Major or minor scale: understanding the difference

The first comparison keeps the same starting note. C major and C minor both begin on C, the tonic, the note the music comes home to. Four notes stay the same: C, D, F and G. Three go down a semitone (the smallest step, from one key to the very next): E becomes E♭, A becomes A♭ and B becomes B♭.

These are the third, sixth and seventh notes of the scale. The third matters most: from C to E there are two tones, a major third; from C to E♭, a tone and a half, a minor third. It is the note that tells the ear major or minor first.

Now hear the difference in music rather than in a scale. The same short phrase, on the same degrees, once in each mode. Many listeners hear the minor version as darker or more serious, but that is not a rule: tempo, rhythm and what surrounds the phrase change the impression as much as the scale.

The second comparison is the opposite: same notes, different tonic. C major and A minor use exactly the same seven white keys. They are called relative scales. What changes is the note the music rests on, and so the place where the semitones fall: in A minor, they come after the second note (B–C) and after the fifth (E–F).

To find the relative minor of a major scale, go down three semitones from its tonic: from C, you reach A. Or count up to the sixth note of the major scale: C D E F G A. The two methods always agree.

Compare the two rows of steps with the ones above. C minor and A minor have the same pattern, because both are natural minor scales. C major and A minor share their notes, not their pattern. Keeping these two ideas apart avoids most of the confusion around major and minor.

Minor comes in three common forms. They share the same first five notes; only the sixth and seventh change. Here they are on A, so that the changes stand out as black keys.

• Natural minor: A B C D E F G A, the white keys. It is the relative of C major seen above.
• Harmonic minor: G goes up a semitone to G♯, both going up and coming down. G♯ sits just below A, so the scale leans firmly towards its tonic, and the chord on E becomes E major (E G♯ B), which pulls back to A minor. Between F and G♯ there is a gap of a tone and a half, easy to recognise.
• Melodic minor: going up, F and G are both raised, F♯ and G♯, which smooths that gap. Coming down, classical practice returns to the natural form, G and F. In jazz, the raised form is often used in both directions.

In the harmonic row, W+H marks the tone and a half between F and G♯. All three forms keep the same minor third, A to C: they are all minor, they only differ near the top.