 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. So here's a question which almost every student I've taught has asked me at some point in their learning journey. What is the difference between a scale and a key? We are in the key or we are in the scale and then we use these words interchangeably and we think we are right but then we probably are not and then what more fancier students will start asking me is then what is the difference between a mode and a scale? What is the difference between a mode and a key? And then some Indian trained musicians will look at all of this data and then ask me Sir or Jason or whatever they want to call me. What is the difference between a raga and a scale or a raga and a key and what not? So I'm going to try my best to answer all this. I'm not a qualified Indian trained musician. So I will do my best but stick around for the lecture hopefully some of these tips and some of these pieces of advice or these theory concepts which need to be very strong in your vocabulary will help you communicate music better with your fellow musicians and also will enable you hopefully to be inspired by these four unique terms or terminologies scales, keys, modes and ragas. So hopefully you can use each of them and give them the respect they all the four things deserve. So before we get cracking it will be awesome if you could consider heading over to our Patreon channel and downloading the handwritten notes for this lesson and many more in the past and the future that would also support our channel and help us go a great way forward. You can also see that subscribe button and the bell button somewhere next to this video wherever it is find it and all it takes is a simple click subscribe. Please do it right now I'll be awesome and give the video a like and leave us a comment at the end of the lesson with stuff you'd want to learn in the future and we will definitely consider that for you on our channel right. So first let's get cracking with scale versus key. What is a scale? What is a key? So I'll kind of explain both of them together and you'll understand. So if you take the set of notes available to us in music there are 12. In fact we call all of the 12 as the chromatic scale a set of pretty much all the available calibrated notes at least on the piano and most instruments and most genres or styles of music creation have 12 notes a b c d e f g and then the respective sharps also known as flats. Now those notes don't sound very organized and may be very confusing if you were to use all of them together in a composition. You don't have an order, you don't have a leader, you don't have a sense of what is more tense than the other or what is stable. Music always relies on stability and tension. So what happens is you need to figure out a way to not jumble these notes so much to have some better order and the easiest way to do that is to not have 12 in the first place to have lesser than 12. So that is where a scale comes into play. A scale will do two things, a scale will reduce the burden of you having to hear so many notes which is all these 12 to you hearing lesser than 12. It will also assign a leader of that pack. So 12 will become lesser than 12. What could lesser be? Now lesser could end up more commonly being seven. So instead of playing the whole scale which is the chromatic scale you have seven notes which can end up being maybe this sort of a sound, maybe this sound. If you think about this I am just playing the chromatic scale and not playing a few notes. So it's going to be 12 minus 5. So 5 notes will be removed or ruled out and the remaining is 7. So 7 note scales are very common in music. So how are these scales built? They will assign a leader or what we also call as the key. So that is the other word. So I am in the key of C but that doesn't mean I am in the C major scale. I am not in a major scale, I am not in a minor scale, I am not in a Phrygian, I am not in some Indian scale. I am in the key of C. So from C I can build many scales. So I can do C major, that's the key of C. I can build C minor, I am in the key of C still. I can build C Lydian, I am still in the key of C. Now if you say your key signature, now key signature is a different concept that is more what we read in sheet music. So key signature will be either major scale or minor scale, that's pretty much it. So key signature is used to either notate the major or its relative minor or minor or its relative major. So you have that chart, I'm sure some of you know, the circle of fifths, we've done a lot of circle of fifths videos, you could probably watch a few of those, we'll put at least one or two in the description wherein you will have the scale, all the notes written in a circle and then each of those will be scales and assigned a key signature. So the key signature is a visual way of telling oneself that I am in the key of C major or I am in the key of A minor, A minor and C major are relatives of each other. So the key signature, you look at it visually and you're like, oh, there are two flats. What are the, what is the only scale which has two flats where that, well, there are only two B flat major and it's a relative minor G minor. So looking at a key signature gives you a universal proof that you are on that scale, but that'll only happen when your sheet reading or site reading notation. What if you're in the real world or what if you're collaborating with maybe more Eastern musicians who don't rely a lot on staff notation from the West, which it where it mostly has originated from. So that is where we have the true definition of a scale and a key. So a scale and a key go hand in hand. So I need a key, so I will pick key as C and I told you earlier that a scale will be a subset, if you will, of the 12 notes. So if you have all your 12, a scale will ideally not have all 12. Then it'll be usable. And each scale needs a leader, needs a ring leader. That's the chairman or the CEO of the company. That will be whatever you assign it, in this case, C. So with respect to C, now that you formed subset notes, lesser notes. Now that you've got only those seven, in this C major case, you don't have