The C Major Scale

Today we are going to start a new section on creating melodies in Reason. But first we need to understand a little more music theory. In music, musicians use scales as the frame for their melodies. There are two basic types of scales, the Major Scale, which has a happy sound, and the minor scale, which has a somber sound. You hear the Major Scale a lot in Pop Music. And you hear the minor scale a lot in Hip Hop music. Today we're going to learn the Major Scale. And more specifically the C Major Scale.

The Major Scale is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth which duplicates the first an octave higher. These notes correspond to the syllables "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, (Do)". The simplest major scale to write or play on the piano is C major, the only major scale not to require sharps or flats, using only the white keys on the piano keyboard:

1. Open Reason
2. Make sure you have a Mixer 14:2
3. Set your tempo to 85 bpm and click the CLICK button.
   
4. Create a NN19 Digital Sampler
5. Click on the Folder in the upper left hand corner of the NN19.
6. In the Patch Browser, click Reason Factory Sound Bank: NN19 Sampler Patches: Piano: BRIGHTPIANO.smp
7. Now we want to use the keyboard to play the scale.
8. Start on the lowest note on your keyboard and play the 8 white notes in a row. Count as you go a long, or say do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, do.
9. When you feel like you have the C Major scale under your fingers. Try recording it.
10. Set your loop points at L1 and R3
11. Push the record button and wait for the cursor to get back to the L.
12. Then play the C Major Scale along with each click.
13. If the notes are a little off beat you can use the quantize function (I'll show you this individually)
14. If this is too easy try setting your loop points between L1 and R5 and go up and down the scale!
15. When you're finished, save the scale in your folder as C Major Scale.
16. On your blog write about the following questions:
17. What is a Scale?
18. What does a Major Scale sound like? Who uses it?
19. What is a Melody?