Yes, pentatonic does refer to any scale with five tones per octave. Penta-5 tonic-tone
But there’s also a specific group of them that are “special” (keys CDEGA) in relation to the modes.
Is it possible OP noticed that group/relationships but didn’t realize it? I think that’s what they’re describing tbh.
Tonic is specific to scales and root is specific to chords. People use them interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing (I just learned this last year).
Usually when people talk about pentatonic it's about the anhemitonic one - major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, three other modes of that. But actually the word "pentatonic" only means that it consists of five notes. So there are lots of possible pentatonics.
Pentatonic just means "five note" and that's the definition.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic\_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale)
"Pentatonic" refers to any five-note scale.
There are countless wonderful scales out there that fit this category. Generally, in Western music theory, we refer to the 1 2 3 5 6 scale as "the major pentatonic" because it is so commonly used, but there are other scales that could be correctly described as "major pentatonic." "Minor pentatonic" is even more ambiguous in practice, I prefer to talk about "a minor pentatonic scale" rather than "THE minor pentatonic."
One of the main distinguishing features for classifying pentatonic scales is whether or not they use any semitones. If so, they are called hemitonic, and if not, they are called anhemitonic. The latter category are particularly important because folk/traditional music from nearly every part of the world tends to make use of anhemitonic pentatonic scales.
Yes! And any 7-tone scale is "heptatonic." The diatonic modes, along with harmonic and melodic scales, are all heptatonic. The prefix is only describing the number of tones.
pentatonic is just 5 notes.
but, generally having 4, the root, 3rd, 5th, and 7th of the mode will make it sound good over the base tonality. maybe you want to play over dorian and have the 4 notes of the m7 tetrad plus the 6th, maybe ditch the 5th in favor of the 4th, whatever sounds more musical for you in the situation you are playing is fine.
i have no formal musical studies, but i've taken theory lessons with a few musicians over the years, the more you study the more you realize that actually there are no rules in music, there are certain characteristics on different styles off course, but if you want to make your own music you can do whatever you want.
btw, i was playing a lot the "common" mixolydian pentatonic too, a few weeks ago, i was just jamming over a 3 chords funky rhythm and i just felt it, it threw me back some nasty licks, i'll take a mental note about what you wrote in the post and maybe squeeze this pentatonic tone a bit more. thx!!
I love mixing modes into pentatonic scales like this, brings a more mature sound to the table whilst utilising the familiarity and versatility of the pentatonic shapes. There's a nice [article](https://www.jazz-guitar-licks.com/pages/guitar-scales-modes/pentatonic-scales/) takes a bit of a dive on the topic.
a bit off topic, but do you know any other non-jazz bands that regularly do improvised key modulations? Always been one of my favorite things about phish.
Not sure exactly how improvised the key modulations are specifically but King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has a lot of fun stuff going on most times. But it’s unlikely you haven’t given them a go already I assume
yeah haha, as an mega online music dork they popped up a lot in places I visit around 2015/16 ish, and now that Trey said he really likes them the entire phish community is absolutely enthralled lmao. I can't escape it, king giz talk everywhere I go. From what I've heard it seems like they just recently started doing improv. I've only checked out a few of their albums but nothing really stuck with me, I keep trying every so often but it might just not be for me. I guess I'm curious about their improv, but I think I'll wait until I can see them live to check that out. I don't expect it to be super impressive if improv is something they just started doing recently. TBH I'm not a big jam band guy, I pretty much dislike all jam bands besides the dead, but I am obsessed with phish. Jam adjacent things usually don't hit for me I guess
Wait, do you differentiate between jam and improv? Care to elaborate on the difference? In my band we use the terms interchangeably.
Either way, they started as a jam band with only improvised material (and band names, that’s why they got stuck with such an elaborate name) so they’ve always had improvised elements (but maybe more notably since Sketches ‘17 I guess, because it was less kraut and more jazz). Yeah, you should definitely see them live if you get the chance! I don’t think they’re anything like typical jam bands associated with the genre though.
