 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this tutorial, we are going to learn all about major and minor. Those two terms which we use almost all the time in the field of music for something or the other to communicate between fellow musicians, to teach and learn, to read and play or read and write or any form of musical transcription, you use major and minor a lot. So we are going to have this real deep dive into the two terms and see where all you are going to find them used in our field of music, in terms of scales, in terms of intervals and obviously in terms of chords. So every time you hear the word major and minor, the first thing is you should not get confused. If someone says play me a C major, it does not necessarily mean a C major scale, it does not necessarily mean a C major chord. You need to be very tactical and very clear about what you are supposed to play. So it's a theory lesson but get your pianos out and play along with me so that you also learn a few of the interesting scales and maybe a few things you don't know which use the terms major and minor. Before we get started, it will be awesome if you could hit that bell icon, if you are a regular subscriber, thanks for that by the way and if you are not a subscriber, if you visited the channel for the first time, if you like the lesson, if you are going to like the lesson rather, please consider hitting the subscribe button and turn on the bell and if you have been watching my videos for a long, long time, you need to turn on the subscribe button right now and all of these lessons including this one, stuff we've done in the past and which we are going to do in the future, we have hand written notes, we have staff notation, we have MIDI, we have backing tracks, all that is waiting for you on our Patreon page. So feel free to head over to our Patreon channel and get yourself a copy of the notes especially for this lesson which we are doing now. So first of all, the terms major and minor can be used when you are conversing or when you are depicting a scale, the terms major or minor could be used when dealing with intervals and when dealing with chords. So a scale first of all by definition is a collection or a combination or a set of seven notes from a universal set of 12 notes which are all the notes we have in music. So once we collect a set of seven notes, not all scales have seven, you could also have five notes in a scale like a pentatonic or six notes in the case of a blues or maybe even nine notes here and there in certain scales. For the most part, a scale is known to have seven unique notes and the eighth note which we sometimes write is the repetition or the octave. So what we'll try and do is look at how the terms major and minor are first used in scales, then we go into intervals and then chords. So what is a scale again? It's a set or a collection or what I sometimes like to tell students is it's a buffet of sorts of seven notes. Why I use the word buffet sometimes? Because a buffet does not necessarily have directional properties. When you go into a restaurant for a buffet, you don't have to start by having the main course first or the starters first even though they call it starters. I perhaps would like to have the dessert and then have another dessert and then the third dessert and not have some of the soups which I don't quite enjoy. That's why I call a scale a buffet of notes because you don't have to use all the seven or if you like one more than the other or if you like two more than the other, use them more. So when we use the term major for building scales, there are a lot of major scales, not just the traditional major. So that's what I'll guide you through first. So if we take the key of C, everyone's favorite, not mine really, but I'm just taking C, which is a very rare occurrence on this YouTube channel. So let's take C and let's look at the major scale, the traditional C major scale. So if someone says place C major, it doesn't necessarily mean this, but if someone says we are in the key of C major, then it definitely means yes, someone is telling you we are in that scale, which is C major, which has those seven notes, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. And we build a scale, as you probably already know, any major scale is built with two steps or two chromatic steps from the two to the three, another two chromatic steps between the three and the four. There's one chromatic step. Also what we call as a semitone between the four and the five is a two step or a tone, between the five and the six is a one step or another tone. Between the six and the seven is another whole step, also called as a tone. And then finally between the seven and eight, just to finish the scale or to check if our answer is correct, we do a semitone or a single chromatic step from B to C and all the major scales are built like that. C major, D flat, D, E flat, E, F, F sharp, G, A flat, A, B flat, B and then C. So all the 12 major scales are built like that. And it's important to know all the 12 scales, not just C major. A great way to do that is with the piano shapes or what I call as piano worms that allows you to visualize between the black and the white note combos where the C major is only white. So it's literally a straight line. But you have other scales where it could be E flat major, for instance, which is black, white, white, black, black, white, white, black. So if you write the scale, it will kind of be like a small boat followed by a bigger boat, so to speak. Boat number one would be this and boat number two and then that cluster. It's good to visualize your scales in these piano shapes, if you will, which I call as piano worms or scale worms. So there are other terms used for major and some people look at major scales as a family. So it's any scale or most scales which have a major third interval, which is this E. And how do we get the major interval and a major interval is a now I'm trying to distinguish between intervals and scales and interval is the distance as they define the distance