The first thing you might notice about music notation is that the notes are written on a bunch of lines. Musicians call these lines “staves,” and each stave (or “staff”) has five (5) lines. The higher notes fall onto what’s called the “treble” (or high) staff … while the lower notes fall onto the “bass” (or low)

In music notation, all 12 notes are laid out in the chromatic scale pattern. So it’s pretty easy to pick apart. The only thing is … this pattern looks different than how we’re used to seeing it on a piano keyboard. You see, on a piano, the chromatic scale is laid out from left to

Of course, it’s one thing to play through different notes and intervals. They sound nice enough … and they give us some good target practice. But it’s another thing to actually play music. And by that, I mean musical scales, melodies, chords, and progressions. We just need to arrange the 12 notes into new and special

This, my friends, is where things really get good. And that’s because all 12 keys in music are exactly the same. So once you’ve learned the interval patterns for one key (like we did in the key of C), you already know how they work in all the others. You see, any note can be the

So all the colors follow the exact same patterns as the scale degrees in music … which is cool. You can see how the different notes are spaced out at whole-step and half-step intervals. And nothing is really complex at all. But you might still be wondering, “Wait a minute … why do we use both letters and numbers

Now that we’ve seen the six basic interval patterns in music, we can look at how musicians label them. We just have to start back at that old, familiar pattern … the major scale. Of course, we already know this scale includes notes 1, 2, 3, 4 … 5, 6, 7, 8. For example, the C

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

Well, what do you know? We’re back to the chromatic scale. And that means we’re back to square one (or circle one … pardon the pun). You see, nothing has changed about the 12 notes in this pattern. It’s just that we now have a huge advantage. Because we can see each note (and every

Nothing in music is random. And that’s why it’s so easy to learn. Patterns like the chromatic scale, the major scale, and the circle of fifths are all very simple. And because each pattern leads to the next, they’re also totally predictable. In fact, no one is throwing us any curveballs here … the science of sound