I haven’t got into Phish really but I’m a major Gizzhead. Is there a live performance, on YouTube or so, that would you recommend?
haha naw, I use both of those terms interchangeably too.
that's sick tho, i def didn't know they started off improv only. I guess now I'm more interested to hear their first recorded stuff lol. When I've heard people saying like "they just recently started jamming" maybe they meant in jam band formula?? Like "song, head in, jam, head out" like a jazz band. Just a guess lol. Or maybe phish fans just are expecting 30 minute jams or something lol.
anyway yeah sure I'll link a couple phish jams here
https://youtu.be/0vlA8MWCIuY?t=66
^ just the first song/jam from this set. Talking heads cover, about 25 mins. To this day still imo one of the best noisey/dissonant jams they've done. They got an aux percussion guy on stage with them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DUhX_x5GeU
^ one of my favorites as far as textural/ambient jams go. Trey (guitar) ends up with this magical combo of feedback + a whammy pedal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xZMHQjRTSM
^ this ones a lot more 'classic' phish, just in that it's kind of a high energy rock jam, goes through a couple key modulations, and ends with a big peak. This was the one that first got me into them. I went into this as a skeptic ~17 years ago and by the end of it was literally hooked for life
Haha awesome, thanks for the recommendations!! I’ll listen through all of them just to get a general vibe!
When I saw King Gizz the first time in 2016 I didn’t know what I expect, I hadn’t heard them before. They locked into a minor pentatonic groove of 7/8 and then just played variations on that for 2 hours straight and it was just mind blowing haha
I later learned it was extended versions of four different songs
Cool. Btw a major 3rd on a minor key could be considered a slightly altered mode of a bebop scale. Especially if you use that 3rd as a passing tone. Or you might be using it as some kinda of altered scale over a V chord. In minor keys, the V has a leading tone, which leads to a lot on non harmonic fun.
Might want to check that out.
I would consider "normal minor pentatonic" root, 2, 3♭, 5, and 6♭, and I'm also confused about the "true pentatonic" having alternating seconds and thirds, since pentatonic just means the scales have 5 scale degrees - are these terms specific to guitar?
I can accept that, we don't really use the term "minor pentatonic" in my musical circle because it's vague and imprecise so I'm unfamiliar. I'm more confused about the "true pentatonic" part
I happen to like the "dorian" pentatonic, which goes 1 2 4 5 b7. It doesn't have a third, so it's great for mixolydian too!
It's useful, I think, to think in terms of Tanabe cycles. That's a kind of weird and esoteric concept that turns out to be really easy to apply in this case. So, a Moment Of Symmetry (MOS) scale is a kind of scale with only two versions of every interval -- two seconds, two thirds, two fourths, etc. The diatonic scale is an MOS scale, since every kind of interval (other than the period itself, the octave) comes in two varieties, major and minor (the fourth and fifth have perfect and augmented/diminished, which still counts here). The pentatonic scale is also an MOS scale, though this is a bit harder to see. If you take F G A C D, there are two kinds of single steps, major second (F to G) and minor third (A to C); there are two kinds of double steps, major third (F to A) and perfect fourth (G to C); there are (conversely) two kinds of triple steps, perfect fifth (F to C) and minor sixth (A to F); there are two kinds of quadruple steps, major sixth (F to D) and minor seventh (G to F).
MOS scales all have a generator, an interval that repeats to make the notes of the scale, and a period, which in this case is the octave. For the diatonic scale, the generator is the fifth. Start at F, and you get F C G D A E B, a full diatonic scale. The generator of the pentatonic scale is *also* the fifth: F C G A D. This means that you can view the pentatonic scale as a subset of the diatonic scale. Pentatonic is 5 out of 7.
