Glossary of Musical Terms

Glossary of Musical Terms
This glossary is not merely a dictionary. For many terms it takes you to practical inter-active screens with audio examples.

Introduction

Degrees of the Scale

There are many different ways of naming the degrees of the scale.

The simplest and most obvious is to number the notes in an octave from 1 to 8.
Singers often learned to sing Doh, Ray, Me. These names are featured in a famous song from the film "Sound of Music". When applied to any scale, this system is called "Tonic sol-fa".
When writing harmony in a figured bass, roman numerals are used, I, II, III etc. Triads can be built up on any of these degrees of the scale.
There are some impressive long words musical theorists use for each degree, such as tonic, super-tonic, mediant and so on.

The table below lists these names, with examples of actual notes for the keys of C major, and Eb major. You can view these names for each note of a melody, while a tune is being played, by going to MENU Theory -> Pitch and Intervals -> View Notes and Intervals as tune Plays.

Arabic numerals	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8 = 1
Tonic so-fa	Doh	Ray	Me	Fah	Soh	Lah	Te	Doh
Roman numerals	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII = I
Full names	Tonic	Super-tonic	Mediant	Sub-dominant	Dominant	Sub-mediant	Leading note	Octave = Tonic
Notes in the key of C major	C	D	E	F	G	A	B	C
Notes in the key of Eb major	Eb	F	G	Ab	Bb	C	D	Eb