.

Can you see that the “Scale Spelling” for Aeolian scale is different from the Ionian one (Major)? As you may guess, if you chose any other scale from “Scales Dictionary” it will be different too. But let’s take a closer look at Ionian and Aeolian scale spellings.

It will be very helpful, if you take a piece of paper and write down a C Major scale and put 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (1) above every note of the scale. If you do it correctly, that’s how it should look like:

Each note of the scale has it is own number, which we always write above the note names. Let’s write a C Minor and the “Scale Spelling” for Aeolian scale above it.

Even if you never learnt music before, we’ve already mentioned that “b” – flats are responsible for bringing notes DOWN for one semitone, whereas “#” – sharps are responsible for bringing notes UP for one semitone. As you can see the spelling for Aeolian scale (Minor) has b3, b6 and b7 in it. The notes that are below these numbers, also have flats: Eb, Ab and Bb. Isn’t that simple? The scale spelling is like a clue for any musician. Let’s say, you know only a construction method for a Major scale using specific pattern (2-2-1-2-2-2-1) and have no idea how to create any other one, but there is a scale spelling for Minor scale in front of your eyes. By writing your Major scale and putting this scale spelling above the notes (1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7, 8) you’ll be easily able to add necessary flats to notes and finally get your Minor scale. The same method applies to any other existing scale in the music world. However, you should follow 2 simple rules:

1) The letters (notes) MUST always correspond to the assigned number (spelling).
2) There may not be notes that share the same name in the scale

What does it mean? Literally, you just need to choose correct enharmonic names for your notes. For example in C Minor (Aeolian) you can’t put “D#” under the number “b3” because “D” is already referred to your second note, the number “2” of the spelling. The same applies to “Ab” and “Bb”. You can’t put “G#“ and “A#” instead. We are quite sure that this fact is very obvious, but still sometimes people can forget, so keeping this tip in mind will help not to make mistakes.

Ok, the time has come, to find out why a Major scale is called “Ionian”, and why a Minor scale is called “Aeolian”. The reason why these scales have more specific names, simply because there are different types of Major and Minor scales. Most of the scales can be divided into Major and Minor families. So let’s have a look at 7 scales that are mostly used in today’s music:

SCALE SPELLINGS:
IOANIAN - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
DORIAN - 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7
PHRYGIAN - 1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7
LYDIAN - 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7
MIXOLYDIAN - 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7
AEOLIAN - 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7
LOCRIAN - 1 b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7

The picture above points us to the different types of Major and Minor scales that have all white notes in it like C Ionian and A Aeolian. There is exactly the same thing for D Dorian, E Phrygian, F Lydian and etc. As we’ve mentioned earlier all scales can be divided into 2 families: Major and Minor. In this case we have:

Major scales:

Ionian
Lydian
Mixolydian

Minor scales:

Dorian
Phrygian
Aeolian
Locrian

The most used scales in Popular music are Ionian, Aeolian, Mixolydian and Dorian. Less used is Lydian, because of the #4 which gives quite dissonant sound, that may feel unpleasant the ears. The most famous example of Lydian scale use, you can hear in known by everybody “Simpsons” music theme. Phrygian and Locrian are common in soundtracks and background music for Horror movies. Just have a listen, and you will understand why! These scales often used in Metal music as well.

The most accurate definition of the scale family would by checking thr 3rd note of the mode. If the 3rd number of the scale spelling is flattened, then it belongs to the Minor scale family. By the way, have you noticed that there are more Minor scales than Major ones? There is exactly the same thing for chords. There are more Minor chords that you can construct from the scale, than Major ones.

If you have a proper look to the scale spellings of these modes (scales), you’ll see how easy it is to construct any mode you like, if simply have a scale spelling in front of your eyes. All you have to do is just to construct Ionian scale and flatten or sharpen necessary notes, according to the spelling. Isn’t that simple? It’s definitely is!

We believe that we’ve shared enough information for today and there is a lot to think about and experiment with. And don’t forget to check out your “Scale Dictionary” in “Piano Companion” which has so many more scales to play with!

Just keep an eye on our blog and you will find so much more interesting about music.

music-theory pianocompanion scales

The Cadences

Posted on March 15, 2016 by songtive

This time we will talk about cadences, one of the most useful harmonic procedures available to every composer or songwriter out there! Every musical hit you know uses it, every song you like it also makes use of it, which makes it very convenient to learn.

