How to Play Major Scales on a Tuba

Video Transcript

"Hello everyone. Kevin Smith here, TubaLove. Doing my typical practice session and I'm going to work on some major scales now and I'm going to say that the scales that I'm doing are based on what we have now in western music called "diatonic scale". It's basically from the Greek work "diatonos" which means moving in whole steps. Any standard diatonic scales has five whole steps and a couple half steps which may or may not be relevant to you at this moment, but may be when I start playing minor scales later. I think major scales are great ways to not only keep working on your general sound, your omberture that morning but a way to hear what it is your producing. Because we're musicians, our ear is critically important. The more you listen, the better musician your going to be. So a major scale, no matter what note you start with, it always has the same relative sound to it. That's a C Major scale. You've got whole step, whole step, whole step, that's a half step, another whole step, another whole step, another whole step and it ends with a half step. So no matter what scale you play that's a C Major scale. If I play a D Major scale, it's going to incorporate certain different notes but the relative sound will be the same. Like C Major, D Major, E Major and F Major. So they're all going to sound as you continue, all of the major scales sound relatively the same. It's the tonic of the first note: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, half step. That's the diatonic construction of a major scale. Again, work on major scales because your going to be seeing them a lot in music and it's just going to facilitate your understanding of it and your ability to music a lot better."