Basic Music Theory: How to Read, Write, and Understand Written Music

Basic Music Theory

Half Steps and Whole Steps

A half step, as it’s defined by Webster’s, is one twelfth of an octave, but

that definition doesn’t help us much. A better definition for a half step is

the difference in pitch between any two adjacent keys on a piano. Or, if

you’re more familiar with the guitar or electric bass, a half step would be

the difference in pitch between any two adjacent frets on the same string.

Natural Half Steps

This is a really important concept and will cause you no end of confusion

if you don’t understand it, so put your thinking cap on.

Most half steps involve some kind of accidental, like B to Bb, or F# to G,

or C# to C natural. But if you look at the keyboard, you can see that there

are two places where there is no black key between two white keys. Go

ahead. Look right now and see if you can name them. I’ll wait.

Remember our definition of a half step? Any two adjacent keys on the

piano, right? So those notes—E to F, and B to C—are also half steps, but

without the need of any accidentals. These are called natural half steps

and if you memorize them now, you won’t have to memorize them later.

Whole Steps

Two half steps make a whole step.

The Chromatic Scale

I guess first we have to define what a scale is in music. According to

Webster’s it’s a graduated series of musical tones ascending or

descending in order of pitch according to a specific scheme of their

intervals. And actually, that’s a pretty good definition, so we’ll use it.

The chromatic scale is the first reason for the existence of enharmonic

notes. The scheme of intervals in the chromatic scale is half steps.

If you were to play a chromatic scale from C to C, you would begin at C

and play every single note going up until you got to the next C, and then