Pentatonic scale - tutorial/applet help..

[matthy]

i tried googling to some tutorials of the Pentatonic scale
because I don't know much about it and want to learn it

however every tutorial i find is a guitar tutorial and not someone with the notes. and the ones i found where verry hard to understand.

does anyone know some tutorial op applet that can help me learn?
its even hard to understand the C-major Pentatonic i dont get it...

Cheers
Matthy

[Bobbotov]

It's here:

http://www.apassion4jazz.net/keys.html

[llatham]

i tried googling to some tutorials of the Pentatonic scale
because I don't know much about it and want to learn it

however every tutorial i find is a guitar tutorial and not someone with the notes. and the ones i found where verry hard to understand.

does anyone know some tutorial op applet that can help me learn?
its even hard to understand the C-major Pentatonic i dont get it...

Cheers
Matthy

Hi Matthy,

Pentatonic simply means "5 tone" or 5 note scale.

In a really broad sense, a scale going C-D-E-F-G could be considered a Pentatonic scale.

Guitarists have sort of messed us up (and I'm a guitarist as well) by limiting the definition to "THE" Pentatonic scale.

Really, there are a handful of common Pentatonics, but the two most common by far are those that closely relate to plain Major and Minor scales.

Most of the time, people call these Major Pentatonic and Minor Pentatonic, though when someone says just Pentatonic, they're probably referring to the Major version (though for rock guitarists playing blues, classic rock, etc., the minor form might be the one they mean).

The Major Pentatonic scale can be seen as a subset of the Major "Septatonic" or 7 note scale (our "normal" one).

C D E F G A B (C)
C D E G A (C)

So the Major Pentatonic uses notes 1 2 3 5 and 6 from a Major scale.

Now, like A minor can be found from C Major, minor and Major Pentatonics share the same relationship - C Major Pentatonic is the same note set as A minor Pentatonic:

C D E G A (CM)
A C D E G A (Am)

So, like an A minor scale is the same as a C major scale starting on the 6th note, an A minor pentatonic scale is the same as a C Major pentatonic scale starting on its 5th note (or you can think of it as 6th of plain C Major still).

CM - C D E F G A B (C)
CM pent - C D E G A
Am - A B C D E F G (A)
Am pent - A C D E G

You could also simply say that a minor pentatonic uses notes 1 3 4 5 and 7 of a minor scale.

Some people (especially "guitarist-theoreticians") like to relate everything back to the major scale, so:

Major Pent = 1 2 3 5 6
Minor pent = 1 b3 4 5 b7

Since these two "relative" pentatonic scales are related to each other in the same way that their "parent" scales (the full major and minor) are, many people treat them very similarly. In fact, the similar treatment has extended to using the principles of "mode-building" as well.

In a sense, Modes are simply "rotations" or cyclic permutations of a set of note.

C Ionian is C D E F G A B C and D dorian is
D E F G A B C D - it's simply a C scale starting on its 2nd note.

Likewise, people have performed the same rotational procedure on Pentatonic scales, so we get:

Mode 1 C D E G A
Mode 2 D E G A C
Mode 3 E G A C D
Mode 4 G A C D E
Mode 5 A C D E G

Mode 1 and 5 are Pentatonic Major and minor respectively. The others don't have "official" names, but I'm sure there are scads of people out there making them up and using them as if they were gospel.

One thing I want to mention is, you can relate these to scales, but you can also just do it by interval. Major Pentatonic is:

M2, M2, m3, M2, m3.

All the various rotations or modes have the same content, just in different order (just the same way the 7-note modes do).

Now, there are other common (especially in other cultures) pentatonic scales as well:

C D Eb G Ab for example (this is Hirajoshi - a Japanese one IIRC).

In a sense, this is like taking 1 2 3 5 6 from a minor scale to produce a pentatonic subset (that doesn't duplicate any of the ones above).

You can thus create any one you like.

I would concentrate on Major and Minor pentatonic, and try to understand how they relate to their parent Major and minor scales, and then explore alternate versions and modes. Then you can get into things like using an Em Pentatonic over a C Major harmony to get a CM9 feel, etc.

HTH,
Steve

[xoxos]

for spice, herer are some scales i've found (and a few i've made)

[matthy]

I would concentrate on Major and Minor pentatonic, and try to understand how they relate to their parent Major and minor scales, and then explore alternate versions and modes. Then you can get into things like using an Em Pentatonic over a C Major harmony to get a CM9 feel, etc.

HTH,
Steve

Many thanks steve i still try to figure out some things and i really apriciate your help. also the rest.

i already made a pattern with c major pentatonic hope to figure out more soon
i still i have a question about a song somone made but its many notes and made in orion so hard to show.

any ideas? or are you so good you can hear all the tone so i can put up an mp3?

Prev. is uses C as root then D, D#, F, G, C and so on.
the same with D then as root then E, F#, G, A, A#, C

any ideas need the track, screenshot or midi? or other ideas

Thx already
Matthy

[llatham]

any ideas need the track, screenshot or midi? or other ideas

Thx already
Matthy

Can you upload a graphic somewhere and link to it? Or a PDF file? Notation is fine.

Steve

[matthy]

here you go






Thx
Matthy

[llatham]

here you go

Thx
Matthy

Matthy,

These are not Pentatonic scales.