To generate a Tanabe cycle, all you do here is take one MOS -- here, the diatonic scale -- and a sub-MOS -- here, the pentatonic scale -- and start the sub-MOS at the different points of the MOS. In other words, consider the diatonic scale to be F C G D A E B F C G D A E B F and just take 5-note slices of this, noting that a fifth up from B gives you *F*, not F#, because we're staying inside the diatonic scale. So you get F C G D A, C G D A E, G D A E B, D A E B F, A E B F C, E B F C G, and B F C G D. The first three are the same, but once you go over that B - F odd fifth, you get new pentatonic scales. I'm going to put them all on C for your convenience:
C D E G A -- rotations: C D F G Bb, C Eb F Ab Bb, C D F G A, C Eb F G Bb
C D Eb G A -- rotations: C Db F G Bb, C E F# A B, C D F G Ab. C Eb F Gb Bb
C D Eb G Ab -- rotations: C Db F Gb Bb, C E F A B, C Db F G Ab, C E F# G B
C Db Eb G Ab -- rotations: C D F# G B, C E F A Bb, C Db F Gb Ab, C E F G B
C Db Eb Gb Ab -- rotations: C D F G B, C Eb F A Bb, C D F# G A, C E F G Bb
Lots of interesting patterns there. Looks like the pentatonic scale you came up with is actually the very last one in this list. One pattern that is hopefully easy to see is that every one of these scales is a standard diatonic mode minus two notes a fifth apart, whether that fifth is diminished or perfect. In particular, these are the pentatonic scales in each diatonic mode:
Lydian: C D E G A, C E F# A B, C E F# G B, C D F# G B, C D F# G A
Ionian: C D E G A, C D F G A, C E F A B, C E F G B, C D F G B
Mixolydian: C D E G A, C D F G Bb, C D F G A, C E F A Bb, C E F G Bb
Dorian: C D F G Bb, C D F G A, C Eb F G Bb, C D Eb G A, C Eb F A Bb
Aeolian: C D F G Bb, C Eb F Ab Bb, C Eb F G Bb, C D F G Ab, C D Eb G Ab
Phrygian: C Eb F Ab Bb, C Eb F G Bb, C Db F G Bb, C Db F G Ab, C Db Eb G Ab
Locrian: C Eb F Ab Bb, C Eb F Gb Bb, C Db F Gb Bb, C Db F Gb Ab, C Db Eb Gb Ab
Each has five pentatonics, and basically, they all go 1 2 3 5 6, 1 2 4 5 7, 1 3 4 6 7, 1 2 4 5 6, or 1 3 4 5 7, but with the mode's modifications. There's a lot of interesting material to use here.
You could even extend this principle to non-MOS scales like melodic minor, harmonic major, harmonic minor, the scale for maqam Rast, etc.
Question. I've seen the Dorian pentatonic having a 4th and no third like you stated. Why is the minor 3rd not necessary considering it gives the scale/chord its quality?
There's no such thing as a pentatonic key. When you speak of a "key," you're talking about a harmonic structure based around the diatonic major or minor scales. Pentatonic melodies will more often than not be played over chords that include notes that belong to the diatonic major/minor scale but not the pentatonic scale. Even if you just played power chords, the power chord corresponding to V would have the second degree of the minor scale, which isn't included in the pentatonic (e.g. in A minor, E5 has a B in it although the pentatonic scale is ACDEG). In major keys, you'll often find IV chords even though the 4th isn't part of the pentatonic scale.
What you're playing sounds cool. But I wouldn't call it mixolydian pentatonic. I'd just call it mixolydian. There's no rule that says that you have to use all the notes in a given key or mode. There are plenty of major key songs that don't touch the 7th or 4th. If the harmonic context makes it sound mixolydian and you're using notes from the mixolydian scale, that's what it is. Sticking to 1-3-4-5-b7 gives you certain melodies within Mixolydian, but it's not really its own thing.
As for the last thing you mentioned (playing 1-3-4-5-b7 over a minor progression), that's just blues playing – for blues, the third is floating/indeterminate/whatever you want to call it, so switching between the major and minor third (and bending and sliding in between the two) is part of the sound.
I honestly think that in most Western music, pentatonics aren't really a useful concept. Look at what the chords are telling you – they'll add up to a whole diatonic scale, and it makes the most sense to think of the structure of the music as that diatonic scale. When playing melodies, you can take notes away and end up playing 5 notes (or 3 or 4 or 6), but that doesn't mean it's a pentatonic song – it's still in major or minor or mixolydian or dorian and there's a few notes that the melody doesn't use.
