earlier we studied that a scale is an alphabetical arrangement of eight notes beginning and ending with the same note for example from C to C or D to D Etc but each note has a function uh degree in a scale and can be given its own technical name regardless of where it is written or played so the first degree note is what they call the tonic now you've heard you've heard me use that word before so if it was like uh if it was from C to C the tonic would be C right um the second degree is what they call the super tonic man my computer overheats um the third degree is what they call the mediant mediant fourth degree is the sub dominant fifth is the dominant sixth is the submediant seventh would be the leading note note and lastly the eighth would be you could call it the tonic again right or you could call it the um the octave octave and I'll I'll put in parentheses or tonic right um now the notes or degrees of a scale are numbered in Roman numerals based on their particular function um of all the degrees in a scale some have more important functions than others and let me list those out so first up um importance here we go um now the the the first uh important uh degree and the most important note of any scale is the first degree um because it gives the name to the key it's both the lowest and highest tone of the scale so so provides the name of key um now the the uh another important degree would be the median Okay the third degree now the median is also important because it's the middle note between the tonic and the dominant and it it determines whether or not the scale is Major or minor so [Music] determines whether or not the scale is major or minor now that leads me to the third important degree would be the dominant now the dominant is important because it it uh well the word dominant comes from Latin Dominus meaning master so the chord built on the dominant is so strong that it Masters the key so um cord Masters the key right and the last the last um important note I want I want to um allude to is uh the the seventh one the leading note now this this degree is um it's also necessary in order to identify the the key it's always a semitone below the tonic and leads directly to it uh this the the seventh scale degree is referred to as subtonic only when the distance between it and the tonic is a tone apart but uh that's sort of a an asterisk for for later um actually I could put that down right so referred to as subtonic only when one tone apart from the tonic atonic right um yeah so the leading note right it it it uh uh is usually um one semitone below the tonic now the names of the other degrees are based on where they are placed in the scale and are secondary to the primary degrees mentioned here right if I could list them in importance I would probably go this one this one this one and this one that's it for now