Revisiting the Lpc and it's scale mode led me to explore something ive been interested in for a long time but never really had my head around. Fully understanding the circle of fifths, scales and keys have somewhat eluded me on the whole, but today i made some good progress in understanding them and found some really useful tips and tutorials along the way.
As mentioned yesterday, the lpc allows you to select from a load of different scales. This is like the midi function in ableton and bascially gives you the set notes to play within. This is great if you dont know scales and can provide great starting points for melodies when you have an idea of the mood or feeling you want to create. For example major or minor keys, or eastern, gypsy, oriental, sounding scale types.
While this is great for starting musical ideas on the lpc, the majority of harmonic ideas come from playing without set structures in mind, and i find these come a lot more naturally when creating music, so i wanted to find a way of understanding how you could find the scale from the notes that you've just played.
This led me to first nail down exactly what is the difference between a scale and a key, as they always seem to be in the same sentences, which wikipedia and this page was very useful for.
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A key is the collection of notes in relation to the note (e.g in the key of c) and a scale is the order of those notes (e.g c major scale).
So the collection of notes for the key of C Major is CDEFGABC, and the Major Scale is Tone, Tone, Semi-Tone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semi-Tone.
These tones/semi-tones are called scale degrees and bascially a tone is 2 physical keys on the keyboard up, e.g C to D, and a semi tone is 1 up, e.g E to F, or natural note to sharp note.
You can apply the Major Scale pattern to any of the other notes, and this would give you the collection of notes contained in that key.
The other thing that confused me was when a piece of music is in the key of C. with no major, or minor indicated. What you do then is simply assume it's Major.
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There in answers all my questions on that, and there a loads of different scales each with their own sound, so i looked for a way of finding them.
First i found this where you can input your own notes and it will tell you possible scales - http://www.scales-chords.com/scalefinder.php. Uber useful if you've just come up with a musical idea and want to find possible scales to play in.
But then Stray sent me a link to the one he used to create the scale function on lpc which was even better - http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/archives/piano/ns4_ie5/ as it gives you the collection of notes for any scale. This led me onto realising i'd like to practice the scales i like in order to start learning. I knew the circle of fifths was a common language, and its something i use in my djing as all my tracks can be navigated by key thanks to a nice little app called Mixed In Key.
The circle of fifths only deals with The major and minor scales, which are the scales in the Western system, but are also the most common so a good place to start learning. I'd seen a video on the spectrasonics website with a tutorial from piano maestro Jordan Rudess on practicing something called triad inversions around the circle of fifths, which was very useful but didnt answer what i was looking for.
So i decided to take an hour out and watch a few tutorials and stumbled across this one below. It took me writing notes and watching it through twice but at the end i understood it and started to practice it. I find it easier to learn by watching it explained and then write my own notes and work it out from trying out what ive learnt, but its a 15 min video, so a quick overview could be this - thanks to this page for helping clarify concisely.
The circle of fifths shows all 12 major keys and 12 minor keys possible in the Western system. Its called the "circle of fifths" as name of the key goes up a 5th each time you add a sharp (or remove a flat), and goes down a fifth each time you add a flat (or remove a sharp). So if we start at C, (which has no sharps or flats), and go up a perfect 5th, we get G, and the key of G has one sharp.
The major keys are listed on the outer circle, and the minor keys are on the inner circle, and the number of sharps/flats are on the outer circle which are in a set order. You can then use this to workout what sharps & flats are in the various scales, which means you can play all of the major and minor keys, and it means you can move around the circle, (and within the scales) to play harmonically / play stuff that modulates and progresses.
I'm sure if google could bring up loads more professional ones but this is the 1st one i found and he seems like he's giving free piano lessons which is well worthy of sharing. You can get a lot deeper into it, and obviously there are many sides to the language of understanding and expressing music theory, but this video helped get started and start to think about how i could practice and learn the keys, scales and circle, so hopefully it will help others too.
I then wanted to find something for practicing scales the guitar and found this really useful tutorial. It open my eyes to something called the caged theory, of which i'll need to look at more as it was getting late, but this seems to show patterns for practicing, which you can then move up and down the fretboard once you've learnt them. The guitar is an instrument of patterns, which makes a different way of learning to the piano, but ultimately means you can pick up the instrument and express and collaborate within the musical ideas of your tracks which is my real interest.
The next day i found this tutorial with a a guide for practicing the circle of fifths
Just posting a status on facebook has already led me to some uber useful information thanks to friend's comments, including the circle progression and these scale, key & chord finders for anyone with an android phone.
It all adds to my thirst to want to explore and understand more, so i can add more sides to my music making and playing, and hopefully this will find its way to other people who are looking. Next up is getting to grips with my Pad Kontrol & learning finger drumming.