Classical music, rock music, R & B music…you name it: they will use cadencial procedures to make effective chord progressions. Check out these songs

(1:02 to 1:03)

… and

(0:53 to 0:54)

That conclusive effect you can listen in such timeless classics, that seems to create a “landing” feeling, is what we call cadence.

What’s a Cadence?

Long time ago, in the 1600s approximately, with the appearance of tonal music – major mode and minor mode – harmonic resources known at the time were refined into the single concept of consonance we already reviewed, and chords as we know them were conceived – major, minor, augmented and diminished triads.

Every major, augmented or diminished chord has a property, a single note that will make it tend naturally to other chords. That single note is what we call leading tone, and when you move that leading tone to a chord that has the note it leads to, you create that conclusive effect – in music theory you call this resolution, a release of the tension created from this leading tone movement. This leading tone can be found in the VII degree of each major or minor scale moving to the root of said key/chord, for example: B would be leading tone to C major/minor, F# would be leading tone to G major/minor, and so on.

How can I do it?

Let’s take Bohemian Rhapsody as our example. When you hear the line “nothing really matters to me” you hear a F7 chord playing behind, and when Freddie reassures it repeating “…to me” you hear an F chord and then a Bb major chord. Let’s take it to our chord chart, and for discussion purposes we are repeating the progression over and over:

Analyzing this simple 3 chord fragment, we get some valuable information:

From F to A#/Bb – when the conclusion effect arrives – there’s an Ascending Perfect Fourth interval
F chord contains a A note, which is leading tone to A#/Bb
When F moves to A#/Bb, the leading tone (A) moves to the root of the chord (A#/Bb)

And this is how the cadence is achieved!

Let’s practice in another key! We are taking D major/minor as an example:

Move from V or V7 to I to perform a cadence!

How can I use it?

Every time you want to end a musical or text line, a cadence will be the most ideal resource to do this. Why? Because of its conclusive effect it will create a clear distinction between phrases and moods, therefore creating symmetry and balance throughout the whole song!

The perfect way to do this

So follow these simple steps!

Enter the Songtive.com and start a new song (or for better sound quality use our iPhone/iPad/Android app)
At the Song preferences tab select a key – select a time signature and sidescroll the metronome for setting the beat
In the line below just input the Cadential Pattern like V – I or V7 – I and press the ‘+’ button at the right
That’s it! You just created a Cadential Pattern to conclude your musical thoughts!
Now combine it with common-tone chords adding a Cadential Progression at the end to create a musical phrase, for example: I – IV – V – V7 – I

cadences chords music-theory progression songtive

Making a Good Chord Progression

Posted on March 8, 2016 by songtive

How is ‘good’ defined when it comes to music? Have you ever wondered what makes a chord progression ‘good’? All of them are excellent questions that we are trying to answer on today’s topic!

Music History 101:

Back in the day, in the 1200s or so – really way back – music was considered an exclusive form of art, and as such, not suitable for everyone to perform and don’t even think about learning it! This was because the Catholic Church was the prevailing power in that time, and considered that such a beautiful gift like the music should be used for the sole purpose of praising God, leaving any other purpose in the heretic area, and as a prevailing power, the Church limited the musical teachings to clerical orders only.

However, those clerical orders observed some acoustic phenomena that were the Beauty Canon back then. Certain intervals were considered ‘good’ due to their acoustic properties: the perfect fifth, the octave and the perfect fourth, because of their overtones, (i.e. sounds so high in pitch that we are unable to hear clearly) produced a distinguishable stable sensation – this stability sensation is what we call consonance, a key concept for a ‘good sounding’ music.

Later on, in a period we know as Renaissance, as the Church became more open and tried to get closer to their congregation (i.e. all the people), some clerics started to pass on the musical knowledge to the nobility and their families. This brought an enhancement in what would be considered consonance, adding up the major third, the minor third, the major sixth and the minor sixth intervals.

In the 1600s we already have the basis of our modern tonal system, consisting in the following intervals: major 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th; minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th; perfect 4th, 5th and 8th. Some musical theorists had the idea of combining sounds by overlaying consecutive 3rds of a major or minor scale: C – E – G for C major scale, C – Eb – G for C minor scale. And that’s how the chord theory (i.e. harmony) was born!

The ‘Good’ in music

All this chord system was entirely based on the combination of consonances starting from the note that gives name to a chord (i.e. the tonic); let me give you an example:

C major chord is formed by C – E – G. The tonic of the chord would be C, since the chord is called ‘C’ major
From C to E there’s a major third: a consonance
From C to G there’s a perfect fifth: another consonance
Consonance + Consonance = Consonance

This consonance combination is what defines what sounds ‘Good’ in any musical context, and all their theoretical aspects are condensed in what we call Harmony.

