1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

MAJOR KEYS AND RELATIVE MINOR KEYS

I thought I had enough to think about in the sections I've covered up till now. This section however, complicates things more. If you are lucky enough to be able to recognize tones and just can't figure out what is going on with a certain scale, that sounds like it has many accidentals or random accidentals, it might be a minor scale. There are actually five modes to minor scales. These are as follows:

Natural	Pure scale
Harmonic	7th tone raised 1/2 step ascending and descending
Melodic	6th and 7th tone raised 1/2 step ascending and normal descending
Gypsy	4th and 7th raised 1/2 step
Tonic	3rd and 6th tones of major scale is lowered 1/2 step
Mel Bay's Deluxe Guitar Scale Book. Mel Bay Publications, Inc. 1973.

Each major key will have a relative minor key. The minor scale is built on the 6th tone of the major scale (this is the tonc of the minor scale). The key signature of both will be the same.

This confused me until I analyzed it further. How could two scales have the same signatures? Then I realized that the minor scales come from the F clef or base clef, and the signatures are the same even though the keys are different. Here is an example of the C scale to start with.

This image shows the G clef and the F clef. If you begin reading the notes from "middle C" which is the note that separates the two staffs, the notes will read C-B-A-G-F-E-D-C the lowest note. Here you will see that this note falls on the second space of the F cleff staff. If this were a G clef staff this note would be A (as opposed to C). Now take the ascending scale and put it on the G clef scale and you will have A minor. Here is how the signatures for the major scales and the minor scales become the same. The only difference is that one set of signatures comes from the G clef and the other (relative minor) signatures come from the F clef. Look at this example:

B major
G# Minor

In the example above the keys of B major and its relative G# minor both have the same signatures, even though the notes are different. In the Key of B major, F-C-G-D-A are sharp. In the example above on the F clef the sharp notes are A-E-B-F-C. However we are not concerned with the names of those notes. I am only showing how the major and relative minor keys assume the same key signatures. For our purposes, we change the F clef to a G clef and rename the scale G# minor. We don't even have a key called G# major. If we had it would require a F## to keep in step with the step program. The minor is possible because the steps are different. There are 13 relative minor keys in relation to major keys. I've arranged them in a table which you will find HERE

HOME