The pentatonic scale. For when you want to get your Orientalism on (see also the Asian riff):
All of the scales we have gone over thus far have been diatonic scales: which is to say, scales that have five whole steps and two half steps in them in the pattern discussed above, making seven notes in total between tonic and octave.
That is the type of scale most commonly used in modern music, as well as the historical Western/European tradition. However, there are scales with numbers of notes other than 7. Of those, the most common is likely the pentatonic scale, a scale which has five different notes, hence the name.
Pentatonic scales can be either hemitonic or anhemitonic: Hemitonic scales contain semitones (half steps) and anhemitonic only contains whole tones. This difference will be further elucidated when we discuss the Japanese scales, but for now let us just look at the Pentatonic Major Scale
This scale is formed by taking the Ionian major scale and removing the fourth and 7th note. Thus, a C pentatonic scale would be C, D, E, G, A, C.
Upon playing this scale, you will likely note that it sounds almost stereotypically “Asian”. And there’s a very good reason for that-the Chinese classical music tradition is based around the major pentatonic scale, rather than the diatonic/heptatonic scale as the Western is. Thus are other musical traditions of the Orient based.
In addition to being the base scale of East Asian music, Western music also uses the pentatonic scale frequently:
Pentatonic scales are very useful devices for jazz musicians, as reducing the number of tones to the core tones of a chord makes pentatonic scales ready-made for improvisation.
It’s also very common in the Scottish musical tradition, as the Great Highland Bagpipe automatically plays an augmented 4th and a diminished 7th.
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