[mapletrees]

ok, got in a minor accident on the way to the garage and now I need a new radiator....

still got my coupon if you're interested in a fair trade...

mmmmpphhh....

this driving stuff is dangerous...

when are they going to invent those personal fly about like astronauts backpack gizmos?


The C major scale again...

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C....

'stack' (hey tbondo, that's probably another word you like!)

where was I...

stack thirds from C until you've got three notes...

you should get CEG


let's look at what we've got within that cluster of notes of CEG

the interval from C to E is a major 3rd (and like you noted above, that's four half steps or more simply thought of perhaps as two whole steps)...recall that an interval of a major 3rd sounds pleasant to the ear...

still within that cluster of notes of CEG now....

the interval from E to G is a minor third (and as you noted above it's an interval of three half-steps or more commonly thought of as 'one and a half' steps...if you were looking in a TAB book for example and they indicate a bent note with a "1 1/2" it means bend the note 1 1/2 steps or equivalently three half steps or equivalently three frets worth)

where were we?

E to G was a minor 3rd...again, recall that an interval of a minor third is pleasant to the ear...

within that triad of the notes CEG think of the C to E interval as the 'lower interval', and the E to G interval as the 'upper interval'....that's common language...now if you look at what we might call the 'outer interval' which is the interval from C to G...you've correctly noted that it is an interval of a 5th (a perfect 5th).....

and again....we agreed long ago that a perfect 5th is a pleasant sounding interval (a consonance as opposed to a dissonance)

so what we find is that when we take a major scale and start stacking up intervals of a third we can get pleasant sounding clusters of notes...(there's other clusters to still be discussed)

when you hear the 'triad' or 'chord' consisting of the notes CEG you hear a pleasant major 3rd, a pleasant minor 3rd, and a pleasant 5th...you get a pleasant sounding chord...

well anyways...

onward...

wait, one more thing about that CEG triad....

what are we going to name it...

even though it is made up of a major and minor interval....the lower interval (the C to E interval) seems to dictate the sound you hear....

play xxx553 (C,E, and G) and you should hear an overall major or upbeat 'quality'....we'll call it a C major triad...

if instead you were to play

xxx543 (C, Eb, and G) you would hear an overall minor quality and you'll see later we'd call this a C minor triad (what you might be able to take note of is that this C minor triad has a lower interval C to Eb that is a minor third....and an upper interval of Eb to G that is a major third......moral of the story is that the lower interval is responsible for whether or not you hear an overall major or minor quality....

off to fart around with the car...

but go back on your own for now and look at the structure of the following triads within the C major scale ...

Do CEG......FAC.....and GBD share the same structure as one another? Hopefully you get "yes".

Do DFA....EGB....and ACE share the same structure as one another? Hopefully you get "yes".

What about that last triad...the one built from the note B....which would be BDF....should get a different underlying structure....


I'm having mother in law thoughts again when I hear that BDF...