The distance between two notes is called an interval. On a keyboard, the smallest interval is the distance between the two closest keys, and this distance is called a semitone.
The interval between the white key B and the white key C is also a semitone, and the interval between E ♮ and F♮ is the same. All other semitones include a black-key note, as shown in Figure 17:
(or 
). Two semitones added together make a whole tone, for example: 
If you play all the white-key notes from one C to another C, one after another in order, then you have played the following scale, as shown in Figure 18:
This scale is the C major scale. "C" indicates that the scale begins and ends on C, and "major" refers to this particular arrangement of semitones and whole tones.
Figure 19 shows the same scale (C major), with all the semitones marked by symbols; all the other intervals are whole tones.
These are key points because they apply to all major keys — these are the essential elements of "major".(There are in fact other kinds of scales, but in Grade 1 all the scales are major.)
