Music Alphabet - ABCDEFG

Note names

Whole and half steps

Tri-tone

Sharps, Flats, and Naturals

Trills

Octave

Scales

• The diatonic scale (seven notes)
• The melodic and harmonic minor scales (seven notes)

These scales are used in all of their transpositions. The music of this period introduces modulation, which involves systematic changes from one scale to another. Modulation occurs in relatively conventionalized ways. For example, major-mode pieces typically begin in a "tonic" diatonic scale and modulate to the "dominant" scale a fifth above.

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, additional types of scales were explored:

• The chromatic scale (twelve notes)
• The whole tone scale (six notes)
• The pentatonic scale (five notes)
• The octatonic or diminished scales (eight notes)

A large — indeed, virtually endless — variety of other scales exists:

• The Phrygian dominant scales (actually, a mode of the harmonic minor scale)
• The Arabic scales
• The Hungarian minor scale