Pentatonic scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to heptatonic scales, which have seven notes per octave.
Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations and are still used in various musical styles to this day. As Leonard Bernstein put it: "The universality of this scale is so well known that I'm sure you could give me examples of it, from all corners of the earth, as from Scotland, or from China, or from Africa, and from American Indian cultures, from East Indian cultures, from Central and South America, Australia, Finland... now, that is a true musico-linguistic universal." There are two types of pentatonic scales: those with semitones and those without.
Types
Hemitonic and anhemitonic
commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either hemitonic or anhemitonic. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic scales do not contain semitones. Hemitonic pentatonic scales are also called "ditonic scales", because the largest interval in them is the ditone.[|Major] pentatonic scale
Anhemitonic pentatonic scales can be constructed in many ways. The major pentatonic scale may be thought of as a gapped or incomplete major scale, using scale tones 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the major scale. One construction takes five consecutive pitches from the circle of fifths; starting on C, these are C, G, D, A, and E. Rearranging the pitches to fit into one octave creates the major pentatonic scale: C, D, E, G, A.Another construction works backward: It omits two pitches from a diatonic scale. If one were to begin with a C major scale, for example, one might omit the fourth and the seventh scale degrees, F and B. The remaining notes then make up the major pentatonic scale: C, D, E, G, and A.
Omitting the third and seventh degrees of the C major scale obtains the notes for another transpositionally equivalent anhemitonic pentatonic scale: F, G, A, C, D. Omitting the first and fourth degrees of the C major scale gives a third anhemitonic pentatonic scale: G, A, B, D, E.
The black keys on a piano keyboard comprise a G-flat major pentatonic scale: G-flat, A-flat, B-flat, D-flat, and E-flat, which is exploited in Chopin's black key étude.
[|Minor] pentatonic scale
Although various hemitonic pentatonic scales might be called minor, the term is most commonly applied to the relative minor pentatonic derived from the major pentatonic, using scale tones 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 of the natural minor scale. The C minor pentatonic scale, the relative minor of the E-flat pentatonic scale, is C, E-flat, F, G, B-flat. The A minor pentatonic, the relative minor of C pentatonic, comprises the same tones as the C major pentatonic, starting on A, giving A, C, D, E, G. This minor pentatonic contains all three tones of an A minor triad.The standard tuning of a guitar uses the notes of an E minor pentatonic scale: E–A–D–G–B–E, contributing to its frequency in popular music. Stevie Wonder employed the minor pentatonic for the funky clavinet riff on the track "Superstition".
Japanese scale
The Japanese mode is based on the Phrygian mode, but uses scale tones 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 instead of scale tones 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7.Modes of the pentatonic scale
The pentatonic scale has five modes, which are derived by treating a different note as the tonic:Ricker assigned the major pentatonic scale mode I while Gilchrist assigned it mode III.
Relationship to diatonic modes
Each mode of the pentatonic scale can be thought of as the five scale degrees shared by three different diatonic modes with the two remaining scale degrees removed:| Pentatonic scale | Tonic note | Based on modes | Base scale degrees | Modifications | Interval sequence |
| Major | C | I–II–III–V–VI | Omit 4 7 | W–W–3/2–W–3/2 | |
| Blues major | G | I–II–IV–V–VI | Omit 3 7 | W–3/2–W–W–3/2 | |
| Suspended | D | I–II–IV–V–VII | Omit 3 6 | W–3/2–W–3/2–W | |
| Minor | A | I–III–IV–V–VII | Omit 2 6 | 3/2–W–W–3/2–W | |
| Blues minor | E | I–III–IV–VI–VII | Omit 2 5 | 3/2–W–3/2–W–W |
Intervals from tonic
Each mode of the pentatonic scale features different intervals of notes from the tonic according to the table below. Note the omission of the semitones above and below the tonic as well as the tritone.Tuning
Pythagorean tuning
gives the following Pythagorean tuning for the minor pentatonic scale:Naturals in that table are not the alphabetic series A to G without sharps and flats: Naturals are reciprocals of terms in the Harmonic series, which are in practice multiples of a fundamental frequency. This may be derived by proceeding with the principle that historically gives the Pythagorean diatonic and chromatic scales, stacking perfect fifths with 3:2 frequency proportions. Considering the anhemitonic scale as a subset of a just diatonic scale, it is tuned thus: 20:24:27:30:36.
Just intonation
| Modes | Ratios |
| Major | 24:27:30:36:40 |
| Blues major | 24:27:32:36:40 |
| Suspended | 24:27:32:36:42 |
| Minor | 30:36:40:45:54 |
| Blues minor | 15:18:20:24:27 |
Other
Assigning precise frequency proportions to the pentatonic scales of most cultures is problematic as tuning may be variable.For example, the slendro anhemitonic scale and its modes of Java and Bali are said to approach, very roughly, an equally-tempered five-note scale, but their tunings vary dramatically from gamelan to gamelan.
Composer Lou Harrison has been one of the most recent proponents and developers of new pentatonic scales based on historical models. Harrison and William Colvig tuned the slendro scale of the gamelan Si Betty to overtones 16:19:21:24:28. They tuned the Mills gamelan so that the intervals between scale steps are 8:7–7:6–9:8–8:7–7:6
Use of pentatonic scales
Pentatonic scales occur in many musical traditions:- Indian classical music, both Hindustani and Carnatic traditions
- Ancient Tamil music, see the Section "Evolution of panns".
- Peruvian Chicha cumbia
- Indigenous ethnic folk music of Assam
- Sudanese Music
- Celtic folk music
- English folk music
- German folk music
- Nordic folk music
- Hungarian folk music
- Croatian folk music
- Berber music
- West African music
- African-American spirituals
- Gospel music
- Bluegrass music
- American folk music
- Music of Ethiopia
- Jazz
- Blues
- Rock music
- Sami joik singing
- Children's song
- The music of ancient Greece
- * Greek traditional music and polyphonic songs from Epirus in northwest Greece
- Music of southern Albania
- Folk songs of peoples of the Middle Volga region
- The tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan
- Philippine kulintang
- Native American music, especially in highland South America, as well as among the North American Indians of the Pacific Northwest
- Most Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic music of Siberia and the Asiatic steppe is written in the pentatonic scale
- Melodies of Eastern Asia: China, Korea, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam
- * Traditional Japanese court music
- * Shōmyō chanting
- Andean music
- Afro-Caribbean music
- Polish highlanders from the Tatra Mountains
In classical music
Beethoven, Quartet in F major, Op. 135, finale:
Chopin's Etude in G-flat major, Op. 10, No. 5, the "Black Key" etude, in the major pentatonic.
Western Impressionistic composers such as French composer Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel used the pentatonic scale extensively in their works.
File:Debussy Voiles, Preludes, Book I, no. 2, mm.43-45.png|500px|thumb|center|Pentatonic scale in Debussy's Voiles, Preludes, Book I, no. 2, mm. 43–45. File:Ravel Ma Mere l'Oye Laideronnette Imperatricedes Pagodes m.9-13.png|500px|thumb|center|Pentatonic scale in Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye III. "Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes", mm. 9–13.
Giacomo Puccini used pentatonic scales in his operas Madama Butterfly and Turandot to imitate east Asian musical styles. Puccini also used whole-tone scales in the former to evoke similar ideas.