The Pentatonic Scale

I’m not writing a mystery here, so Iet’s just start with the answer:  play notes from the pentatonic scale.  Exactly what pentatonic scales are, which ones to use and how to use them will be the subject of the remainder of this essay.

Of course there are other ways to jam than with pentatonic scales. But when you’re starting, it’s nice to impose some structure on the process, something that gives you a comfortable place to start your explorations.  That’s what pentatonic scales do.

A regular major scale has 7 different note names, for example C major is: c d e f g a b.   (The word “octave” makes people think there are eight, but count them -- there are only seven.) As you can see above, the pentatonic scale uses five of the seven notes of the major scale.  That’s where the name pentatonic comes from: penta of course means five, tonic means tone.

Of course there are lots of five note scales but we’re concerned mainly with two in this essay: the major pentatonic and the minor pentatonic.  I’m thinking about adding the dominant pentatonic as a third.

My neighbor brought over a marimba he’d made out of two by fours based on a five note middle eastern scale.  That’s an example of something we won’t cover here.  But this is a good place to mention that I may occasionally go off on geeky tangents, which I’ll try to remember to label as being safe to ignore.   For example, a geeky question would be to ask how many kinds of different five note scales are there, all transpositions and modes together only counting as one?  Then a really geeky answer of the Burnside-Polya counting theorem applied to the 2 color 12 bead necklace.  I’ll spare you this one.

I’ll focus as much as possible on the C major pentatonic, because C is the easiest key for pianists to get their heads around.  But if you really want to play rather than just read about playing, you’re going to have to learn the pentatonic scale (and the related blues scale) in every key.  You can get pretty far starting with C, G, D and F pentatonic.   If you play with guitarists, you’ll be biased toward the sharp keys, so next comes A and E.  Expand out from there: Bb, Eb, B.  Wrap up with F#, Ab and Db.

I know it looks like there are six notes above because I followed the usual convention with scales and wrote the root note twice: once on the bottom (middle C here) and once on the top (high C).   C major pentatonic has five unique notes: c d e g a.   It’s C major without the f and the b.  I only wrote one octave’s worth out, but you obviously don’t have to restrict yourself to the octave starting at middle C.

Next: You Need A Chord Progression to Jam Over