Pentatonic is Everywhere

Speed up your learning of many tunes!

One of the most popular note patterns in musical styles around the world is the pentatonic scale.  I often start beginners off  with tunes based on this scale because they can be great tunes, but easy to learn.  Some pentatonic fiddle tunes use only 2 fingers.

This scale has been used for centuries in Celtic music, American folk, gospels, blues, country, rock, jazz, East European, West African, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Greek, Native American, Southeast Asian, South American, Afro-Caribbean — in fact, it's hard to find places where the pentatonic scale is not in common use.  It has been important in classical music as well, particularly in Romantic and impressionistic music.

Carl Orff believed the pentatonic scale was natural for children, so the Orff method focuses on its use for younger learners.  It's also part of the Kodaly method, and us used in Waldorf schools, for similar reasons.

It's easy to visualize the 5 notes of this scale when you see it on a piano:  if you play just the black keys, you have a major pentatonic by starting with the 3 black keys, and then playing the other two — the 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 notes of the scale. 

The minor-key version of the pentatonic scale starts two notes lower, just as any relative minor does, and results in the 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 notes of the scale.  This is the foundation of blues and rock music. Note the leading tone in parenthesis (below) that’s often inserted between the 3d and 4th notes of the minor pentatonic.

Here’s a typical riff in country and bluegrass music that’s pure pentatonic:

Many Celtic fiddlers love the Shetland tune “Spootiskerry” but few realize that it is entirely in pentatonic G:

Gershwin’s jazz standard “I Got Rhythm” starts right off with a straight pentatonic scale, up and down, or at least four of the five notes. Here it is, in Bb, starting on an F:

If you practice the pentatonic pattern you will come to recognize it in many tunes.  Knowing that tunes such as “Spootiskerry” (above), the Irish polka “Britches Full of Stitches,” the Cape Breton reel “Put Me In a Box,” or the Scottish song “Leaving Lismore” (all shown below) are pentatonic means you’ll have an easier time learning and remembering the tune.  And if you forget some notes and have to search for them, you have nearly 30% fewer notes to shop for!

Whether in Celtic, jazz, rock, blues, bluegrass, classical or many other styles, the pentatonic scale is a great learning tool, and a versatile improvisatory pattern to explore. Using the minor pentatonic notes allows anyone to “fiddle around” on a break in a blues tune. Give it a try!

I’ll leave you with Chopin’s Etude in G-flat Major, Op. 10, No 5, which uses all the black keys — the G-flat pentatonic scale notes. At the end of this 2-minute selection, you’ll hear a straight pentatonic scale coming down the black keys.