I shamelessly copied and pasted this from another answer of mine. ---------------------- Here's a little thing called the chromatic scale. It's simply all twelve notes used in music. The slashes indicate alternate names for those notes (notes are also called tones): A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab - A (and so on...) Memorize this and you'll find music theory much easier to understand. The letters used are A to G; all the letters have a sharp except B and E. Read that last sentence a few times and never forget it. Technically there are times when E# and B# (a.k.a. F and C) are used, but not that often. The distance between two notes (eg, G to G#, Bb to B, E to F) is called a half-step (also called a semitone). Obviously twice that interval (eg, G to A, B to C#, Db to Eb) is a whole-step (also called a whole tone). The b is called a flat, meaning one half-step lower, while the # is called a sharp, meaning one-half-step higher. ------------------------------- The major and minor scales are what we hear most often in Western music, so they're the bread and butter for most musicians. If I'm speaking Greek to you, think of "Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do." That's the major scale in sing-songy terms. Below are the intervals for each scale (interval = the distance between each note). Check out the examples below by using your knowledge of the chromatic scale and the whole and half steps that I mentioned earlier. Major - W W H W W W H eg, D major scale is D E F# G A B C# (D) Minor - W H W W H W W eg, D minor scale is D E F G A Bb C (D) At this point perhaps you ask why we sometimes use sharps and sometimes use flats. It's just to keep it looking pretty. For example, if the Bb in the D minor scale were instead an A#, we'd have two A notes and no B notes. So whatever keeps every letter in the scale is what we use to determine whether we use flats or sharps. A# and Bb are the same thing, just different names under different circumstances. The first note of the given scale is called the root. So the D note is the root of the D scales. The third note of a scale is called the third, the fourth is called the fourth, et cetera. Look above at the D major and minor scales above. Look at the first, third, and fifth notes of each scale. Seriously, look at them. A plain ol' everyday good-to-have-around major or minor chord consists of these notes, respectively. So a D major chord has the notes D-F#-A while the minor is D-F-A. See how the only difference is the third, and how the minor chord's third is one half-step lower than the third of the major chord? That's the only difference between major and minor chords. For example: A major: A-C#-E A minor: A-C-E E major: E-G#-B E minor: E-G-B C major: C-E-G C minor: C-Eb-G ------------ Those are the basics. Hope I gotcha somewhere.

Chromatic scales are basically a series of half steps going up or down. Major scales have a diatonic pattern in which there are half steps between the 3 and 4 notes and the 7 and 8 notes. The pattern in W W H W W W H, where W represents the whole steps, and the H represents the half steps. You must remember though, that there are natural half steps between B and C, and E and F. This is useful information to know when building a scale. Minor scales start on the sixth tone of the relative major scale. There are three types of minor scales: natural, harmonic, and melodic. The natural minor scale has a normal minor pattern: W H W W H W W. The harmonic minor scale raises the seventh tone a half step. The melodic minor scale raises the 6th and 7th tones up a half step while ascending the scale, and brings them back down while descending the scale. All taken from my knowledge. :) I'm knowledgeable about scales.