Pentatonic scale
A scale of five notes, common in folk music.
What it means
A pentatonic scale comprises five notes per octave. The most widespread form is anhemitonic pentatonicism, which manages without semitone steps: on the keyboard it corresponds to the black keys. Its distances are whole tones and minor thirds. Alongside this there are forms with semitones, which occur in East Asian musical traditions.
Musical use
Because the semitones are absent, the tension relations that create direction in the diatonic scale are absent too — there is no leading tone and no tritone. This makes pentatonicism extraordinarily agreeable: any notes of this scale never sound harsh together, which explains its spread in folk music, in children's songs, and in music-making together.
Two forms are especially common: the major pentatonic of tonic, major second, major third, fifth, and major sixth, and the minor pentatonic of tonic, minor third, fourth, fifth, and minor seventh. Both contain the same notes, only read from different degrees. If one adds the diminished fifth to the minor pentatonic, the blues scale results.
Pentatonic scales are widespread worldwide and count among the oldest demonstrable tone orders. In music education they are used early, because one can improvise on them without prior knowledge.
The most common form is the semitone-free pentatonic, which corresponds to the black keys of the piano. It occurs in the folk music of East Asia, Africa, Scotland, and America, in blues and rock, and in many children's songs. Because semitones are absent, no harsh dissonances arise; this is why it is well suited to improvisation and school music. There are also pentatonic scales containing semitones, for instance in traditional Japanese music, which have a quite different, more austere character.
Performance practice
Use the pentatonic for improvising: over a simple accompaniment hardly anything can sound wrong, which directs attention to rhythm and shaping. Take care not to run the scale up and down but to form motifs. And listen to the minor thirds — they give the pentatonic its open sound and do not want to be played over.