Harmonized Scales

Knowing how to harmonize a scale is really important as you become a better musician. The good news, is it’s incredibly easy once you get the basics. The better news is this information can be used to help you write songs and learn new ones. Even better – it’s not just for mandolin, but all instruments! This is a quick review of harmonized scales and how you can use them. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below!

What is a Harmonized Scale?

The easiest explanation of harmonized scales is that they are series of chords created by stacking 2 thirds on each degree of a scale. For example, the C Chord is C E G – C to E is a 3rd, and E to G is a 3rd – hence the phrase “stacking thirds”. When you repeat that process for an entire scale, you get 7 chords made up of notes from that scale. These 7 harmonized chords fit together in a given key naturally, which is why they form the foundation of so many songs across various genres.

While just about any scale can be harmonized, the most common scale to harmonize is the major scale. Harmonizing the major scale is where we get the basic Nashville Numbering patterns of “1 4 5” and “6 2 5 1” etc from. Below are the basic patterns to harmonize a scale:

Basics of Scales

Before we get in to harmonized scales, first we need to touch on scales as a whole. Scales are a series of ordered notes/pitches that sound good together. While there are a lot of different types of scales, the most common, especially in bluegrass and folk music, are 5 tone scales called pentatonic scales or 7 tone scales called diatonic scales like major scales. For our purposes here, we’re focusing on the 7 tone diatonic scale – more specifically the major and natural minor scales.

You can create any scale by knowing the “scale formula”. Below are those formulas for Major and Minor scales.

• Major: Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half
• Natural Minor: Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half, Whole

If you’re more a visual learner, the below may be a bit more helpful

What’s a Whole Step and Half Step?

Good question! The easiest explanation is a Whole Step is 2 frets on your mandolin and a Half Step is 1 fret on your mandolin. Honestly, you don’t need to know much more than that for our purposes here – but in case you’re dying to know more, below are a few graphics that should help.

Using a piano is probably the easiest visual for this. The below shows the Whole vs Half Step for an octave of the C Major Scale.

Now, since we’re mandolin players, let’s look at this on the mandolin fretboard too! Below is the C Major scale (which is C D E F G A B C) highlighting the Whole vs Half steps in the scale

You can essentially sum up the above with the below:

• Minor scales are similar, but the half steps are between the 2nd & 3rd degrees and the 5th & 6th degrees.
• Major Scale, you’ll have half steps between the 3rd & 4th degrees and between the 7th & 1st degrees. Everything else is a whole step.

Harmonized Scale Chord Generator

Use the below tool to see the harmonized chords for specific keys.

Key: C G D A E B F C# G# D# A# E# B# F# Cb Gb Db Ab Eb Bb Fb Scale Type: Major Minor Mixolydian Harmonic Minor Melodic Minor

Chord Root	Chord Type	Nashville Number	Chord Tones

Downloadable Harmonized Scale Charts

The below are graphics showing harmonized chords for all keys in a particular scale set..

• Harmonized Chords for Major Scales
• Harmonized Chords for Minor Scales

Here’s a few different practices for the harmonized scales as well

• C Major scale harmonized

I’d suggest creating some flash cards to memorize these progressions as well. On one side, the key. On the other, the harmonized scale.

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