Last week we looked at three different types of progression which you can follow in the music, even if you don’t actually read music.

The simplest progression is a musical scale where the notes move from space-to-line and line-to-space and you simply follow the line of notes and go up or down a whole note with each move.  They are not all actually whole notes but your brain is attuned to the major and minor scales in western music so you will do the half tones naturally when they come (though those are the ones which are most often a little out of tune).

Sometimes the notes are spread out in what is called an arpeggio.  In the music we sing this is often the major or minor triad (1st, 3rd, 5th).  Wollemi Pine is a great example of that – full of arpeggios.

The trickiest progression to sing is a chromatic scale where is movement is only a half tone.  In these scales you see a lot of sharps (#) or flats (b) which mean move the note up half a tone (#) or move the note down half a tone (b).

Tony pointed out to me that a great example of a chromatic scale is the Aria Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen – a downward chromatic scale thats fiendishly difficult to sing in tune