Pentatonic Scales

Ever since the advent of rock and roll as mainstream music, pentatonic scales have become a staple element of music writing. The pentatonic scale is the backbone of blues, rock and guitar solos. Since this type of music has influenced songwriting over the last 35 years, you can be sure that pentatonic scale features heavily in pop music.

In the last couple of lessons, I've mentioned the importance of chord scales and sixth chords. The variations listed are really the strongest statements based on pentatonic scales, the ones are going to work the best. Why is that? Because they define the chord best. A single pentatonic scale can yield 120 variations. That doesn't mean all of them are good. The 48 or so variations that I've listen in the chord scale and sixth chord lessons are the most musical for creating melody, because of outlining the chord. However, we can get 5 variations out of a complete pentatonic scale which can be very useful in the writing of melody.

In the following examples, we're going to start the pentatonic scale on the C and start all the other examples on the next note of the pentatonic scale. As you listen to these, I'm sure that you can identify most of them.

These are the best full pentatonic scale variations, that are going to work very well with all 5 tones of the pentatonic scale. Another good use of the pentatonic scale is for filling in large scale segments. In any situation where you have a skip of a sixth, you can fill in that skip with a pentatonic scale. Click below to listen to an example.

Example

You can also play a whole pentatonic scale and double the beginning note and octave higher at the end, giving you 6 notes and more melodic words that you can add to your arsenal.

Example

Putting it all together

For this example we're using the song "Sukiaky". Built entirely along the pentatonic scale. Click here to listen.