Why this departure from the alphabet? I have no idea.

Given that C major is “home base” in the western tonal system, it’s weird that it starts on C and not A.

Where did the naming convention come from? Here’s the C major scale in circular form, using the chromatic circle on the left, and the circle of fifths on the right: The curvy lines show notes with a skip between them, and the angled ones show notes that are adjacent on the piano: Here’s the C major scale in standard music notation. Here’s a video series talking about the music you can make by treating the piano as a color-coded instrument: The scale is extremely easy to play on the piano: just play the white keys from C to C. To make the C major scale, you just remove all the ice cubes with # in their names, like so: Imagine an ice cube tray with twelve slots, one for each note in the western tuning system, labeled like so: If you master it, you get a bunch of cool chords and scales for free, along with a window into a huge swath of our musical culture. The C major scale is the foundation that the rest of western music theory sits on.

E flat major scale g major scale