the black notes, you just have the white notes. How do you perceive this? What is this doing to the brain while we listen to this stuff, right? Whenever you are planted in the key of C, what tends to happen is you're rooted here. So every decision you make is ideally based from this point. From this C, you're here, if it hears, let's say a B, it's with respect to C. So speaking, B is a very tense note in this world. In another world, B major, B is a not so tense note. It's a very pleasant, resolved note. But in the key of C or in the key of C major, B is a very, very tense note. It's like, where do I go next? I want to go next somewhere else, but here, which is, so some notes of a scale like the seventh resolve, some notes like the fourth resolve to another note, that's a four going to three. So all of this happens because of the root. The root gives you that purpose. The root decides the energy state of each note and the root forms the intervals because intervals will all be with, yes, with respect to all the notes of the scale, especially when you're forming chords, but at the ground level, you need a root. So in this case, C. So if you just compare, you have C D with respect to C, C E with respect to C, C F with respect to C, C G with respect to C. Now if you compare those five, it's a bit unstable if you ask me. That is home. That is very stable. That's a bit unstable. It's like, where do I go next? It's also quite stable. In fact, wherever I play it, see, it's very stable. And if you journey forward, this is like a mystery. It's neither there or not there, but it's all with respect to the C. That's a tension and that's an octave. So the octave is the same. So it's going to be like a plain slate back to home, back to your bed, so to speak. And that's the impact of the key. So the key is part of the scale. So if you're on a major scale, the scale is called major. The scale is not the key. But you can, if you tell someone that I am playing on C major, that is I think a very accurate thing to say because the first letter C is the key and major is the name of the scale. So now using that analogy, you can then say I am in the key of C minor, which has a difference collation of intervals. Now I look at a scale like that. A scale is a set of intervals. It's a pack of notes which are all working for the goal of the song you're trying to make. So if you're on the major, it's a very kind of, this is the very, this is the mood you're going to get. It's a very resolved, very stable, very positive sound engender, especially when I don't play too many chords. But if I take it to the minor, the very nature of these intervals with respect to the same root or the same key C makes it more melancholic, more painful, more like a sorrow, but the key is still C. The scale is not C though. The scale is C minor. In this case C natural minor, we have a lot of words for it. We also call it the Aeolian scale or the mode Aeolian. And if you decide, let's say you don't want that B flat, you want a B instead, there are a lot of systems in all parts of the world. Even in India, we have a great system, the Raga system, especially when you form the Mela Karta Raghas, which are the primary Raghas in music. You form them just using maths permutations. You say the second or the re would be only those options. The ger will be only those options. You don't move around, but you have a lot of permutations of those Raghas. So just off the top, if you see C major, it's all these white notes. Now you tell yourself, hey, I don't want the E. What can I replace E with maybe E flat? I don't want D also, so D flat quite like that. I don't want E anymore like that. Then you get a completely different vibe. Feels like very Spanish or Arabic in that vibe or in that kind of space, so to speak. But is this still the key of C? Yes, I'm still in the key of C. So I hope you see the difference now between a scale and a key. A scale is an assortment of intervals which have a key, which have a root or which have a CEO or a leader of the pack, so to speak. Now you have endless scales. You have a lot of scales. You have thousands in India as we learn. You have quite a few in the West. You have jazz scales. You have classical scales. You have rock scales as well. But how many keys are there in life? You just have 12 keys. It's pretty much it. So there will be 12 keys and like a lot of scales. So as you learn music, you have to learn playing them on different keys and you have to learn different scales on different keys. Hope that made sense. Let's now move forward to the next level of these questions. Now we have a scale. We have a key. What about mode and Raga? Let me try and address the mode concept a bit more. So you have two ways of looking at a mode or using a mode in a song. One is you can use it relatively. The other way is you can use it parallely. So if you take the key of C, C major, C, now I'm getting it wrong. So if you take the key of C doesn't make much sense. You have to say if you take the key of C major, which is it gives you this vibe. Now, what if this is now a set of seven? It's a data set of seven. It's a pack of seven. Now the CEO of the company decides, no, I don't want to be the leader. I'll be a normal employee and someone else takes over. Let's say the new CEO is A. A decides to take over. So C has left the role of being the main leader and now A becomes the new leader of the pack. So A has a different vision for the company. A has a different perspective and that's what I call as a mode concept or a relative mode idea. Relative mode idea means you take the same set of notes. So the notes will be the same. It's all the white notes, but new leader, and what does a new leader mean? New key. New key has kind of also changed the scale and we don't call it a change of scale. We just say we are in a mode of C major. So what that means is we are still in the C major notes, trying to not drift too much from the scale concept, but somewhere in the middle of the song. Let's say you're starting your verse and you do your very rooted on C and then in the next section. A lot of people may have different opinions. People may think, hey, this