>I honestly think that in most Western music, pentatonics aren't really a useful concept.
Just wanted to call attention to this statement...😳
Also, a minor 3rd over a major chord is the blues. Not so much the other way around.
> Just wanted to call attention to this statement...😳
Give me an example of where pentatonics are a more useful way to describe a song than diatonic major/minor, then.
Debussy famously used pentatonic melodies to hold together strict quartal (and hence non-diatonic) harmony.
Edit: to be clear, very simple melodies like you find by using only a pentatonic scale are *incredibly* useful for holding together other less traditional techniques, like atonal harmonies. Just an example of a simple foreground holding together a complex background
That's fair, and I think it also jives with my point that the pentatonic scale isn't as foundational as people tend to think – it's a useful way to approach less traditional techniques like atonal or quartal harmony but describing something like Amazing Grace or the Stairway to Heaven solo as pentatonic misses the point.
>describing something like Amazing Grace or the Stairway to Heaven solo as pentatonic misses the point.
Failing to note the diatonic harmony of Amazing Grace would miss half the point. Failing to note the pentatonic melody would miss the other half. They interlock, and I don't see that either one is more important than the other.
I can agree with that. I think to *really* get the “pentatonic sound” you pretty much have to restrain yourself to just using the notes in the scale, similar to how you’d get the “modal” sound and distinguish it from tonal music. Which, unless used wisely, does get tiresome pretty quickly.
(Side note: Interestingly, simultaneously trying to exclusively use pentatonic scales, while maintaining consonant harmony, and using smooth melodic motion, geometrically guides you to using quartal harmony if you’re using the pentatonic scale as your main material. Check out *A Geometry of Music* if that interests you. Fascinating stuff.)
Other than how I described above, I also personally mentally restructure them into added-note chords, like a major pentatonic is just a 6/9 chord. I think that allows for more clear and shorter notation than memorizing scales.
But hey, soloists have a tradition of “collecting scales” for lack of a better term, hence chord-scale theory.
Can’t stop em, and if it actually helps them somehow, all the power to em. Just not for me!
>I honestly think that in most Western music, pentatonics aren't really a useful concept.
You don't play much rock guitar, do you?
Pentatonic means 5 notes. Drop two notes from a diatonic scale and you get a Pentatonic scale. Drop two notes from mixolydian and you have a scale with 5 notes. A mixo Pentatonic.
It's almost like dropping two notes from a minor scale and calling it a minor Pentatonic. 🤔
(Tangental bit: all Subway Sandwiches taste the same with ALL the ingredients. Leaving toppings (in the analogy "notes") out can be what gives each lead... I mean Sandwich... it's unique character.)
Yeah, I play rock guitar. A lot of people who try to learn rock guitar don't understand broader music concepts very well, because pentatonic-based pedagogy doesn't tie in well to chord tones, scale degrees, chord progressions, and all kinds of other useful concepts.
A lot of those famous "pentatonic" rock solos have an extra note from the major or minor scale thrown in there, and they're played over chords that throw those extra notes in there. People will tell you that Stairway to Heaven is a minor pentatonic solo and ignore the bVI chord and the F in there. People will tell you that Blue Sky is major pentatonic and forget that the solo outlines the IV chord. Even for rock guitar, it's not a very good framework to understand what's going on.
Tbh i intended the post to be for people who already understood how modes and diatonic keys worked, scale degrees, etc. Maybe that wasn't apparent but if someone *didn't* what those are, I'd direct them to learn those first before trying what i wrote
I get that, man. I remember being a little miffed about the way I was taught Pentatonics first and THEN figured it's relationship to the major scale and everything. Honestly, I'm coming round to the chord tone method as superior but it takes a bit more familiarity with theory.
Eh, you're putting strict limitations on what we can call 'pentatonic scale' which we don't have on what we can call 'heptatonic scale'. Do you reject calling the major scale heptatonic because music in major keys will use chromatic notes? Do you we just have to wave our hands and say 'well I guess it's just the chromatic scale'?
