Why do pentatonic scales sound good

Sounds good, right? Pentatonic Scales, as their name implies, contain 5 notes. The most common pentatonic scale contains the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, scale steps of the major scale.

Yes, the 4th and 7th degrees of the major scale. In C, these are F and B. Play them together on the piano. So if we play a major scale and leave out the F and B, we leave out the possibility of unresolved dissonance and also the half steps. What are we left with? Whole steps and relatively consonant scalar relationships.

From Irish jigs to contemporary jazz, from blues to rock, and from nursery rhymes to pop, pentatonic scales sound great wherever they appear.

Try some pentatonic improvising the next time you sit down at your piano to play. Thanks for sharing this. Hi Peter. Much appreciated! Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. If you want to sit down at your piano and play with more fluency and a greater sense of joy, click HERE to get started with my video course along with my personal guidance.

Learning these scales is an absolute necessity. Now is it really necessary to know pentatonic scales to be able to play the guitar?

A lot of guitarists go their whole career learning riffs, songs, and making up licks based off of the knowledge that they have while enjoying every minute of it.

However, a lot of these guitarists know in the back of their mind that they should learn their scales. If you have been a guitarist for a little while, you have probably heard about it from other guitarists, musicians, teachers, and Internet articles that you should know your scales.

Curious how lessons work? Sign up for more information about our private lessons. Submit Sign up successful. The pentatonic scale can be used in almost every single song. Even if the song you are playing to uses a scale other than the pentatonic, you can play pentatonic over it and it will sound amazing.

The pentatonic scale gets more miles per gallon than any other scale, and the fuel is recyclable. The power of the pentatonic is that it has no barriers to engagement and no matter what the age, cultural background or level of ability a musician has, the pentatonic scale can be understood, appreciated and used by everyone. The concept of the pentatonic scale is very simple and comprises of five notes taken from the seven note major scale.

To form the pentatonic scale you simply remove the 4th and 7th notes leaving five notes per octave 9. The easiest way to discover the pentatonic scale is on the piano because it is easy to visualise the five notes. If you begin by playing the black keys one after the other you will hear the sound of the pentatonic scale. You can find the major pentatonic scale by playing the three black keys and then playing the other two, the 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 notes of the scale.

The minor pentatonic scale starts two notes lower and you can find it by playing the 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 keys 9. The major and minor pentatonic scales are the foundations of blues and rock music. It is very easy to memorise the pentatonic scale which means that when improvising even an inexperienced musician can rely on the pentatonic scale to make their compositions sound good. The reason why the pentatonic scale sounds so good is because it has no semitones which means that there is no tension between the notes in the scale.

In a seven note major scale it is the fourth and seventh notes that introduce suspense and tension 10 and so when these notes are removed you eliminate any possible discord. As Kodaly suggests, pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient cultures and in fact it was Pythagoras, the ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher, who is the first person known to have carried out a scientific study into pentatonics. Like the Babylonians 14 before him, Pythagoras discovered that the notes of the pentatonic scale seemed to occur naturally in the world 15 and he began to use pentatonics to explore the numerical relationship between intervals.

His studies into pentatonics led him to discover the mathematical properties of proportion and symmetry and to investigate the idea of universal harmony, which although now outdated, continues to intrigue modern theologians and occultists. It transpired that the flute, which was made from a vulture bone, had five holes and was found to have been tuned to the pentatonic scale. The flute is thought to be between 40, and 60, years old and demonstrates that even prehistoric societies appreciated and understood pentatonics.

A string produces a sound based not only on the vibration of the whole string, but also on vibrations of that string in halves, thirds, etc.

Each division produces a soft, but audible tone called the overtone that becomes a part of the texture of the fundamental tone. This is not only true of strings, but any vibrating body, be it a tube of air or metal gong or drumskin. The pentatonic is evident in music from all types of cultures from all over the globe and is called the most universal of scales because of its ubiquity.

The scale appears in early Gregorian chants, West African music, Native American music, Sami joik singing, Indonesian music, Appalachian folk music, Celtic folk music, Chinese music and Andean music in addition to many others 19 ; and, as Kodaly noted, the pentatonic scale is also evident in the works of impressionist composers like Claude Debussy.