guy changed the scale. Well, in theory, I did. I went to A minor, but I'm still in the same using the same members. I'm still using the same data set, the same set of seven. And that is how modes are generally taught. You use it in different parts of the song and sometimes you will have different modes for different chords. So when chords come into the party, you have different ideas. So here's where I will take a step back from this lecture and guide you after you finish watching this in the description. We will have for you a good number of lessons on modes and also intervals. So do check them out in the description. A lot of our YouTube videos are there. We've been doing videos now for a while. So you will find a lecture specifically on the chapter of mode. So do consider checking it out. And if you want to learn some of the basics, they're all waiting for you on our website, NathanielSchool.com, where on our members only portal, you will have all this stuff covered in a sequential step by step from ground zero manner. So do consider heading over to NathanielSchool.com, where you'll find me again as your teacher in a more structured environment. So coming back to mode, so I hope you felt that title shift, that polar opposite shift when C as the leader gave way to A as the leader. See, C major doesn't sound very happy anymore, starting it from C just like we do. Why? Because that leader A is referencing all of its subjects as different intervals. So A with respect to C is a minor third. A with respect to F is a minor sixth. You have that G, which is a minor seventh. And then at some point, you can go back to C major. So you have different vibes all through your song because the song is a dynamic art form. It's not static. You're not staring at it and saying, hey, I just saw that. No. It's more like a movie for the years. You're looking at it over time. So that's how you think of a mode. Now, there are seven modes by that argument for any scale. If you take C major, in other words, seven possible CEOs or seven possible leaders of the pack, so to speak. What if D became your leader? What does D have to say about life in general? All white notes still same members. But what is D trying to tell us? D is telling us a story where something brave is happening. That's D Dorian. If you're on E, it's going to be very mystical, mysterious. I also call it as an exotic scale, Frigian. Then if you take F as your new leader, very bright sound. It's like looking at the sun on a beach or something. It's a very dreamy sound. Then you take G, a completely different vibe, a very sort of like community vibe. Like we're all part of the same family joining together to do something cool. And then A I've already showed you, A Aeolian or A minor, G Mixolydian, by the way. That was a five. And the most tense of them all, the B Locrian. The seventh degree. You have modes of different scales also. So, modes kind of comes after you know scales. And we look at modes in this way relatively, but you could also look at modes as parallel scale. So, what I mean by that is you could be on the C major scale and borrow another scale. Maybe go to the, say I borrow that B flat note. A lot of people have done it. And then from the major beatles go to that Na Na Na part. You could do things like back to major. So you're just drifting a little bit going sort of to your friend's house chilling out there and coming back somewhere out of the neighborhood or somewhere not known to you, you know. But you're still in the same key because you know the route to come back home. You're still in the key of C. So you have the parallel mode options. You have the relative mode concepts. And yeah, so we've so far covered scale, key and mode. And the last thing, even though I'm not so qualified as an Indian classical trainer to teach this is a Raga. But what I will say without too much of demonstrations is Raga has a lot more properties than what a scale or a key or even a mode has to offer. First off, a Raga will have directional properties. So C major will not, you may go ascending in C major. But when you come down, you may come down in a completely different direction. You may go up in one way with one assortment of notes. You may come down in another way. So they have different directional properties where each direction not only determines the number of notes you play. It also determines the notes like which notes in that data set, but they will all come from maybe a bigger Raga, a bigger palette of data. And then you play around with that. So that will be a Raga or maybe a Janya Raga, a subset scale. I've done a video on subset scales, which is my interpretation of how Indian scales are built. Do check it out in the description. It's called subset scales. And another thing which the Raga will have will be the glides or the gamakas or in between the notes you have these microtones which musicians will deliver. And the great singers, the great musicians, which is why a lot of the great Eastern instruments have a huge amount of bend. Unlike a piano, you can't really bend between C and D-flat or C and D. But an Indian train musician will glide, will do all sorts of roundabout routes to kind of reach the next note. But they'll still be in that geography of the Raga or the rule set or the permutations or the logic of that particular Raga. It's not random. And it's very much prepared by the student with a lot of hours of practice. Right, guys? So that was an introduction to what a scale is. The definition of what a key is. What is a Raga? What is a mode? What is the parallel concept? What is the relative concept? We also touched a bit on key signature. So if you have any further questions regarding the video, do consider leaving a comment and we will try and get back to you. If you want a more structured approach where all these concepts would be covered, do consider visiting our website nathanielschool.com where you could opt for these video courses which are there waiting on the platform or you could reach out to one of our course advisors and do a regular semester at the school. Thanks again for watching the video. See you in the next one. Cheers.