An Interactive Music Scales Chart helps singers, musicians, songwriters, producers, composers, and music students explore the notes and interval patterns that create different scales. Instead of memorizing a static list, choose a root note and scale type to instantly build the scale in any key.

The chart includes major, natural minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, the seven modes, major and minor pentatonic, blues, whole tone, chromatic, and diminished scales.

For each scale, you can see its notes, scale formula, step pattern, scale degrees, semitone distances, solfège syllables, and keyboard layout.

Understanding Scale Formulas

Scale formulas describe each note according to its relationship with the root.

For example, the major scale formula is:

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

C major therefore contains:

C – D – E – F – G – A – B

The natural minor formula is:

1 – 2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – ♭6 – ♭7

C natural minor contains:

C – D – E♭ – F – G – A♭ – B♭

Learning formulas makes scales transferable. Instead of treating C minor, D minor, and E minor as unrelated collections of notes, you can recognize that they are created from the same interval structure starting on different roots.

Hear the Scale

Use Play Ascending, Play Descending, or Up & Down to hear how the notes relate to one another.

You can also click an individual scale note to hear it separately.

This makes the chart useful for more than music theory. It can function as a simple scale ear training and pitch practice tool.

Music Scales for Singers

Singers can use scales to develop pitch accuracy, interval recognition, vocal agility, improvisation, and harmony skills.

Try playing the root note and then singing the next scale degree before clicking it to check yourself.

You can also practice patterns such as:

1 – 2 – 3 – 2 – 1

1 – 3 – 5 – 3 – 1

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1

Once these relationships become familiar, finding melodies and harmony notes by ear can become easier.

Major and Minor Scales

The major scale is one of the foundations of Western tonal harmony.

Its whole-step and half-step pattern is:

Whole – Whole – Half – Whole – Whole – Whole – Half

The natural minor scale has a different pattern and lowers the third, sixth, and seventh degrees compared with the parallel major scale.

The tool also includes harmonic minor, which raises the seventh degree of natural minor, and the ascending form of melodic minor, which uses natural sixth and seventh degrees.

Explore the Seven Musical Modes

The seven commonly taught diatonic modes are:

Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.

Ionian has the same interval structure as the major scale, while Aeolian corresponds to natural minor.

The other modes change particular scale degrees, giving each a different harmonic character. For example, Dorian has a minor third but natural sixth, while Lydian is major-based with a raised fourth.

Pentatonic and Blues Scales

Pentatonic scales contain five notes per octave.

The major pentatonic formula is:

1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 6

The minor pentatonic formula is:

1 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – ♭7

These scales appear across many musical cultures and are especially useful for melody, improvisation, riffs, vocal runs, and songwriting.

The commonly taught minor blues scale adds the ♭5 to the minor pentatonic scale:

1 – ♭3 – 4 – ♭5 – 5 – ♭7

Keep in mind that real blues performance can include bends and expressive pitches that fall between the fixed notes represented by a keyboard or equal-tempered chart.

Relative Major and Minor

Major and natural minor scales can share the same notes while having different tonal centers.

For example:

C Major: C – D – E – F – G – A – B

A Minor: A – B – C – D – E – F – G

They contain the same pitch collection, but C feels like the tonal center of C major while A functions as the tonal center of A minor.

The chart automatically displays the relative minor of major scales and the relative major of natural minor scales.

Use the Chart for Songwriting and Production

If you're writing a melody, building harmonies, programming MIDI, arranging background vocals, or experimenting with improvisation, use the chart to quickly identify the notes available within a scale.

You can also compare similar scales. For example, switch between C major, C Mixolydian, and C Lydian and watch which notes change. This is a useful way to hear how altering just one scale degree can change the musical character.

Tip: Don't only memorize the names of the notes in a scale. Learn how each note sounds in relation to the root. Play the root, look away from the chart, and try to sing a selected scale degree before checking yourself. Understanding those relationships can make scales far more useful for singing, songwriting, improvisation, harmonizing, and playing by ear.

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