What you have here is a C harmony with moving notes above, a D harmony with moving notes above, and an F harmony with moving notes above.

Considering the moving notes, over the C you have:
D-Eb-F-G

This gives you a total note set of C-D-Eb-F-G. Ok, YES, it's FIVE notes, but since these notes are easily found in a plain old minor scale, we just say that a C minor scale (or notes from the key of C minor) is being used. It just so happens that not all of the notes from the scale have been heard.

The next, D harmony set of notes is:

D-E-F#-G-A-Bb and C. These are notes from the key of G minor, but, you might see them as type of D scale. Nonetheless, they aren't really pentatonic. Taking each chord box you posted (which is 1 pattern I believe) then you have Dmajor, followed by either a Gm/D harmony, or a switch to D minor. Either way, even though there are a total of 5 or so different pitches, we still usually see these notes as just using part of a scale, not a "pentatonic scale" per se.

The final one, on F, is
F G Bb C - a 4 note scale. We don't call it a "tertatonic" scale! It's just F major with note all the notes happening.

This is a really dangerous practice to get into Matthy - all music is not "scale-based" (despite what Jazz players tell you). Some of it is, but much of it is not. So sometimes it might be helpful to say "what scale is the writer getting these notes from", but much of the time, those notes are coming from just the harmony, or the key, or some other source (like simply the entire chromatic collective).

When composers use pentatonics, they try to do so in a way the makes them obvious, because, since they are usually subset of existing scales, it's very easy for them to be confused with exisiting scales. So if they're using a 5 note set, they tend to use that pretty significantly, or pretty obviously. In the cases you've shown here, it's really pretty ambiguous.

HTH,
Steve

[jancivil]

'Pentatonic scale' tends to mean 5 notes per octave. I don't think any set from eg., C to G can be precisely called a 'scale' of any kind. From ancient Greek times to today, eg., C to F is the 'lower tetrachord', G to the octave C, the 'upper tetrachord'.

[matthy]

I DON'T BELIEVE IT
I GET IT

i also saw that you can spice up this song by using a pentatonic C-min with the C-minor scales main-lead and so on.

one question though how did he knew that a
C-min
G-min
F-maj
A-maj (was the last pattern forgot to post)

scale fitted, i mean i tried this all as chords with Root C,C#,D,D# and E
and it all sounded horrible. then i tried just the notes C,G,F,A that sounded fine but you cant reconise the minor and major in it.

dit he just tried something or is this also a sort of harmony

Btw llatham do you have a site or something because all your explanations are way more helpful then any other tutorial on the Internet you certainly deserve one!!

[llatham]

one question though how did he knew that a
C-min
G-min
F-maj
A-maj (was the last pattern forgot to post)

scale fitted, i mean i tried this all as chords with Root C,C#,D,D# and E
and it all sounded horrible. then i tried just the notes C,G,F,A that sounded fine but you cant reconise the minor and major in it.

Matthy,

One of the advantages to using pentatonic scales, or other subsets of larger scales, is that there are less "wrong" notes.

For example, take the chords:

G - A - C - D

If you tried to play any one scale (7-note scale) over that progression, you're going to run into problems with the C and C#.

So to solve the problem, just eliminate the C!

If you also eliminate the F#, you end up with G-A-B-D-E - G Major Pentatonic.

If you think about it, there are at least two notes that go with each chord:

A - A-E
C - E-G
D - D-A

And for G, the Tonic, you get three:
G - G-B-D

The B and D are not too offensive to the A chord, the A B and D not too offensive to the C chord, the G B and E not too offensive to the D chord, and the A and E not too offensive to the G chord - and since we've established G as the key, most G notes will not sound too out of place.

But if you played a C on the A chord, you might have some trouble (unless you could pull it off as a "blue note" for example).

So many times, musicians will just look at what notes are common to most or all of the chords. With the progression:

C - Eb - F - C you have
C = 2
E = 1
Eb = 1
F = 1
G = 1
A = 1
Bb = 1

The rest are 0. Since there are two DIFFERENT E notes, they are more dangerous unless you're playing the right one at the right time. So we're left with C-F-G-A-Bb, or F-G-A-Bb-C.

And you're right - sometimes when you use this method, you eliminate the "color" notes that make the chords more obviously major or minor.

Playing those notes over that chord progression gives a totally different feel than playing something like C major over the C chord, Eb Major over the Eb chord, and F major over the F chord (or various pentatonics over each) - though that is of course possible.

You could also play C pentatonic minor over those chords since the chord roots are from the C minor pentatonic: C-Eb-F-G-Bb. You would just have to watch out for playing the Eb over the C Major chord (again, unless you want a bluesy sounding element).

dit he just tried something or is this also a sort of harmony

Could be. Depends on how they were thinking. The thing that moves from DM to gm/D makes me thing they might have been thinking about it from a chordal standpoint, but it also could simply be that they thought those notes "sounded cool" and decided to use them.

Btw llatham do you have a site or something because all your explanations are way more helpful then any other tutorial on the Internet you certainly deserve one!

Well, I've toyed with it, but to be honest with you - it's too much work! But thanks. I check here regularly so if you post, I'll try and respond helpfully.

Best,
Steve