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Lesson 1

Musical

Example

Lesson 1

Secret

Score

Lesson 1

Score/

Music

Using the Natural Minor Scale

In the Composition 101 section, most of our music was composed using only the notes and chords found in the C Major scale. But you can actually use a minor scale that contains the exact same notes as that C Major scale. This scale is the a natural minor scale.

(To learn how to create any natural minor scale, refer to Natural Minor Scales.)

Let’s now listen to a piece of music created entirely from the a natural minor scale:

As you can hear, the music expresses a sad, wistful quality. Yet every chord in this music can also be found in the happy sounding C major scale. That's because as we just discovered earlier, the C major scale and the a natural minor scale contain the same notes and build the same chords. It's the emphasis we place on specific notes and chords that distinguishes these two scales.