Exercise 1:

1. Enter the Tookit
2. Left-drag the white circle (anchor) to the left-most piano key
3. Choose “Major” from the Scale menu.  You’ll see two blocks with 7 of the 12 piano keys (labelled 0,2,4,5,7,9,11)  occupied.  Listen to these.  This is the sound flavour of the “Major scale”.
4. Repeatedly click “Labels”, and you will see the labels change, including showing numbers 0 – 11, 1 – 7, 0 – 24, and MIDI note names.

With labels 0 – 11, 0 labels the block start (the anchor).

The label 4, say, means that piano key produces a sound 4 semitones higher than the key labelled 0.

Change the labelling until you see 0 – 11 repeating.

Exercise 2:

1. CTL-left-click somewhere nearby the current anchor.  The two blocks shift, keeping the same semitone distances,  starting at this new anchor.  Listen to these.
2. Repeatedly click “Labels”, and you will see the labels change, including showing numbers 0 – 11, 1 – 7, 0 – 24, and MIDI note names.
3. Notice 0 – 11 doesn’t change after the blocks have shifted.  The actual named notes involved will have changed, determined by where the blocks have ended up.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 a few times.

Examples of semitone collections and their names.

0,2,4,5,7,9,11 is named major scale.  0,2,3,5,7,8,10 is named natural minor scale.  These are different scale types.

0,4,7 is named major triad.  0,3,7 is named minor triad.  These are different chord types

The sound flavour we experience results from the semitone distances between the notes involved (in various blocks).  One of these notes often dominates the overall sound. The flavour may be restful, edgy, very clashy, and so on, causing different emotions, maybe anticipating or really wanting change of flavour to happen.

We call this note the tonic for a scale and a root for a chord (a collection of three or more different named notes, that can be played at the same time)

You listened to the sound flavour of the major scale in Exercises 1 and 2 above.  The flavour just shifted higher or lower in pitch, and with ear training practice this flavour can be recognised and individual semitone distances.

Change the labelling until you see 0 – 11 repeating for the following exercises.

Exercise 3:

With the ALT-key held down throughout, hover the mouse over a specified piano key to generate a major triad rooted there, then move beneath the key, and repeat this a few times, to get the sound flavour of this chord in you head

1. Do this with note 0 in the left-most block.
2. Then with note 0 in the next block.

Can you hear the same sound flavour, just higher?  This is because the chord involves the same three notes at semitones 0, 4, 7 from the block start, but in different octaves.

Exercise 4:

You are going to create the minor blues scale without using the Scale menu.  Its semitone collection is ( 0, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10).   As you do this exercise, the notes will relabel as emuso is analysing your creation for a tonic.

1. If needed, enter the Toolkit
2. Click Invent
3. CTL-left-click on some piano key to set the anchor (start of a block)
4. Left-click at 0, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 piano keys to the right of the anchor.  The scale is recognised.  Play it.
5. If you want to see this on guitar, type ‘g’.  ‘p’ switches to piano.
6. We can now choose a different block start if these notes are hard to sing, say.  CTL-left-click some piano key or guitar string/fret to change it.

While we only see a few notes, music created with this scale could use notes from several blocks.