Whole tones and Half tones

Page views

Great well now that you've got your first song down its time to do a tiny bit more theory, dont worry I'll try to keep it short.

Now that you know three Major chords (C F and G), I'm going to give you a formula that will allow you to work out any Major chord that you may need.

Whole Tones and Half Tones

Before I can give you the formula I just need to take a second to explain to you what a whole tone is and what a half tone is.

A half tone is the smallest possible interval between two notes on the piano, so looking at the keyboard below C to C# would be a half-tone, C# to D would be a half-tone, D to Eb would be a half tone. Interestingly E to F and B to C are also half tones because they do not have a black note separating them.

Now very simply, a whole tone is twice the width of the half tone interval(strange that, isnt it?). So looking at the keyboard below we see some whole tones as being C to D, D to E, E to F#, F# to Aflat, Aflat to Bflat and Bflat to C. There are of course more, A to B, B to C# etc, these are all whole tones, once you get the idea of what a whole tone and a half tone is you are ready to move on.

Copyright © 2002 - 2003 by Akhil Shastri - All Rights Reserved

No portion of this site may be reproduced with out the express written permission of Akhil Shastri.