between two musical notes. And you can form the interval either melodically one by one or harmonically. Together. Now it may be called as the distance between two notes in the theory textbooks. But what I'd also like to add is an interval is the vibe or the emotion or the mood created when two of these notes collide with each other. And that for me is a better definition. Otherwise, I tend to look at distance as actual distance on planet Earth, which we have a proper measuring devices for. It's weird to call distance and compare it with the field of music, in my opinion. So I would just say C to E is a major third, which is four steps or four semitones away from any root. So you get this major third and it has a very positive, happy kind of emotion. However, a minor third has a more sadder, negative, serious kind of emotion, which is three steps away from the root. So when we are referring to an interval, we could say we have a major third, which is E or a minor third, which is E flat. And this is quite, you may think it's subjective because emotions tend to be subjective, but if you say, which is the more happier of the two, I'm sure you'll all agree that the major tends to sound more positive or more playful or more happy compared to the minor, which is more. Instead of calling it sad, you could even say serious. That's a more general way of putting the minor. So all major scales are considered to at least have a major third in them. And all minor scales, which we are going to see after we learn the major scales are considered to have at least the minor third in them. So if you take the major scales, the basic vanilla major scale, which I told you C major or any major, okay, that's how the major scale is built. Now you can have a small set of modifications to this and get some other scales, for example, C lydian, which also sounds on the positive side, but it's a bit more dreamy, you could say, a bit more unclear or a bit more hazy, so to speak. How does that happen? By sharpening the four. So any lydian scale, you sharpen the four and then you have another kind of major scale, which is the more, what I call the more epic or the more braver major scale, which we have a name for. It's called the mix or lydian scale. So you will be pleasantly surprised to note that almost all the rock songs you hear or movie team scores, if you think it's major, may not be major, it could actually be mix or lydian. Or if the scene of a movie is very ambient or very dreamy or very chaotic, for all you know, it could be lydian because it's a very unclear scale, it's a mix or lydian. It's a lot more braver. Okay, that's your mix or lydian. What does mix or have? It's a major third major scale without the normal seven with a flat seven. And then we have a few mix or lydian modifications, which I like to use a lot. One is called the mix or lydian flat six, which goes. This is a very, you could say a Celtic scale. They use it a lot in folk music, but it still has that major chord or the major third, which goes very well with it, right? Works well over a major chord. You can also have another mix or lydian variation, which would be the mix or lydian scale with a sharp four. Incidentally, all of these mix or lydian variations are modes of the melodic minor scale. We've done a lot of videos on the minor scales only. So we leave you some of those links in the description on the same similar topics. We can also learn a lot about the modes. I've sort of deep dived into the lydian, the mix or lydian and all the modes which exist in music of the major scale and even of the minor scale. So do check out the modes videos as well, which we'll put up. You also have a bunch of exotic major scales, a few being the Phrygian major, which takes the Phrygian mode. A Phrygian mode is essentially flat two, flat three, flat six, flat seven of a major, which is a mode of the major scale. In fact, it's the third mode. Now, if you want to make that Phrygian major as they call it, also known as the Phrygian dominant scale, it would be you get a more get a more Middle Eastern kind of vibe. And this will work perfectly with our major chord works really well if you ask me. So I'm just trying to show you alternate scales apart from the one you probably already know the major scale, which which also have the major third in them and also work with the major chord. So the Phrygian major or the Phrygian dominant, you could also take the harmonic major, which is essentially the harmonic minor with a major third. You don't have the minor third. You have the major third. So harmonic minor is very famous scale harmonic major would be there we go. So the same things can be said about the minor scales. You don't just have the normal minor and that I'm sure you already know from theory, right? You have the natural minor, you have the harmonic minor, you have the melodic minor and in today's world we have to kind of consider the fact that you have the classical melodic minor, which has different ascending and descending properties and you have the jazz melodic minor, which is just one way ascending and descending the same way. So the natural minor would be flat three, flat six, flat seven. So that's E flat, A flat, B flat. Then you have your harmonic minor, which is only flat three and flat six. You leave the seven alone from major or as some people like to say we raise the seventh with respect to the natural minor. They don't say that. They just say raise the seven. But I would like to say you're raising the seventh with respect to the Aeolian or the natural minor scale. And then you have the Dorian scale, which also has a minor third. But a natural sixth or a major sixth of flat seven. So it's sort of like the sad cousin of the Mixolydian. If you know the Mixolydian is about power and glory. The Dorian is about more bravery and against the odds kind of a scale. So this is Mixo. While the brave scale, it's almost all the movie scores or the movie music you hear in soundtracks will have either the Dorian or the Mixolydian. Hence I thought we should do this lesson to