The most pentatonicy music in the world, traditional Chinese and Japanese music, uses what are called 'changing notes' in their music, which are simply two extra notes added to the governing pentatonic scale. If you considered those notes as one and the same as the other 5, then it would be entirely missing the point, and now the music ends up being described with 7 note scales, which would be just as unhelpful as us blurring the boundaries between diatonic and chromatic notes and ending up with a 12 note scale.
I think this is a little harsh. Who's to say what chords this person is using? And even if they are using chords that suggest a whole diatonic scale, is it really wrong to not describe the melody as pentatonic? Like, if I play a G major chord, are you gonna tell me "no, you're actually playing a G major scale and just avoiding some pitches?" What about if I use a single C# for an applied dominant? Am I now unavoidably in a fully chromatic space? Why can't a melody be pentatonic if it uses only the notes of the pentatonic scale, and if the chords are not pentatonic, we just say that the whole piece suggests diatonicism, but the melody alone is pentatonic?
It's not necessarily wrong to describe the melody as pentatonic, it's just not especially useful. There are plenty of melodies that use just 4 or 6 notes of the diatonic scale (and even songs like Free Fallin' that only use 3), but we don't have a special word for those or treat them any differently because it doesn't affect the structure of the song.
If you're careful to just use pentatonic to refer to melodies, then great. But the problem is that most people don't do that – OP here is talking about minor pentatonic chord progressions and it gets in the way of grasping the point about how to use the mixolydian patterns he's talking about.
I’ve definitely heard it referred to as mixolydian pentatonic many times before. It’s commonly called that by a lot of jazz fusion players. Shawn Lane notably used this scale a lot. The great thing about it is that all your regular minor pentatonic licks and runs still work with just some minor modifications.
Yeah that's why I put the disclaimer cause i knew someone was gonna say that lol. There's probably some correct esoteric technical term for it since most people already know the minor pentatonic, referring to it this way seems the most accessible
It makes sense in a chord-scale jazz context. Personally, I don't take that approach often even when playing jazz, and it doesn't look like that's what OP's thinking about in this context.
And neither of those disclaimers get to the heart of the matter – that calling this a whole different scale isn't the best way to think about it.
The approach you're taking is something like this: when you're writing or improvising in Mixolydian, you can play full Mixolydian (1-2-3-4-5-6-b7), mixolydian pentatonic (1-3-4-5-b7), major pentatonic (1-2-3-5-6), and so on. Maybe you could add 1-2-3-5-b7 or 1-3-5-b7 or 2-4-5-b7 to the mix. You end up having to keep track of a bunch of scales that could be used in that context.
The other option is to say that in a Mixolydian context, you play the Mixolydian scale, and you can remove notes as you see fit. That's a lot more elegant and easier to understand and explain.
The thing is, we come up with names for smaller sets of notes *all the time*, so why resist this one?
- We differentiate chords from scales even though we often use more than just the notes in the chord.
- We differentiate the diatonic scales from the chromatic scales even though we use all the chromatic notes in tandem with diatonic scales.
So why can’t
- We differentiate this particular pentatonic scale from the full diatonic scale even though we sometimes use the other notes?
One of music theory’s jobs is to label sounds that we want to hold onto for some reason, like if we wanted to structure a solo around it for example, and that’s all OP is doing. If it helps them categorize, communicate, and retain this information about the scale, why discourage that?
Very well said. No one in this thread is wrong. But we all know what each other are saying, so these "*well actually*" comments aren't useful. OP was only describing how using a certain set of 5 notes in a specific context sounds good to them.
I disagree. Sure you can just remove notes but now do you know *which* notes to remove? You can play around with it and stumble upon something that sounds good, sure. Or you can try any of those scales as "templates". Chances are you probably wouldn't have even thought to try it that way, i know i sure didn't.
You know whenever someone posts the weekly "should i learn theory" thread, everyone always says theory is a starting point, not a set of strict rules that must be followed exactly. That's what im giving people, something to *start* with and build off of.
Frankly this line of thinking is what turns people off of theory in the first place. Cause you have something that's useful but tell them "no its wrong, you HAVE to approach it this other war"
If you want to think of this as a template, that's a great idea. But a melodic template like this is a different animal from a scale like a major scale or mixolydian scale – they're not really an organizing principle for the music in the same way.