What makes a Good Chord Progression?

When you take any major scale in any key, and you analyze it note by note, you get a series of tonal degrees, which we number using roman numbers:

C    D     E     F    G     A       B    C 
I -  II – III – IV –  V –   VI –   VII - I

Now we overlay third by third in each degree to get the chords for every degree, you must look at each degree vertically:

G       A       B        C      D     E           F            G
E       F       G        A      B     C           D            E
C       D       E        F      G     A           B            C 
I       IIm    IIIm      IV     V    VIm        VIIdim         I

Chords for I, IV and V are considered major chords since there’s no letter in them.

Since the IV degree is placed a half step away from the III degree, and the same occurs from VII to I, we are going to call IV (F note) and VII (B note) our leading tones for C major scale. If you want to find the leading tones for any other key just look at their IV and VII degrees. For example, in G major scale would be C (IV) and F# (VII).

Here comes the nice part: every time you put a chord after another you create a chord progression, but anytime you put a chord after another chord that shares one or more notes with the first one you create a Good Chord Progression! Let’s see some examples:

Moving from I to III there are two common notes: G and E
Moving from V to I there is one common note: G
Moving from II to V there is one common note: D
Moving from VI to IV there are two common notes: A and C

This way you can make a good chord progression following this simple tip:

And if you repeat it over and over, you will find it very pleasing to the ear!

Of course, you can combine chords with no common notes between them to achieve a musical effect called contrast:

Explore multiple combinations with Songtive so you can find many chord progressions that fit your songs!

How can I use it?

Enter the Songtive.com and start a new song (or for better sound quality use our iPhone/iPad/Android app)
In the line below just input your progression and press the ‘+’ button at the right

chords music-theory progression songtive

The Pachelbel Progression

Posted on February 29, 2016 by songtive

This time we’re going to learn about one of the most popular chord progressions ever. How popular? Well, enough to be part of these musical hits:

Cryin’ – Aerosmith
Graduation – Vitamin C
Basket Case – Green Day
Hotel California – The Eagles (a minor mode version of it)
Valley of the Damned – Dragonforce
Changes – David Bowie
Go West – The Village people (yep, even them)

As you can see, a wide variety of styles include this simple-yet-effective chord progression: from rock and roll, to punk rock, disco music, heavy metal, power metal, glam rock… the list is huge!

The Progression

In the 1600s, there was this popular musician called Johann Pachelbel, who made it into the musical hall of fame due to his widely known work “Canon in D”. A canon was a musical form that consisted in starting a melody and then adding up successive melodic lines based on the same harmony that the first melody created, developing a complete and quite beautiful musical effect by overlapping each line using the chord progression (i.e. underlying harmony) as an unifying element. You can listen to it by yourself:

The cello starts the melody, and the underlying harmony that comes within gives the point of entry for the first violin and the other instruments. The notes are:

||: D – A – B – F# – G – D – G – A :||

If you take the notes and understand them as the root of their own chords in the D major key, you get the following chords:

And, if we rewrite it as a chord progression chart, we get the following:

||: I – V – VI – III – IV – I – IV – V:||

This way, you can transpose it to ANY OTHER MAJOR KEY without giving yourself the trouble of figuring out the chord types, since a chord progression chart works for every key Let’s see an example in the key of A major:

Why does it work so well?

The answer lies, as Brahms said, in the bass: the motion of these roots generates a Descending 4th’s Progression (1 – V; VI – III; IV – I) which sounds good because of the logic pattern it suggests to our ears. Just check it out by listening to the cello part again at the beginning of the ‘Canon in D’!
Even when the pattern is interrupted when moving from IV to V at the end of the progression, it sounds good due to the authentic cadence pattern it creates when you repeat the progression: IV – V – I (being I the beginning of the progression all over again). This chord progression just had all the elements that make it harmonically effective!

How can I use it?