show you that major and minor and life in general is not just major and minor scales. There's so much more in the world of music. And as I generally say, music theory is not about mugging up concepts. It's more trying to have an adventure into the field of music. And when you have an adventure, what ends up happening is you discover new things. You experience new things which you haven't before. So moving forward, you also have the Jazz Melodic minor, which is only flat three. And then you have the Phrygian, which I talked about earlier when I compared it with Phrygian major. This is the normal Phrygian scale. You don't need to say Phrygian minor. It's just called the Phrygian scale or the Phrygian mode. Very popular as a Spanish or a Flamenco scale. So again, there are a lot of other minor scales which we could go into in another lesson, of course, or watch the minor scales in the in the video. And it's under what I call as exotic scales because beyond the point, you can kind of form your own minor scales or beyond the point, you'll need to really know music in a very geographical way. You'll have to, you know, if you if you look at traditional Spanish music for all, you know, a kid learning the guitar is not going to start learning with the major scale. He's going to start with the Phrygian scale. So each part of the world, each culture have their own way of learning sort of like anything, any cultural thing. So that was about major and minor scales. Just a quick word on intervals. So there are a variety of intervals used, but the terms major and minor, which are used for intervals will be major. If I say major or minor, it will be major, second, major, third, major, sixth, major, seventh. And for minor, it would be minor, second, minor, third, minor, sixth and minor, seventh. We do not have a major fourth. Please remember that we do not have a minor fourth. Those words are taken up by the perfect words, the augmented and the diminished. So you have a perfect fourth. You could have an augmented fourth. You could have a diminished fourth, which is rare. You could also have a diminished fifth, which is common. You could have an augmented fifth, which is also used in music. So essentially you have two, three, six, seven. Those are the degrees in which you can call an interval major or minor. So major second with regards to C is D. Major third is E. Major sixth is A while major seventh is B. While the C to F is called as a perfect fourth. C to G is called as a perfect fifth. C to C is an octave, there is no other word for it really. Or you can call it a perfect octave, which is the official word. Minors on the other hand, minor two, where you flat the major down by one. Minor three, where you flat the major third by one. Minor sixth, where you flat the major sixth by one. Minor seventh, where you flat the major seventh by one. Or you do not have to flat it, you can just remember it as C to B flat is a minor seventh. C to A flat is a minor sixth. C to E flat is a minor third. C to D flat is a minor second. So we've looked at the terms major and minor for scales. We've looked at them for intervals and last but not least in this lesson, we are going to understand the terms major and minor for their use in triads and chords in general. So as you may already know, you have major and you have minor chords. So how it works is you need to remember this when you're understanding music theory. You have major chords which are there in a major scale. You have minor chords which are also there in a major scale. And similarly, you have minor chords in a minor scale. You have major chords in a minor scale. So remember that chords can be part of scales using the triads, using this general logic. The scale is a set of notes from the set we play melody and harmony. We play tunes and we play chords. So we should not get confused when we say, for example, someone might argue, play me G major. That's a very debatable thing for someone to say because is he telling you to play the G major scale or is the guy telling you to play the G major chord? So we need to specify. But if someone says we are in the key of G major, yes, definitely. We are in that scale and we are talking scales. If someone says, can you move from a G to a C? That's also debatable. So are you moving from the scale G to the scale C? And then the guy is not even saying major or minor. So we need to be a bit very clear with when we converse unless of course you've jammed with that fellow musician for years and years. So it's easier to talk. So coming back to triads. So in a major scale, there are three major chords built at the degrees one, four and five. As you may know from chord theory. So on the C major scale, you have C major, F major, G major to form a major chord. You can just write down your scale and 135 in a scale circle will help you remember this better. 135 will give you your chords or your triads. If you don't have any kind of a scale reference, you can still formulate these chords easily by going major third and perfect fifth. So major third will be as we've studied in this lesson itself, a perfect fifth would be seven steps from the root. Or if you remember your circle of fifths, it's the very next neighbor in the clockwise direction. So major chord, minor chord and we've put together a little visual chart for all the major chords which can be visually grouped well on the piano. You have your white, white, white majors, which is C major, F major, G major. You have your white, black, white majors, which is D major, E major, A major. You have your black, white, black majors, which is D flat major, E flat major and A flat major. Then you have your miscellaneous majors, which is B flat major, which is black, white, white. B major which is white, black, black and then you have all black which is F sharp major. F sharp, A sharp and C sharp. While the minor chords have very similar shapes, you have white black, white minors, C minor, F minor, G minor, you have all white minors which is D minor, E minor, A minor, you have black, white, black minors which