All 12 Major Scales

(You may want to read the articles about Scales, the Major Scale, or Key Signatures first.)

There are 12 different Major Scales: One with no sharps or flats, 4 with sharps, 4 with flats, and 3 with either sharps or flats depending upon enharmonic spelling.

Major Scales with no sharps or flats: C Major

Major Scales with sharps: D, E, G, A

Major Scales with flats: E-flat, F, A-flat, B-flat

Enharmonic Major Scales: C-sharp/D-flat, F-sharp/G-flat, B-natural/C-flat

Learn about other Scales.

Sharps, Flats, Naturals, and Enharmonic notes

When a Sharp or Flat is added to a note it raises or lowers the note by a Half-step. For example, if we have the note C and we add a sharp to it the note now becomes C-sharp. If we have the note E and we add a flat to it the note now becomes E-flat.

Here are some examples of sharps and flats on the staff:

Naturals are notes without sharps or flats: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. For example the note D can be called D-natural because it has no sharp or flat.

Here are the natural notes:

Natural notes sometimes have their own symbol attached to them:

Enharmonic notes:

Enharmonic notes are notes that have the same pitch but have different note spellings. For example, F-sharp and G-flat are enharmonic notes, as are C-flat and B-natural.

See how sharps and flats are arranged on a keyboard

Review the staff and the note names

The Keyboard

The Keyboard is arranged so that the pitch goes left to right, low to high. The keys on keyboard instruments are arranged in a reoccurring pattern. The black keys are arranged in groups of two and three between the white keys.

This pattern continues up and down the keyboard.

The note names of the white keys are:

This key pattern repeats on the keyboard so that the note names of the white keys keep repeating: CDEFGAB-CDEFGAB-CDEFGAB and so on.

Sharps and Flats:

If we take a white key, D for example, and we go up (to the right) to the adjacent black key we are now on the note D-sharp. If we go down (to the left) to the adjacent black key from D we end up on the note D-flat. This is how we determine the names of the black keys and therefore all black keys will be a sharp or flat note.

You may have noticed that black keys can have more than one note name. For example C-sharp and D-flat are on the same black key, but which name we should use depends upon context, such as the Key Signature.

Half-steps and Whole-steps:

A Half-step is the distance of two adjacent notes, such as D to D-sharp, E to F, or A-flat to G. (A half-step is also known as a minor second.)

A Whole-step is the distance of two Half-steps, such as C to D, E to F-sharp, or B-flat to A-flat. (A whole-step is also known as a Major second.)

Learn about reading music