Mini lesson: Major Pentatonic Scale
Just as a pentagon has 5 sides, pentatonic scales are a collection of 5 notes. Some fiddle tunes are completely pentatonic. Other tunes are not strictly 5-note the whole time, but have a lot of riffs or whole sections that are pentatonic. (You can click here to see the pentatonic and sometimes pentatonic tunes that I’ve posted.)
There are a few things to know about the scale:
It is easy to sing. It combines some steps and some leaps (in thirds) which are easy intervals to hear and play.
All the notes generally sound good together (wind chimes may be tuned this way for example). It is useful for improvising because it is easy to find things that sound good (just going straight up and down the scale can be cool) and having less options (5 rather than 7 notes) can actually help you come up with ideas for what to play.
It is found all over the world. As an exercise, it is fun to try to evoke different styles by using different phrasing and rhythms.
Just like major and minor 7 note scales, the same group of notes can be either major or minor depending where you start. (That is, start a third down from home in major and you have natural minor. Start a third up from home in minor and you have major.)
It is easy to emphasize chord tones using this scale. That is partly because 3 out of 5 of the pentatonic notes are also in the “home” chord. The other 2 notes are only a step away from those. Getting your head around this so it’s completely internalized might be an interesting exercise for improvisers, as is changing easily between a few different pentatonic scales that are 5ths apart. (And when doing that, notice the number of shared tones between those!)
Famous Melodies that are pentatonic include:
Oh, Susannah (first half)
Amazing Grace
May the Circle Be Unbroken
And so many more…
What follows are some patterns to help you memorize and internalize the G major pentatonic. Not that you should rely on patterns only…but it’s a good place to start. After you learn some of these in G major, you can make a fresh exercise by transposing them to A or C. Also, you can see my The Stone Arch to see how these bits and pieces can be assembled into a tune.
