Whole Steps and Half Steps

Lesson 5: Whole Steps and Half Steps  There are basically two fundamental intervals in music, Whole Steps and Half Steps. A half step is the same thing as a semitone as in it's just a consecutive note in the chromatic scale such as C# to D or B to C.  A whole step is the distance of two half steps or skipping a half step if you will. For example, C to D, there is a C#/Db between these two notes so therefore, it is a whole step. On a guitar this would be skipping a fret or the distance of two frets. Now, we already talked about building scales with the Circle of Fifths by taking seven fifths in a row and reordering them by pitch in a single octave. We also said that we could turn this into a major scale by making the 2nd fifth in the sequence the bottom note. Such as. D A E B F# C# G#, A becomes the bottom note and the scale is reordered into A B C# D E F# G# A. You'll notice how that there is a combination of whole and half steps to get this result. A to B is a whole step but C# to D is only a semitone or half step.

If you've had any traditional theory, you may have heard of the Whole-Half method of building scales.
Such as a major scale having the formula W-W-H-W-W-W-H The W represents a whole step and then the second W represents another whole step from the second note in the first whole step. What we're essentially doing is starting the following interval on the upper note of the previous interval  In other words, it looks like this:  CD  to  DE     These are both whole steps because they both have a sharp shoved up between them. After E, is F though, which means now it's a half step. So we have CD  DE  EF  then FG which is another whole step. And we have whole steps GA  AB  and Finally, BC which ends the cycle on a half step. At this point the whole pattern repeats itself creating an endless C major scale.   There is a couple of reasons I don't like this method but then there are reasons that I teach it anyway.  One, knowing the formula of Whole and half steps isn't nearly as useful as knowing how scales are built from a sequence of fifths such as we did before. The reason is that Whole Half gives us almost no relation to harmony or tonal gravity. The one thing it
does give us, however, is knowledge of half steps. These half steps will become very important later on in this course, so you should remember where they exist in a major scale.

Half Steps and Whole Steps related to the Circle of Fifths 

So how do we relate this to the COF? Ok, well, if we keep in mind that major scale comes from taking the 2nd note of a sequence of seven fifths(try saying that three times fast), then we'll have the correct mindset for thinking. Basically, think of a whole step in the COF almost the same way you think of a whole step in the chromatic scale. It skips a note. If we have CGDAEBF#, then C to D is a whole step and D to E is a whole step. So every other note in the COF is a whole step apart. That's it, that simple. 

Half steps are a little more confusing. To find half steps apart, we have to move in the circle five times. 

So C then 1G, 2D, 3A, 4E, 5B  therefore, B is a half step lower than C. If we want to find one higher than C we have to go seven steps in the circle, C G D A E B F# C#.  But then again, what's the point of this if half steps are just consecutive notes in the musical alphabet you should already know? There isn't one. So I'm just mentioning that using the COF to find half steps is ridiculous. 

This was a bit of a more technical lesson, so just keep these concepts in the back of your mind. 

ASSIGNMENT: 

                Remember what whole and half steps are 

                Get feel for relating whole steps to the COF don't worry about half steps with the COF

                

Onto: Investigating the Major scale