Eb major scale

7 notes · the major 7th

The scale the rest of this page is measured against. Its seven notes harmonise into the seven chords of a major key, and the only unstable note in it is the 4th, a semitone above the 3rd of the tonic chord.

Heard in: Almost everything in western popular music, at some point in it.

Key

C C♯D E♭E F F♯G A♭A B♭B

major natural minor dorian mixolydian lydian phrygian locrian harmonic minor melodic minor lydian dominant altered major pentatonic minor pentatonic blues whole tone diminished half-whole diminished

The notes of Eb major

The whole scale. Choose a chord below and this row will show which of these notes it uses.

Twelve frets in standard tuning, high E at the top. Each dot is labelled with its degree rather than its note, because that is the part that moves with you when you play the shape somewhere else. The green dot is the root of whatever is being shown — the scale, or the chord chosen out of it.

The chords in Eb major

Take every other note of the scale and you have a chord. Do it from each degree in turn and you have the key. Each row below is that stack, and the letters in it say what each scale note becomes in that chord — so the G of the scale is the 3rd of one chord, the 5th of another and the root of a third. Choose a row to see it on the neck.

Each chord of Eb major, and which notes of the scale it takes
Degree	Chord	Eb 1	F 2	G 3	Ab 4	Bb 5	C 6	D 7
I	Ebmaj7	R	·	3	·	5	·	7
ii	Fm7	7	R	·	3	·	5	·
iii	Gm7	·	7	R	·	3	·	5
IV	Abmaj7	5	·	7	R	·	3	·
V	Bb7	·	5	·	7	R	·	3
vi	Cm7	3	·	5	·	7	R	·
vii°	Dm7b5	·	3	·	5	·	7	R

Every note of the scale appears in four of these chords, and every chord shares three of its four notes with the chord a third away from it. That overlap is why one can be substituted for another.

What to play Eb major over

The chords on Eb whose every note this scale contains, biggest first. The largest of them is the one that pins the scale down: over Ebmaj11 there is nothing in Eb major that can sound wrong.

Ebmaj11 Ebmaj13 Ebmaj9 Eb69 Ebsus2sus4 Ebmaj7 Ebadd9 Eb6 Eb Ebsus2 Ebsus4 Eb5

Modes of this scale

Same notes, different home. Which one you are in is decided by the chord underneath, not by the notes.

Eb natural minor Eb dorian Eb mixolydian Eb lydian Eb phrygian Eb locrian

The key of Eb major is these chords with everything a key borrows on top of them: the key explorer adds the secondary dominants, tritone substitutions and borrowed chords. Every scale on every root is on the scale index, and every chord on the chord index. Where the shapes and the theory come from is on the about page.

Eb major scale

The notes of Eb major

The chords in Eb major

What to play Eb major over

Modes of this scale

Midi Settings

Style

Layout