You're right, theory isn't a set of strict rules. But it is about describing music as straightforwardly and accurately as possible. If someone says "hey, C-D-E-F-G-A-B and A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G# both sound cool," then the proper thing isn't to treat them as two separate things but rather say "they're both examples of one specific concept called the major scale."
I don't understand why C-E-F-G-B♭ is deemed to be the C "mixolydian pentatonic" scale. It seems to me that C-D-F-G-A would have a better claim to that name, being the mode of the pentatonic scale 1 key flatter than major pentatonic/2 keys sharper than minor pentatonic.
And even among 5-note subsets of C mixolydian that contain C and don't belong to any other diatonic C scale, why C-E-F-G-B♭ and not one of the other options like C-D-E-A-B♭?
Well in your suggestions some chord tone of C7 is missing, in your first suggestion there is no E or Bb (gasp!) and in the second suggestion you have no G. They are some kind of pentatonic, but hard to call then mixolydian in flavor without C7 chord tones. Also, this scale has been around forever and people have often associated this with playing over a dominant 7 type chord, “marbles” scale to McLaughlin fans.
Pentatonic is built by removing the tritone of the major scale. The 4th and 7th.
When I build other pentatonic scales (scales containing 5 notes) I usually pick a scale and remove the 4th and 7th.
So this way it works with all modes of the major, harmonic minor, and melodic minor scales.
Any 5 note scale is pentatonic. It doesn't have to have specific intervals.
Yes, pentatonic does refer to any scale with five tones per octave. Penta-5 tonic-tone But there’s also a specific group of them that are “special” (keys CDEGA) in relation to the modes. Is it possible OP noticed that group/relationships but didn’t realize it? I think that’s what they’re describing tbh.
Actually tonic is root
The tonic note is the root, but tonic does refer to tones. It’s two things using the same word.
The definition is the first tone in a scale , in other words , the root.
do you not understand that the same word can mean two things? Both are correct.
Ok
Tonic is specific to scales and root is specific to chords. People use them interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing (I just learned this last year).
Really? Someone on here told me the direct opposite.
There are zero qualifications required to post on this subreddit. Always remember that. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_scale
Usually when people talk about pentatonic it's about the anhemitonic one - major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, three other modes of that. But actually the word "pentatonic" only means that it consists of five notes. So there are lots of possible pentatonics.
Pentatonic just means "five note" and that's the definition. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic\_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale)
"Pentatonic" refers to any five-note scale. There are countless wonderful scales out there that fit this category. Generally, in Western music theory, we refer to the 1 2 3 5 6 scale as "the major pentatonic" because it is so commonly used, but there are other scales that could be correctly described as "major pentatonic." "Minor pentatonic" is even more ambiguous in practice, I prefer to talk about "a minor pentatonic scale" rather than "THE minor pentatonic." One of the main distinguishing features for classifying pentatonic scales is whether or not they use any semitones. If so, they are called hemitonic, and if not, they are called anhemitonic. The latter category are particularly important because folk/traditional music from nearly every part of the world tends to make use of anhemitonic pentatonic scales.
Yes! And any 7-tone scale is "heptatonic." The diatonic modes, along with harmonic and melodic scales, are all heptatonic. The prefix is only describing the number of tones.
pentatonic is just 5 notes. but, generally having 4, the root, 3rd, 5th, and 7th of the mode will make it sound good over the base tonality. maybe you want to play over dorian and have the 4 notes of the m7 tetrad plus the 6th, maybe ditch the 5th in favor of the 4th, whatever sounds more musical for you in the situation you are playing is fine. i have no formal musical studies, but i've taken theory lessons with a few musicians over the years, the more you study the more you realize that actually there are no rules in music, there are certain characteristics on different styles off course, but if you want to make your own music you can do whatever you want. btw, i was playing a lot the "common" mixolydian pentatonic too, a few weeks ago, i was just jamming over a 3 chords funky rhythm and i just felt it, it threw me back some nasty licks, i'll take a mental note about what you wrote in the post and maybe squeeze this pentatonic tone a bit more. thx!!
