MusicReasonScales, Keys, Intervals, and Notation
What are the notes and degrees of this scale?
Choose a tonic and a scale family. This tool spells every degree consistently, letter by letter, and lets you play it after you click, entirely in your browser.
Answer and Play
Want to learn more? Scales, Modes, and Tonal Centers
Understand
A scale is a selected ordered pitch collection; a mode is that same kind of collection heard with a chosen tonic, not just a rotation you read off a list. D Dorian and C major share every pitch class, but D Dorian's changed degrees (a lowered third and seventh relative to D major) are what make it its own tonal center, not a stylistic label on top of C major. This tool never claims a scale "sounds happy" or "sounds sad" as a universal rule, and it never claims a scale alone determines a chord progression or key without additional context.
Worked example
D major spells as D, E, F-sharp, G, A, B, C-sharp, with D repeated an octave higher to close the pattern. Every one of the seven letter names appears exactly once before that repeat: the formula's semitone pattern (whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half) tells you which of those seven letters needs a sharp, here F and C, without ever skipping a letter name or reusing one within the octave.
Method and limitations
Each formula is a fixed set of semitone offsets from the tonic in 12-tone equal temperament. Starting from the tonic's letter, each successive scale degree advances to the next letter name in sequence and is spelled with whatever single accidental reaches that formula's target pitch class, which is why the same pitch class can be spelled two different ways in two different scales. Playback uses A4 = 440 Hz by default and only starts after you click Play; it never begins automatically or continues after you leave the page. A formula outside this launch vocabulary (the seven major-scale modes plus harmonic and melodic minor) is not approximated by this tool.
Modes versus keys
It is easy to conflate "D Dorian" with "the D on the white keys of C major," since both happen to share the same seven pitch classes. Treating them as the same thing throws away the one fact that actually matters for how the collection is used: which note functions as the tonal center. A melody or chord progression built around D as its center will use Dorian's characteristic raised sixth relative to natural minor in ways a C-major-context passage never will, even though a pitch-class comparison alone cannot tell them apart. This tool always asks for an explicit tonic and family together for exactly that reason, rather than letting a mode be inferred from a key signature alone.