Music/Scale/Hirajoshi

• Hirajoshi Scale

  • From hirajōshi, "even tuning", a standard tuning of the Japanese koto. On C, in the form most Western references give: C D E♭ G A♭. Steps in semitones: 2 1 4 1 4.

  • History

    • Hirajōshi is a tuning for the thirteen strings of the koto, credited to Person/Yatsuhashi Kengyō in the seventeenth century. It became the standard tuning for solo koto music of the Edo period, including his Rokudan no shirabe.
    • Western scale catalogues and guitar method books lifted the tuning's pitches out as a five-note scale in the twentieth century. Japanese theory treats the same pitches as the miyako-bushi or in scale.

  • Use

    • In Western rock, metal and film music, the scale stands in for Japan.

  • Quirks

    • Western references disagree about which note is the tonic: 0 2 3 7 8 and 0 4 6 7 11 both appear in print. They are rotations of one pitch set, the same set as the miyako-bushi scale 0 1 5 7 8.
    • It is a hemitonic pentatonic, the opposite of Music/Anhemitonic: two of its five steps are semitones, each followed by a major third. That pairing gives it a sound unlike the semitone-free Music/Scale/Pentatonic/Major.
    • The Launchpad manual names a "Hirajoshi" setting without listing its pitches.