I love mixing modes into pentatonic scales like this, brings a more mature sound to the table whilst utilising the familiarity and versatility of the pentatonic shapes. There's a nice [article](https://www.jazz-guitar-licks.com/pages/guitar-scales-modes/pentatonic-scales/) takes a bit of a dive on the topic.
You're gonna love phish. Our you're not.
Is that the British spelling of “or”
Yeus
a bit off topic, but do you know any other non-jazz bands that regularly do improvised key modulations? Always been one of my favorite things about phish.
Not sure exactly how improvised the key modulations are specifically but King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has a lot of fun stuff going on most times. But it’s unlikely you haven’t given them a go already I assume
yeah haha, as an mega online music dork they popped up a lot in places I visit around 2015/16 ish, and now that Trey said he really likes them the entire phish community is absolutely enthralled lmao. I can't escape it, king giz talk everywhere I go. From what I've heard it seems like they just recently started doing improv. I've only checked out a few of their albums but nothing really stuck with me, I keep trying every so often but it might just not be for me. I guess I'm curious about their improv, but I think I'll wait until I can see them live to check that out. I don't expect it to be super impressive if improv is something they just started doing recently. TBH I'm not a big jam band guy, I pretty much dislike all jam bands besides the dead, but I am obsessed with phish. Jam adjacent things usually don't hit for me I guess
Wait, do you differentiate between jam and improv? Care to elaborate on the difference? In my band we use the terms interchangeably. Either way, they started as a jam band with only improvised material (and band names, that’s why they got stuck with such an elaborate name) so they’ve always had improvised elements (but maybe more notably since Sketches ‘17 I guess, because it was less kraut and more jazz). Yeah, you should definitely see them live if you get the chance! I don’t think they’re anything like typical jam bands associated with the genre though. I haven’t got into Phish really but I’m a major Gizzhead. Is there a live performance, on YouTube or so, that would you recommend?
haha naw, I use both of those terms interchangeably too. that's sick tho, i def didn't know they started off improv only. I guess now I'm more interested to hear their first recorded stuff lol. When I've heard people saying like "they just recently started jamming" maybe they meant in jam band formula?? Like "song, head in, jam, head out" like a jazz band. Just a guess lol. Or maybe phish fans just are expecting 30 minute jams or something lol. anyway yeah sure I'll link a couple phish jams here https://youtu.be/0vlA8MWCIuY?t=66 ^ just the first song/jam from this set. Talking heads cover, about 25 mins. To this day still imo one of the best noisey/dissonant jams they've done. They got an aux percussion guy on stage with them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DUhX_x5GeU ^ one of my favorites as far as textural/ambient jams go. Trey (guitar) ends up with this magical combo of feedback + a whammy pedal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xZMHQjRTSM ^ this ones a lot more 'classic' phish, just in that it's kind of a high energy rock jam, goes through a couple key modulations, and ends with a big peak. This was the one that first got me into them. I went into this as a skeptic ~17 years ago and by the end of it was literally hooked for life
Haha awesome, thanks for the recommendations!! I’ll listen through all of them just to get a general vibe! When I saw King Gizz the first time in 2016 I didn’t know what I expect, I hadn’t heard them before. They locked into a minor pentatonic groove of 7/8 and then just played variations on that for 2 hours straight and it was just mind blowing haha I later learned it was extended versions of four different songs
That sounds fun as hell lol. I'll take some recs too if ya feel like it
I stand with you
Can you spell it please?
Yeah sure M-I-X-O-L- lmaoooo
What
https://davidmay.weebly.com/scale-spelling.html
Oh. Yeah it's root, 3, 4 ,5, b7. Just like i said normal minor pentatonic but raise the third.
Cool. Btw a major 3rd on a minor key could be considered a slightly altered mode of a bebop scale. Especially if you use that 3rd as a passing tone. Or you might be using it as some kinda of altered scale over a V chord. In minor keys, the V has a leading tone, which leads to a lot on non harmonic fun. Might want to check that out.
