pentatonic scale

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (seven note) scale such as the major scale. Pentatonic scales are very common and are found all over the world, including Celtic folk music, Hungarian folk music, West African music, African-American spirituals, Jazz, American blues music and rock music, Sami joik singing, children's songs, the Greek traditional music and songs from Epirus, Northwest Greece and the music of Southern Albania, the tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan, Philippine Kulintang, melodies of Korea, Japan, China, India and Vietnam (including the folk music of these countries), the Afro-Caribbean tradition, Polish highlanders from the Tatra Mountains, and Western Classical composers such as French composer Claude Debussy.The pentatonic scale is also used on the Great Highland Bagpipe.




The common pentatonic major and minor scales (C-D-E-G-A and C-Eb-F-G-Bb,


respectively) are useful in modal composing, as both scales allow a melody to be


modally ambiguous between their respective major (Ionian, Lydian, Mixolydian) and


minor (Aeolian, Phrygian, Dorian) modes (Locrian excluded). With either modal or


non-modal writing, however, the harmonization of a pentatonic melody does not


necessarily have to be derived from only the pentatonic pitches.