Fiddlewidget for String Teachers

Activity 2b : The major scale; where the chords live

Time required: About 10 minutes
Materials:

1.Printed copies of the chromatic scale notes that were used in the first part of this activity

2. The chromatic-capable instrument that was used in the first part of this activity.

3.Some means of selecting the tones from the chromatic scale sheets to give a major scale. For now, a plain old-fashioned pencil will work. Have enough for everybody, and make sure they have erasers. I'm not kidding about this- sometimes students come unprepared, and even the prepared ones make mistakes sometimes.

Lead the students through marking the notes in the G major scale, or whatever major scale you chose for the tune in activity 1.

I just call out the notes; g, a, b,c,d,e,f#, and g again. They can circle these tones with a pencil, and then we'll talk about the scale structure.

Things to point out here:
1. The notes they circled will be the notes needed for the tune we played in Activity 1.

2. The half step / whole step pattern they marked applies to any major scale:
Root, 1 step, 1 step,1/2 step,1 step, 1 step,1 step,1/2 step

3. The notes in the major chords are determined by where the notes fall in the scale. We will finally get into that in the next Activity.

You can assess the learning here by asking students to start on a given root note, and just say or write down the notes in that major scale by using the half step pattern above.

Now let's move on to the Nashville Numbers system in the next Activity.

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