Music/Scale/Pentatonic/Major

• Major Pentatonic Scale

  • Also called the Music/Anhemitonic pentatonic, gong mode in Chinese theory, and the MicroFreak's "Pentatonic" setting. On C: C D E G A. Steps in semitones: 2 2 3 2 3.

  • History

    • Five-note scales without semitones appear in traditions with no historical contact: Chinese, Korean, Japanese, West African, Andean, Scottish and Appalachian music among them. Chinese theory derived its five tones, gong shang jue zhi yu, from a chain of fifths by the third century BCE.
    • European art music took it up as a marker of the exotic or the rural. Person/Claude Debussy heard the Javanese gamelan at the 18/8/9 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and "Pagodes" (Estampes, 1903) is built on pentatonic collections. Javanese slendro tuning divides the octave into five near-equal steps, so the Western pentatonic is only an approximation of what he heard.

  • Use

    • Folk melodies such as "Auld Lang Syne" and "Amazing Grace" are pentatonic.
    • Music education uses it for improvisation because it contains no semitones and no tritone. The Orff Schulwerk and Kodály methods start children on it.
    • Country, gospel and rock guitar use the major pentatonic for major-key soloing. Its five modes include Music/Scale/Pentatonic/Minor.

  • Quirks

    • It is a stack of four perfect fifths (C G D A E).
    • The pitch-class complement of Music/Scale/Major is a pentatonic collection: the black keys of a piano form G♭ major pentatonic.