The Major Scale on Piano

Most of the music you hear today is written in a major key. From your favorite pop songs, to large orchestral works, to blues classics, all draw from this selection of notes. It’s also the first scale we learn in piano lessons and one that is extremely versatile.

Formula for a Major Scale

First, the difference between a key and a scale:

A key is a collection of notes that sound good together.

A scale is the exercise of playing those notes in a specific order.

That order begins on the note the scale is named after and ends an octave above. For example, the C major scale begins on C, and ends on the next C above it, encompassing the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. The G major scale would start on G and end on the next G, encompassing the notes G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, and G.

By convention, scales begin on the note closest to middle C, just because those are the notes easiest to reach with your hands when sitting correctly at the piano, but it is still called a scale regardless of where you begin it. These two (C major and G major) are the first scales usually taught when learning the piano. This is because the C major scale does not include any black keys, and it is easiest to memorize, and then you learn scales with an increasing number of black keys. C major has no black keys, G major has one black key, D major has two black keys, A major has three black keys, and so on. To learn how to play all twelve major scales (there are twelve notes), review our resources or enroll in music lessons near Arlington with us.

The terms scale and key are used somewhat interchangeably, but it is good to know the technical difference. You wouldn’t say a piece or song is written in a major scale, you would say it is written in a major key. However, when you solo over a chord progression, you would be soloing using the major scale.

Kinds of steps in scales

There are two kinds of steps in scales — whole- and half-steps. These are essential terms to learn for beginner piano. These are also called whole tones and semitones, respectively. A half step is the distance between one key and the next (for example, C to C#) and a whole step is two half steps (C to D). As you can see in the image to the left, E to F is also a half step, as there is no black key in between to make it a whole step, like in C to D. For a more complete visual representation, check out our blog on the layout of a piano keyboard!

The formula for a major scale is as follows, using H and W as shorthand for half-step and whole-step: W, W, H, W, W, W, H. You can use this formula to find a major scale starting from any note on the keyboard.

Though the formula exists, it is not very useful to calculate the major scale every time. Scales are a very useful exercise for beginners and advanced players alike. For beginners, it is useful for teaching you how to use every one of your fingers and building the muscles required to play piano through repetitive motion (like any other exercise for any other part of your body). For advanced players, scales can be used to both become comfortable soloing in any key while simultaneously increasing speed and dexterity.

Above are a few major scales with the correct fingering – for more here is a complete guide. It is important to stick to the correct fingering! Major scales, and the piano, have existed for hundreds of years, and over time humanity has figured out the optimal way to play them with our human hands. Maybe in the future, when we all have 20-fingered bionic hands, it will change, and I’ll have to update the blog, but for now, this is the correct way.

Check out this blog on how to read sheet music for a refresher!

how to begin learning the major scale on piano

As a piano teacher, the first thing I do when teaching piano is to start people on playing major scales. It serves the double purpose of teaching people how to use every one of their fingers as well as learning a few different and common keys in which their favorite songs are written.

When learning how to play a major scale, the most difficult thing to learn is the finger positions. There are eight notes in a major scale, and we only have five fingers on each hand, so we have to use some of our fingers more than once. In the first few scales, the right hand plays with the thumb (1st finger), then the pointer (2nd finger), then the middle (3rd finger), then the thumb tucks underneath the third finger (pictured left) to play the next note, after which you have enough fingers to finish the scale, so it just goes 2nd, 3rd, 4th (ring), and 5th (pinky) to finish the scale. Then you just reverse it to go back down. By convention, you just play from bottom to top, and then without repeating the top note, immediately proceed back down to the starting note.

The left hand plays the scale as a mirror image to the right. This means that it starts with the 5th finger at the bottom of the scale, starting with the upward direction, so then the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st finger, before tucking the thumb under and reaching for the next note with the 3rd finger, then finishing the scale with the 2nd and 1st fingers.

While this may seem confusing, just playing it a few times will make a lot of sense! Imagine you have the problem of needing to play all the notes in a scale. You start to play the scale with your left hand, one note to each finger, but you run out of fingers after the 5th note! So you just reach over and finish the scale with the three fingers you need to finish it up.

Here is a video guide on how to play the C major scale with each hand.

Most students struggle more with playing the scale down than they do with playing it up, so I recommend just practicing playing in a downward direction a few times before reconnecting it to the full exercise and playing it bottom to top to bottom.

Applications of the major scale in piano

Though there are no pieces nor songs that just play the major scale repeatedly in its entirety with both hands, which would be quite boring, many, many pieces and songs use portions of the major scale as melody or additions to the melody. These passages are called scalar passages, and they can be used very effectively in music.

Here are examples of some beginner pieces that use the major scale:

Mozart’s Sonata No. 16 in C major, which effectively uses some scalar passages as the melody in measures 4-8, among others,

J.S. Bach’s Minuet in G major, which effectively uses some scalar passages (of the C major scale) in the melody throughout the piece,

and Elton John’s Your Song, in which classically trained Elton John shows off his piano skills with somewhat scalar passages (of the Eb major scale) all throughout the song.

Origins of the major scale

The origin of the major scale has a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is the Greeks, and the long answer is we don’t really know!

Today’s major scale is based on the Greek Ionian mode – one of seven modes in music. These modes were recorded by Pythagoras (yes, same Pythagoras as the Pythagorean Theorem), and over time, certain modes became more popular than others for writing music.

The origins of today’s western music can be traced to choral music in the Renaissance, where the major scale proliferated as it results in some very pleasing interactions between the tonic (first note of the major scale) and the other notes when they are combined. Over time, this became the main scale in which Western music was written, and when music theory began to be studied (without the history we know now) it was labeled as the major scale, and the name stuck.

However, we really don’t know why this scale was the one that was chosen. Our blog post on the layout of the piano keyboard covers why certain notes were chosen in greater detail, but basically, certain intervals, such as the octave, fifth, and fourth, have whole ratios of their fundamental frequencies, and the other notes have been filled in between those intervals. But why were those notes chosen specifically? What about this arrangement of notes is so pleasing that it has developed independently across many cultures in the world as a way to organize music?

We just don’t know. The origins of music are prehistoric, and though historians have done their best to draw a throughline between bone and reed flutes (some of the first instruments) found in archeological sites of ancient settlements to the music we have today, we just don’t have enough information. Even those flutes came after the first music, which was most likely just songs that people would sing. And without writing, or a way to record those songs that ancient hunter-gatherers would sing, the origins of music, and the true origin of the major scale, are lost to the ravages of time.

Maybe when time machines are invented, we can finally solve this and many other burning historical questions, but for now, the why is lost – all we have is the musical theory that was built on top of it, and the vast library of beautiful music that is written in major keys.