You can check our the most popular app Piano Companion which helps you to better understand chords and scales.
Enter the Songtive.com and start a new song (or for better sound quality use our iPhone/iPad/Android app)
At the Song preferences tab select a key – I’m using D major for discussion purpose – select a time signature and sidescroll the metronome for setting the beat
In the line below just input the Pachelbel Progression and press the ‘+’ button at the right
That’s it! You just created a Pachelbel Progression to compose or improvise over!
Try to land on the chord tones as they come. This is called “playing the changes” in a jazz context, and it’s a very useful resource to make wonderful melodies

chords progression songtive

Tutorial 2 – Minor Scale Construction and Introduction to “Circle of Fifths”

Posted on February 25, 2016 by songtive

In our first post we were talking about the names of notes, it’s placement on keyboard, Major scale construction method and how “Piano Companion” application can help you in memorising all these musical things. Today, we are going to discuss how to build a Minor scale using the same method as we used for a Major scale creation. We will also introduce a very handy tool – “Circle of Fifths”.

As you can remember from the previous post (Tutorial 1 – Note Names, Placement and Major Scale), to construct a Major scale we need to know the specific order/pattern of gaps/steps or (in musical terms) “intervals” between notes. You probably already know that these intervals are called “semitones”. The order/pattern for the Major scale is 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 and the easiest way of figuring it out – was counting gaps between white notes on keyboard from “C” to another “C” note. We can apply the same concept to create any Minor scale. We just need to find out which Minor scale has all white keys in it as well. There is a great musical feature in the application, that will help us to do that. If you open the main menu of “Piano Companion” you will see the button “Circle Of Fifths”:

When you press the button, you will be redirected to another screen, where you actually can see the “Circle of Fifths”:

Ok, you all probably have a question in you mind: “How this tool can actually help me to find the key, that I am looking for?”In our case it is A Minor scale, which has all white notes (which has no flats and has no sharps). Please have a look at the circle again:

There are 3 sections in the circle:

Purple section – It represents Major scales.
Peach section – It represents Minor scales.
White section – It represents sharps and flats that each of these key has.

Can you see that a letter “A” is underneath a letter “C”? You can also see that there is a white section underneath both letters “C” and “A”.

Basically, that means that a “C Major scale” has no sharps and flats, as well as “A Minor scale” has no sharps and flats too. This is exactly what we were looking for, isn’t? The same rule applies to other letters of the circle. According to the picture, it’s clearly seen that a “G Major scale” has 1 sharp as well as “E Minor scale” has one sharp too. A “D Major scale” has 2 sharps, whereas a “B Minor scale” has 2 sharps as well and etc. Now you can tell for sure, that a “C Major scale” and “A Minor scale” has all the same notes, only the root note/ starting point is different. These scales are called “Relatives”. So, if you ever want to find out which Minor key has the same amount of sharps or flats as your chosen Major scale (and opposite), you can always use a “Circle of Fifths” as your guide.

This is not all that a “Circle of Fifths” can assist you with. It has much more information that it may seem from the first glance, however we will talk about this handy tool deeper, a little bit later. Right now, let’s come back to the main goal we were aiming for – Minor scale construction. Please go back to your main menu of the “Piano Companion” and choose a “Piano”:

Here is our piano roll, but with note names on it, just to make the process easier:

If you press the keys from A to A, you will hear the A Minor scale. So let’s have a look at the specific order/pattern for Minor scales. We are sure that you all understand, this order/pattern is different, than the one for Major scales. How do we determine it? Once again, all you need to do is look at the keyboard and count how many gaps/steps there are in between each note of the scale. Have a look at the picture below:

Cool, now we can confidently tell that the specific note order is 2-1-2-2-1-2-2, which is the order/pattern of gaps/steps that applies to any Minor scale. With this pattern you will be able to create any Minor scale!

There is one more interesting fact about the name of a Minor scale. It has another more specific name – “Aeolian scale”. If you remember the Major scale is also called – “Ionian scale”. Don’t forget, you can always check these scales in “Scales Dictionary” of the “Piano Companion” application:

As you can see, we have emphasised some “little circles” on the picture. There are two types of them:

Fully coloured circles – represent 1 Tone/ 2 semitones
Half coloured circles – represent 1 semitone.

That means if you forgot the specific sequence of intervalic gaps for “Ionian” or “Aeolian” scales, you can always refer to this “circle pattern” because it is equal to the“numeric pattern” of “2-1-2-2-1-2-2” or “2-2-1-2-2-2-1”.

