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Half Steps and Whole Steps Worksheet

This document discusses half steps and whole steps in music. It defines half steps and whole steps as intervals between notes, with a half step being the smallest interval and a whole step being two half steps. It provides examples of half steps and whole steps on a musical staff and keyboard. It also introduces the chromatic and whole tone scales, which are composed entirely of half steps and whole steps respectively. Listeners are directed to audio files to hear examples of these scales. The document concludes with two exercises asking readers to identify intervals and fill in missing notes.

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Sergey Olegovich
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347 views6 pages

Half Steps and Whole Steps Worksheet

This document discusses half steps and whole steps in music. It defines half steps and whole steps as intervals between notes, with a half step being the smallest interval and a whole step being two half steps. It provides examples of half steps and whole steps on a musical staff and keyboard. It also introduces the chromatic and whole tone scales, which are composed entirely of half steps and whole steps respectively. Listeners are directed to audio files to hear examples of these scales. The document concludes with two exercises asking readers to identify intervals and fill in missing notes.

Uploaded by

Sergey Olegovich
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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OpenStax-CNX module: m10866 1

Half Steps and Whole Steps *

Catherine Schmidt-Jones

This work is produced by OpenStax-CNX and licensed under the


Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0„

Abstract
The pitch of a note is how high or low it sounds. The distance between two pitches can be measured
in half steps and whole steps.
The pitch of a note is how high or low it sounds. Musicians often nd it useful to talk about how much
higher or lower one note is than another. This distance between two pitches is called the interval between
them. In Western music, the small interval from one note to the next closest note higher or lower is called
a half step or semi-tone.

Half Steps

(a)

(b)

Figure 1: Three half-step intervals: between C and C sharp (or D at); between E and F; and between
G sharp (or A at) and A.

* Version 2.22: Feb 15, 2013 7:41 pm -0600


„ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

http://cnx.org/content/m10866/2.22/
OpenStax-CNX module: m10866 2

Listen1 to the half steps in Figure 1 (Half Steps).


The intervals in Figure 1 (Half Steps) look dierent on a sta; sometimes they are on the same line,
sometimes not. But it is clear at the keyboard that in each case there is no note in between them.
So a scale that goes up or down by half steps, a chromatic scale, plays all the notes on both the white
and black keys of a piano. It also plays all the notes easily available on most Western instruments. (A few
instruments, like trombone and violin, can easily play pitches that aren't in the chromatic scale, but even
they usually don't.)

One Octave Chromatic Scale

Figure 2: All intervals in a chromatic scale are half steps. The result is a scale that plays all the
notes easily available on most instruments.

Listen2 to a chromatic scale.


If you go up or down two half steps from one note to another, then those notes are a whole step, or
whole tone apart.
1 See the le at <http://cnx.org/content/m10866/latest/6f.mid>
2 See the le at <http://cnx.org/content/m10866/latest/6a.mid>

http://cnx.org/content/m10866/2.22/
OpenStax-CNX module: m10866 3

Whole Steps

(a)

(b)

Figure 3: Three whole step intervals: between C and D; between E and F sharp; and between G sharp
and A sharp (or A at and B at).

A whole tone scale, a scale made only of whole steps, sounds very dierent from a chromatic scale.

Whole Tone Scale

Figure 4: All intervals in a whole tone scale are whole steps.

Listen3 to a whole tone scale.


You can count any number of whole steps or half steps between notes; just remember to count all sharp
or at notes (the black keys on a keyboard) as well as all the natural notes (the white keys) that are in
between.
Example 1
The interval between C and the F above it is 5 half steps, or two and a half steps.
3 See the le at <http://cnx.org/content/m10866/latest/6b.mid>

http://cnx.org/content/m10866/2.22/
OpenStax-CNX module: m10866 4

Figure 5: Going from C up to F takes ve half steps.

Exercise 1 (Solution on p. 6.)


Identify the intervals below in terms of half steps and whole steps. If you have trouble keeping
track of the notes, use a piano keyboard, a written chromatic scale, or the chromatic ngerings for
your instrument to count half steps.

Figure 6

Exercise 2 (Solution on p. 6.)


Fill in the second note of the interval indicated in each measure. If you need sta paper for this
exercise, you can print out this sta paper4 PDF le.
4 See the le at <http://cnx.org/content/m10866/latest/stapaper1.pdf>

http://cnx.org/content/m10866/2.22/
OpenStax-CNX module: m10866 5

Figure 7

http://cnx.org/content/m10866/2.22/
OpenStax-CNX module: m10866 6

Solutions to Exercises in this Module


Solution to Exercise (p. 4)

Figure 8

Solution to Exercise (p. 4)

Figure 9: If your answer is dierent, check to see if you have written a dierent enharmonic spelling of
the note in the answer. For example, the B at could be written as an A sharp.

http://cnx.org/content/m10866/2.22/

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