Pentatonic Scale Chords Piano

[David]

The pentatonic scale often has chords that are 4 or 5 semitones apart (CEA, GCE, etc.). How do you describe these chords? Is the only way to describe them as major/minor chords but with a different lower note (C/G, etc.)?

It's better to think of the Pentatonic scale as a 'cut down' scale. In the minor Pentatonic it's notes 1,3,4,5 and 7(missing 2 and 6). The chords of the pentatonic scale are the same as the standard minor, so they'd be Im, IIIM, IVm, Vm and VII.

I hope that helps. the problem with analysing chords like this is that you're kind of in a system of music that's not got a formal naming structure. Usually the 7 notes of the scale are the basis for scale theory, so when you remove 2 of them, but apply the 7 note convention of moving up the scale you get some funkily named chords as you can see. It's similar to when a 12 tone system is used, only going the other way. Another way to think of it is like operating with a different base system.(if you're a mathmetician)

I'm not sure if there's a system for describing them in a similar way to the 12 tone stuff, but I hope my answer has given some understanding into why it's not generally considered. If my answer is based on false assumptions, please let me know in the comments and I'll Update :)

That's all there is. Of course many three-pitch chords can be interpreted in several ways, but with the above list I'm referring to a standard classification used e.g. in Creative Chordal Harmony for Guitar by Mick Goodrick and Tim Miller.

Obviously, different inversions do not count as different chords.It might seem odd to call a chord "minor 7 (no 3)", because it's the third that determines whether a chord is major or minor. But the rationale behind it is that we are in the key of C major and in this key we normally have a Dm7 chord (the same holds for Am7).

If you play piano, the pentatonic scale is one of the most useful tools you can learn. The pentatonic scale sounds good nearly all the time. It will also appeal to most listeners because it appears in practically every musical human culture in the world.

Another reason you might like the sound of the pentatonic scale is because of its similarity to the blues scale. While the blues scale is less universal than the pentatonic one, it is widely used in popular music and will sound familiar and pleasant to most modern music lovers.

A common habit beginners fall into is playing the pentatonic scale up and down over a chord progression. While this sounds perfectly fine, it can quickly get stale. If you want to challenge your creativity and come up with more interesting and unique pentatonic improvisations, here are some tips:

Just like diatonic scales, pentatonic scales have modes too! And each mode evokes its own style or mood. More advanced pianists may want to learn how pentatonic modes work and how they can be used to avoid Avoid Notes in jazz theory.

In general the blues scale(s) is only applied in certain circumstances: unsurprisingly, in blues music. The best answer to this kind of question, in my opinion, is to observe blues music to determine blues' chords.

You certainly could write blues music with chords like the ones you listed above, because no one's stopping, you, but when I think of "blues chords", I think of three chords, and only three: The I7, the IV7, and the V7.

The blues scale is a loose association of notes that when used melodically tend to be perceived as "bluesy". The blues chords tend to use similar groups of notes, but there's no useful direct relationship between the blues scale and blues chords.

It's the same thing with the pentatonic scales. At least in popular music (because it's different in more ethnic-sounding music), the pentatonic scales aren't the only allowable notes. Plenty of pop songs use just the pentatonic scale in the melody, but the chords are far from restricted to that scale. Usually, it's I-IV-V and sometimes vi, quite similar to the blues in terms of framework around which the melody is implemented. The whole point of the pentatonic scale is to remove the notes with the most tension (well, that's at least an important effect of using the scale), but without any tension, all of western harmony falls apart. See the duality?

That said, the pentatonic scales make some cool chords. And of course, not all blues songs only use three chords, and not all pop songs only use "the" four chords. However, the scale of the melody and the scale of the chord do not have to be the same, and often they arent in those two styles/harmonic environments.

The so-called blues scale isn't really a thing. Jazz, blues, and rock and roll music doesn't really build melodies out of such a scale. The blues scale is sort of a crutch that teachers use to help students get started with playing the blues, and different teachers don't even agree on what notes are in the scale. The form you give, C D D# E G A in C, isn't even one that I've ever seen before. If someone held a gun to my head and demanded that I name the notes in a C blues scale, I'd probably say something like C Eb F F# G Bb. But you can throw the D or the A in, or not use the F#, or play E instead of or in addition to Eb.

You seem to be taking a certain version of the blues scale and building chords by starting on a certain note and playing every other note in the scale. This does work in the sense that if you start from a diatonic scale and do this, you get the usual triads and seventh chords, but it's not really where harmony comes from or how chords are constructed. At the physical/physiological level, the major triad clearly comes from the overtone series, but in general chords are just combinations of notes that occur in music. Originally they occurred because people were writing music with 3 or 4 voices, and combinations of notes came about because of the way the different melodic lines interacted.

There are lots of ways of making various scale patterns fit with various chords in a bluesy context. It would be boring and static if the only way of doing it was to make the chord and melody out of the same set of 5 or 6 notes. Some examples:

Any note whatsoever can be played as a chromatic passing tone. For instance, over a C7 chord you could play Bb B A, and depending on how you executed it and fit it into the musical context, it could sound fine.

In a 12-bar blues in C, if you're improvising melodically, then it tends to sound boring and static if you never recognize the changes in harmony with changes in the notes you're using in the melody. If you play Eb over the F7 chord and then play E over the C7 chord, it gives the listener the feeling that you're helping to tell the harmonic story. If you play E over the F7 chord, it's probably going to sound just plain wrong.

Scale fragments can be transposed. For instance, you could start a 12-bar blues in C by playing a lick on the notes G A Bb over the C7 chord. Then when the chord changes to F7, you can transpose the same lick to C D Eb, and similarly, if you like, for the rest of the chord changes.

A pentatonic scale is a five-note scale. This type of scale is popular in music around the world, especially Eastern music. You can also find the pentatonic scale in modern jazz, blues, and rock music.

Lisa Witthas been teaching piano for more than 20 years and in that time has helped hundreds of students learn to play the songs they love. Lisa received classical piano training through the Royal Conservatory of Music, but she has since embraced popular music and playing by ear in order to accompany herself and others. Learn more about Lisa.

When you play the minor pentatonic scale, you may notice that it sounds a bit bluesy. This is because this scale is really the blues scale with one note missing. For example, in an A minor blues scale, the added note would be D sharp.

Back in June I did a post on creating melodies from chord progressions. One method I described was creating melodies based on a pentatonic scale, and I want to explore that idea a little more in this post.

The reason for that ease is because the 4th and 7th notes of a major scale are a bit fussy about which chords make them sound good. Take, for example, the 3rd note E in C major pentatonic. It will sound great with:

The 7th note B also has chords that it works well with (C, changing it to Cmaj7, just as one example), but other standard chords where suddenly hearing a B might call for careful preparation for that chord: finding a B in an F chord, for example.

Hm, I think a minor pentatonic scale is missing the notes 2 & 6 (supertonic and submediant). Then the mjnor pentatonic scale can be found from the major pentatonic scale by going to a minor third below the tonic of the major scale, and both scales have all the same notes. Exactly as a full major scale and its natural relative minor.

Thanks for pointing that out. The scale I mentioned in the article is a form of pentatonic scale, as it comprises five notes. But I should have been consistent and used the form you suggest, with no half-steps.

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