That is all for today and If you find our articles useful, just keep an eye on our blog, as this is just a beginning. New posts will be added frequently. Keep on doing music!

chords circle-of-fifths major minor piano pianocompanion tutorials

Tutorial 1 – Note Names, Placement and Major Scale

Posted on February 13, 2016 by songtive

If you are willing to be a musician and want to express your own ideas and feelings, it is really essential to learn at least some basics of music theory. Especially if you are thinking about writing your own songs and musical compositions. For many people who has never been a musician, a “Music Theory” sounds scary and seems complicated at the first glance, but in a reality it isn’t, depending on the way it’s presented of course. Luckily we are living in the world of technology and have so many tools, resources available, for such an easy learning of anything we want to. A Piano Companion is a wonderful application that will make your music learning process as simple as possible, without a touch of any musical instrument or even a computer. All you need – is just your phone or your tablet. Here at Songtive Blog, we will attempt to explain a “Music Theory” subject and how a “Piano Companion” can help those of you, who have never learnt or have just a little knowledge of music theory, but really would like to give it a try and improve own musical/composition/songwriting skill. Shall we start our trip into the world of music?

Today is our first tutorial and we are going to start from the very beginning! We will learn how the music notes are placed on the keyboard, how are they called (their names), what a major scale is and how to create it. Before we carry on, we would suggest you to download the Piano Companion app to your device and open it. In case if you are still thinking about downloading the application and not ready yet, you can just open any other virtual keyboard. Having the keyboard in front of you will make an understanding of a topic much easier. However, when you open a “Piano Companion” you can see the following picture on you screen:

Please choose a “Piano” button to open the keyboard.

Great! This is your piano roll and you can follow the tutorial. However, this a pure keyboard, with no note names on it. That is why we are including another picture with the same app’s keyboard but already named one. Please have a look below:

As you can see, each key has a letter and those letters are the real names of the notes. There are only 7 letters/notes that you need to learn in this specific order: C-D-E-F-G-A-B. This pattern repeats again and again throughout the entire keyboard: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C an etc. Now, if you press the keys in this order, you will actually hear what we call a C Major scale. Note “C” itself and a “C Major scale” are the starting points for beginning of learning a music theory.

Take a look at the following screenshot from Scale Dictionary in Piano Companion:

You may have a question in your mind, why is this specific order which starts from the note “C” is called a “C Major scale”? To provide you with the answer to this question, we need to explain what the music scale is, isn’t it? In simple words, a music scale is a melody that consists of 7 notes (actually 8 notes, but the 8th note is always the same as the 1st note) but always arranged in ONE SPECIFIC ORDER.

Don’t be afraid, everything is not that complicated as it may sound! Have a look at all the white keys on the keyboard! One again, If you start on the “C” note and press white keys one by one, going from the left to the right until you reach a “C” note, this will be that SPECIFIC ORDER for a “C Major scale”. This order will help you to create any major scale in the future, but we will talk about that later on.

You’ve just had a chance of playing a “C Major scale” by pressing the “C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C” keys on your keyboard. So what can you tell about the actual sound? We are pretty sure that even if you’ve never heard a word – “Major Scale”, by playing it just now, you could have heard that it represents a happy, uplifting sound. Doesn’t it? And this is a truth! Any major scale – is all about happy sound. There is also one more interesting fact about it. A Major scale has another more specific name, rather than just a Major. It’s called – “Ionian”. If you stay tuned with our blog posts you will find out why is it called like that, but in the meantime, let’s answer to the main question: “How do we create a major scale?”

Please have a look at your keyboard in the application and look at this picture afterwards as well:

To create our “C Major scale” we had to leave out all the black keys. But these keys actually represent the necessary gaps to achieve this beautiful sound. From the picture above, you can see that there is a black key between “C” note and a “D” note, the same applies to “D and “E”, or “F” and “G” and etc.

These gaps between keys are called “tones” and “semitones”. We can also call these gaps as “steps” to make it easier for understanding. For example: 1 semitone is one step between each key, whereas 1 tone = 2 semitones or two steps between keys.

Let’s say we want to calculate how many steps there are from the “C” note to “D” note. Looking at the keyboard, it’s clearly seen that a journey from “C” (white key) to “D” (white key) first brings us to the black key in the middle. This is the first step/semitone. Then we arrive at the white D key, which represents another step/semitone. All this means that there are 2 steps/semitones between the “C” note and “D” note. If you check your keyboard carefully, you will detect that most of the notes from the “C Major scale” have gaps of 2 semitones. But here is only 1 step/semitone between the “E” and “F” note, as well as between “B” and “C” because these are not separated by a black key.

All you need to do, is just to calculate the gaps between each note/letter of the scale. Once you’ve done it, you will end up with these calculations: 2-2-1-2-2-2-1. THIS IS THE SPECIFIC PATTERN/ORDER for any Major scale. You can use it to create any Major scale starting from any note that you want. So, let’s practice by creating a “D Major scale”.