is C sharp minor, F sharp minor and G sharp minor and you have the miscellaneous ones which is B flat minor, B B W, B minor, W W B and then you have all black, E flat minor. So minors also can be grouped well and so are your majors. Now the cool thing or maybe the not so cool thing, maybe at this point in this lesson, you are bored with the words major and minor in the first place. Why do we have to call everything in music major and minor? That itself may have been something the curators of all these words should have thought before they made it. Maybe the words itself are annoying but I guess we have to stick with it. Just like the notes in music, A, B, C, D, E, F, G could have so easily been called, I don't know, named after fruits or vegetables or something. Why do they call it A, B, C, D, E? I don't know really. So maybe because of the piano because the piano sort of started music theory historically. Before the piano everyone was quite happy actually, just get a violin, play it and be happy. The piano just ended up making it very rules and regulations based which I guess is debatable. So we have the terms major and minor used for triads or chords. Now if you expand on it, you can build your more fancy advanced chords. You can go a major triad plus a major sixth interval will be a C major sixth chord. A major triad plus a minor seventh interval will be a dominant seventh chord or seventh chord. A major triad plus a major seventh interval. See how I'm trying to be very particular. A major triad that's the chord of three notes plus a major seventh interval with respect to C the root. When you put together that's a major seventh chord. So major sixth, dominant seventh, major seventh. These are some of the extended triad or chords which build themselves from traditional major triads. What about minor? So plant C minor down. You get minor sixth. So minor sixth chord is a bit weird to remember theoretically because it's a minor chord followed by a major sixth interval. That's a minor sixth chord. Then you have a minor seventh chord which is a minor triad followed by a minor seventh interval. Then you have a minor chord which is then followed by a major seventh interval. That's it's tough to name it. We call it a minor major seventh. So if you're annoyed with the words major and minor now you have to have a chord which has both of them in one chord. Minor major seventh. For simplicity I would just call this the James Bond chord. Just like some of the other more complicated chords in music like a seven sharp nine could so easily be called as a Jimi Hendrix chord or a Jimi chord. You could give it any name you wish or a Lydian chord or a major triad with a flat five could just be called maybe a Simpsons chord. Stuff like that. So you can give it your own names but when communicating with others it's good to know at least whether you're discussing in terms of the scale in terms of intervals and in terms of the chords because even the extensions of the chords will still continue to have majors and minors and the even more extensions like the levens and nines again sometimes tend to have the majors and minors. So that's about the lesson guys and I'm just going to have a quick recap with a few sort of questions you need to ponder over as you revise the terms major and minor and where all they can be used. First of all as I've been saying throughout the video major minor could be used to depict a scale or a kind of scale an interval two three six seven major or minor or a chord major or minor triad and then their extensions like major sixth major seventh dominant seventh. Then we need to remember that there are 12 keys for the major scale. So we can say C major is a major scale in the key of C. Key is the root. So there's a slight difference or a big difference rather between the key the terminology key and the terminology scale scale as I said earlier is a set or a buffet of seven notes generally. The key is the CEO of that set of notes or the ring leader or the main pivotal point the root of everything. So that's the key the key could be any of the 12 as we know there are 12 keys in music or 12 notes in music and just to stress on the point there are four general interval types major and minor two three six and seven while four and five are perfect one is called unison eight is called octave. Then there are many types of major scales as I would want it to stress on it's not just the traditional major or minor you have variance you have natural you have Dorian harmonic and melodic and Phrygian and whatnot. My argument is call a scale major call it a major type scale and call it a minor type scale. What makes it a major type the major third what makes it a minor type the minor third interval. Another point to remember the extended chords or the additional chord symbols tend to carry the same old names major and minor example major sixth minor sixth minor seven minor major seven and so on dominant seven and we need to also understand one more thing we'll probably talk about in a future video naming of intervals is not very musical in nature it's more alphabetical in nature in other words a major third from C would be C D E that's English doing the answer not music really. So there are a few things in music which I guess are very grammatical or very alphabetical or very non-musical it's important to state that fact and if you'd like us to cover any of your you know pressing doubts as this was a lot of students have been mentioning you know an explainer video on major and minor the terms and the chords so I thought I'll do this for those of you who've left it in the comments and if you have any other doubts feel free to leave those in the comments as well let us know what you thought about the lesson don't forget to give the video a like and if you haven't already please hit the subscribe button turn on that bell for regular notifications and you can consider heading over to our patreon page for the notes midi files wherever applicable staff notation backing tracks and so on thanks for watching the video cheers