If you want to make great music, then you need to know more than just the eight notes of a major scale. I mean, the major scale sounds nice and all. But music is full of scales and chords that include those other notes … the ones you skip in the major scale pattern.

At first glance, these labels—which are called “scale degrees”—might look strange. After all, they have some pretty weird names … like “b2” and “b3.” But the truth is, they’re not so bad. These musical terms are just a foreign language. And we can use Color Music as our own personal translator.

You see, color and music are just different languages that tell the same story. So by using color (which we already know), we an easily learn the vocabulary of a musician.  In fact, it’s surprisingly simple. There might seem to be a lot of notes and labels in music. But really, all intervals can be broken down into six basic groups:

Really … that’s it. There are only a handful of intervals in music. And they’re all easy to see using squares and circles. We just have to look at how musicians label these intervals … and then we’re set. Because once we understand these nuts and bolts of music, we can start playing any pattern we want.