As it has already been told, we have to use a sequence 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 of steps/gaps to create another major scale. You can see the steps between semitones in the scale details:

It will be very useful if you take a piece of paper and write the 8 letter/note progression on a piece of paper, starting from “D” and going up until reach a“D” again. This would look like: D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D.

Great! Let’s start from a “D” and according to the order, our next note of the scale will be 2 steps/semitones away from the starting point. That means If we start from “D” and go up with 2 steps (the first step will be from D to black key D#, the 2nd step will be from D# to E), we reach our destination–note E. Relying on the 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 order, the next step you need to make consist of 2 semitones too. From the note E we need to go up with 2 steps, which makes our destination F#. Please complete all the steps until you reach your second “D” note of the scale. You can check yourself by playing the notes that you’ve written down. Can you hear that the scale sounds like a major? If you are not sure, you can close your piano roll for a while, go back to the main menu of Piano Companion and choose “Reverse Scale Lookup”.

Then you will see a piano roll again on the left side of the screen. Press a “D” note on the keyboard. A dropdown menu will appear and you will need to choose a “D Major scale”. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to see this picture on your screen:

Now, you can compare what notes have you written down for the “D Major scale” practice exercise and what the actual notes are. But we really hope that the information that we’ve provided for you today, was useful and your exercise was completed successfully.

The huge benefit of knowing how to create music scales, is that once you have created a music scale as well as selected the notes which you will be working with, you can never go wrong if you use this 7 notes of the chosen scale, in your own songs/compositions.

android music-theory pianocompanion tutorials

Songtive Web is singing a whole new tune

Posted on August 7, 2015 by songtive

For the last few months, we have been working to import full functionality from both our iOS & Android apps directly into a full-service web UI (check out our full web intro here). Previous to these updates, Songtive only operated in ‘view mode’, which allowed users to see and listen to visual representations of chords. We have since incorporated editing devices for song, style and drumset. To begin, just tap on the top left corner:

From there, tap New Song and the Songtive smart engine will generate a random chord progression in the chosen corresponding style.

The Song Editor feature consists of two sections. The first is a chord editor which allows you to view all the chords assigned to the song. Tapping on the chord allows you to change it in the Song Editor’s second section. As you can see on the screenshot, the selected chord becomes highlighted. In this example, we’re working with G minor.

In the Section Editor, you are able to change song sections (#3) and also assign or modify song styles (#4). You are not limited to only using a single instrument, either – simply selecting a new one in the dropdown menus can change it to whatever you like.

Tapping the “Add New” button in Styles & Drumset will open a Style Editor where you will be able to specify exactly how each chord will be played. As you can see in this screenshot, we can set the root note to play through the whole bar and then have the following notes to be arpeggiated one by one. For a video tutorial, click here.

When you’re done, just tap Save. That’s it! You can now share the song you just created with your friends.

Any questions or comments, please contact us at support@songtive.com.

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New Icon, Sharing Scale Fingerings, Filtering Chords in Piano Companion for iOS

Posted on June 13, 2015 by songtive

It’s been awhile since our previous update for iOS, but we were working hard to bring you another set of great features. First of all, we are happy to announce that Piano Companion has changed an icon!

Secondly, that update is dedicated to scales and common chords mostly. Many of you were asking for alternative fingering for scales and ability to input custom fingering. Well, we decided to go further and added possibility to share fingering with other users. Everyone is able to vote/favorite other user fingerings (see #1).

You can input left and right hand fingering and Save it so other users could see them (see #2, #3, #4).

Common chords are displayed as small keyboard but you will be able to switch to note notation too.

Chords dictionary allows you to filter chords by triads, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th chords and additionally we added new chords: add9, add11, add13.

We improved usability and performance of some screens including long waiting fix for reverse lookup crash.

Hope you like it and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

ios pianocompanion

Style and drums editor for Web

Posted on March 4, 2015 by songtive

We are proud to announce that the latest update of Songtive Web has Styles and Drums editors available for you! You don’t need to have Songtive iOS in front of you to see and even create styles or drums which could be used in your composition later.

Starting with that update a user profile contains the list of styles and drums created by a user. Check out community’s drums.

We also added ability to embed a style or drums right into your blog as shown here.

… and the most interesting feature is ability to add triplets, tuplets in a style or drums. We received couple suggestions regarding that feature and decided to implement it in Songtive Web first – feel free to send your feedback on: support@songtive.com.

Hope you’ll like it and stay tuned as the next Songtive Web update will contain Song editors too!

songtive web