Building A Minor Scale
In this video we're going to discuss how to build a minor scale, and of course the minor sound is the sadder-sounding scale as compared to a major, which is more of a happy sound. But the construction of the scale is very simple, and it's going to be similar to how we explained it in constructing a major scale, with the use of whole steps and half-steps. So, a whole step is when you skip a note, so from C to D is a whole step, because we're skipping this C-sharp. A half-step would be going from C to C-sharp.
So, to construct a minor scale, a C-minor scale is going to look and sound like this. And the way it's constructed is if you use whole and half-steps, you've got whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half-step, whole step. So, again, that's whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, whole. And that formula can be used on any part of the keyboard for any scale, so it's easiest to learn your scales just in terms of that formula so you don't have to necessarily memorize each note in them. If you wanted to do, say, the G-minor scale using the same thing, again, it would be whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, whole. That sounds like this, and as far as the fingering, you're just going to go up to your third, cross over with your thumb and all the way up. If you're going two octaves, you're going to go third, cross over with your thumb, fourth, cross over with your thumb, third, cross over, fourth, to the top, and the same way back down. So, the fingering is the same way up and down, but now that you know that, the best thing to go and do is start at every key of the keyboard using that same whole-half construction, and that way you'll be able to start to learn and visualize each of the minor scales in every key.