Understanding scales for melodic steel instruments can be a little confusing at first glance, as we need to talk about music theory. If you don't understand this right away, that is okay! It's a thorough explanation and is quite dense, and reading or grasping this won't affect your overall playing experience. If you want to skip, you can scroll down to either “Tension, Musical Flavours and Sound Healing” our the below scale table, to get a quicker idea of the scales you may like.

So with that said, read on for a deeper explanation of music theory and how it relates to these instruments.

If you are completely new to music, or have been exposed to just a little bit of theory, the terms used on our website may seem a little nebulous. I will do my best to remove the fog, but to do that we will need a starting point to set forth from. A "C Major Scale" is something most people are familiar with, so for the following explanation I will use that.

Before we get into the scale, we need to look at an individual note, as that will help us moving forward. The note we will look at is C4. The C refers to the note, and the number 4 refers to the octave that the C is part of. Middle C on the piano is C4, and a standard piano has 7 octaves. An octave consists of going from a C to C on the keys, and all notes between those two. The lower the number, the lower the octave, the lower the sound, and vice versa.

Octave Examples; C2 – C3, C4 – C5, C6 – C7, etc.

In music theory there is a hierarchy of scales, with three main layers. Those layers are the chromatic scale, the diatonic scales, and the musical modes. Musical modes can then broken down even further into the esoterically named scales used for melodic steel instruments, but we will cover that a bit further down in the “Tension, Musical Flavours and Sound Healing” section.

To start, the chromatic scale contains every note available in music. This would entail playing through all the white and black notes on a piano keyboard sequentially. So C4, C#4, D4, D#4, E4, F4, etc and moving on from there. Because a chromatic scale uses all of the notes, they are not considered to have a key, and can only be identified by the note they start on (The root note). We do not use chromatic scales on our instruments, as the sympathetic resonance created while playing causes them to sound poorly.

A musical key is defined by the number of sharps (#) and flats (b) in the sequence of notes, which dictate whether it is a major or a minor, based on the root note chosen. The C major scale has no sharps or flats, (none of the black keys are played on the piano when playing a C major scale), and all the notes are considered “natural”. You can learn more about keys, and their corresponding sharps and flats by consulting a table known as “The Circle of Fifths”.

*Any key that can be chosen for a steel percussion instrument has a similar learning curve. What adds difficulty is the amount of tension within the chosen scale, or if the instrument is going to be played with other instruments. Uncommon keys can make mixing instruments more challenging, but not impossible.

The root note is what note you generally start your composition on, however, for more complex pieces, the root can be looked to as “How you resolve musical tension”, or “How you bring the music home”. By resolving the tension or bringing the music home, you are creating a finality in the musical composition, and bringing that phrase to a close. In the ever popular Old MacDonald song, the phrase goes “Old MacDonald had a farm, ee ay ee ay oh”. The “oh” is the resolution of the musical tension.

Diatonic scales are next, and they are based around a particular key. The C Major Diatonic scales goes sequentially through all the notes within the key of C Major and resolving on the next C in the octave (C4 going up to C5): C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5. So as you can see, it is all natural notes (They are not augmented with a sharp/# or flat/b symbol). A D minor diatonic scale has one flat (Bb) and all the rest of the notes are natural: D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 Bb4 C5 D5. There are major and minor keys for every note in the chromatic scale. C major/minor, C# major/minor, etc.

Every key also has a major and relative minor relationship between notes. For example, C Major and A minor are relative keys and share the same notes, however, they start on a different root note.

C Major: C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5
A minor: A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5 A5

Using the relative relationships between the major and minor keys is a good place to start to find harmonious combinations, when combining instrument you would like to play together.

The next subdivision in this hierarchy is musical modes. Modes start on a particular note in a specific diatonic scale, and then play through that scale back to the same note creating a modal octave. There are seven musical modes, each relating to a particular note (or interval) of the Diatonic scale. So again, going back to that C Major Diatonic, if we start on the C3 that is technically the Ionian Mode (I). Starting on the D3, we would have the Dorian mode (II). Or if we started on the G3 we would have the Mixolydian mode (V).

For a C Major Diatonic the modes go as follows:

C4, is the Ionian Mode (I)
D4 is the Dorian Mode (II)
E4 is the Phrygian (III)
F4 is the Lydian (IV)
G4 is the Mixolydian (V)
A4 is the Aeolian (VI) *Aeolian Mode is the natural minor, C's relative minor.*
B4 is the Locrian Mode (VII)
All the way back to C5 which start the modal sequence again, with the Ionian (I).

Now having said all that, there is still one more layer to go down. You can have two different C Major scales, with very different flavours, simply by choosing a different sequence of intervals from a musical mode to build your scale. So taking the C major, starting on the C3 (So both of these scales are Ionian mode based) we can make 2 different scales:

1.  C3 E3 G3 C4 D4 F4 G4 B4
2.  C3 B3 D4 E4 F4 A4 C5 D5

Both of these scales are technically in C major, and based on the Ionian mode, however they are not a perfectly sequential musical mode. These scales now need a name which differentiates them from other scales, so that customers or other makers can identify them easily. This is why we get the names such as Sabye, Golden Gate, etc.

You can then go on to make an infinite number of scales by choosing different musical modes to start on and selecting different sequences of intervals. Many of the esoteric scales will mirror the musical modes in some ways, however, they may not follow the sequence exactly. Instead, choosing a particular selection of intervals from the diatonic to complete whatever musical flavour a particular maker decided to produce. This is why there is such variation in the scale flavours and names.

So after all that, you may wonder why makers are going through all that difficulty to create these scales, and not just use the diatonic scales as they are so much easier to deal with. Well aside from a desire to experiment with strong musical flavours, a bit of history about the physical limitations of these instruments is needed to expand the understanding.

When handpans and tongue drums were in the early phases of development, they usually only had 8 notes, chosen from across 3 octaves (C3 – C5). Original makers also had to contend with note size and physical limitations of the instruments. On the early PANart Hang, the shell sizes weren't of a large enough diameter or made deep enough to allow a C3, D3, and E3 all on the same instrument. If you have ever seen a handpan, you will understand, as larger notes require a larger surface area to be made, and so there are space restrictions for what note sequences can be produced. Because of the small amount of notes that were being made on any single instrument, and makers having to work with a restrictive instrument size, a lot of musical variation was created.

The esoteric scales have peculiar names such as “Celtic Minor”, “High Arboreal” and “Hijaz”. Some, such as the Hijaz are based strongly on one of these musical modes. Where as a scale such as a Celtic minor, is more loosely based on the Aeolian mode. When a new scale is developed it is usually named by the person conceptualizing it, and they may give it a name for any particular reason. A feeling, a memory it elicits, a composition it resembles, anything really. Because this naming system is free-form you may have 2 scales that go by different names such as “Kurd” and “Annaziska” but that are basically the same, but were developed by different makers. This is a challenge, and something the industry as a whole grapples with, and why I have created this long explanation to try and bring some clarity to something that is frequently asked about.

I hope this has been informative, and with that information percolating in your mind, we can now move onto Tension, Musical Flavours, and Sound Healing.

Coming Soon!

Start this off by asking yourself: “What sounds am I more drawn to?  Would I prefer playing in a happier and brighter sounding scale (Major) or a more emotional and darker scale (minor)?”  Here is a list of both the Major and minor scales we offer to help you begin sorting through our recordings.