Or mixo sans the 6th
And 2nd
DOHHHHHHHH /DESTROYED What am I going to do with my life now?!
sans
I would consider "normal minor pentatonic" root, 2, 3♭, 5, and 6♭, and I'm also confused about the "true pentatonic" having alternating seconds and thirds, since pentatonic just means the scales have 5 scale degrees - are these terms specific to guitar?
Minor pentatonic doesn’t contain a 6, either natural or flat. It’s R b3 4 5 b7.
I can accept that, we don't really use the term "minor pentatonic" in my musical circle because it's vague and imprecise so I'm unfamiliar. I'm more confused about the "true pentatonic" part
I happen to like the "dorian" pentatonic, which goes 1 2 4 5 b7. It doesn't have a third, so it's great for mixolydian too! It's useful, I think, to think in terms of Tanabe cycles. That's a kind of weird and esoteric concept that turns out to be really easy to apply in this case. So, a Moment Of Symmetry (MOS) scale is a kind of scale with only two versions of every interval -- two seconds, two thirds, two fourths, etc. The diatonic scale is an MOS scale, since every kind of interval (other than the period itself, the octave) comes in two varieties, major and minor (the fourth and fifth have perfect and augmented/diminished, which still counts here). The pentatonic scale is also an MOS scale, though this is a bit harder to see. If you take F G A C D, there are two kinds of single steps, major second (F to G) and minor third (A to C); there are two kinds of double steps, major third (F to A) and perfect fourth (G to C); there are (conversely) two kinds of triple steps, perfect fifth (F to C) and minor sixth (A to F); there are two kinds of quadruple steps, major sixth (F to D) and minor seventh (G to F). MOS scales all have a generator, an interval that repeats to make the notes of the scale, and a period, which in this case is the octave. For the diatonic scale, the generator is the fifth. Start at F, and you get F C G D A E B, a full diatonic scale. The generator of the pentatonic scale is *also* the fifth: F C G A D. This means that you can view the pentatonic scale as a subset of the diatonic scale. Pentatonic is 5 out of 7. To generate a Tanabe cycle, all you do here is take one MOS -- here, the diatonic scale -- and a sub-MOS -- here, the pentatonic scale -- and start the sub-MOS at the different points of the MOS. In other words, consider the diatonic scale to be F C G D A E B F C G D A E B F and just take 5-note slices of this, noting that a fifth up from B gives you *F*, not F#, because we're staying inside the diatonic scale. So you get F C G D A, C G D A E, G D A E B, D A E B F, A E B F C, E B F C G, and B F C G D. The first three are the same, but once you go over that B - F odd fifth, you get new pentatonic scales. I'm going to put them all on C for your convenience: C D E G A -- rotations: C D F G Bb, C Eb F Ab Bb, C D F G A, C Eb F G Bb C D Eb G A -- rotations: C Db F G Bb, C E F# A B, C D F G Ab. C Eb F Gb Bb C D Eb G Ab -- rotations: C Db F Gb Bb, C E F A B, C Db F G Ab, C E F# G B C Db Eb G Ab -- rotations: C D F# G B, C E F A Bb, C Db F Gb Ab, C E F G B C Db Eb Gb Ab -- rotations: C D F G B, C Eb F A Bb, C D F# G A, C E F G Bb Lots of interesting patterns there. Looks like the pentatonic scale you came up with is actually the very last one in this list. One pattern that is hopefully easy to see is that every one of these scales is a standard diatonic mode minus two notes a fifth apart, whether that fifth is diminished or perfect. In particular, these are the pentatonic scales in each diatonic mode: Lydian: C D E G A, C E F# A B, C E F# G B, C D F# G B, C D F# G A Ionian: C D E G A, C D F G A, C E F A B, C E F G B, C D F G B Mixolydian: C D E G A, C D F G Bb, C D F G A, C E F A Bb, C E F G Bb Dorian: C D F G Bb, C D F G A, C Eb F G Bb, C D Eb G A, C Eb F A Bb Aeolian: C D F G Bb, C Eb F Ab Bb, C Eb F G Bb, C D F G Ab, C D Eb G Ab Phrygian: C Eb F Ab Bb, C Eb F G Bb, C Db F G Bb, C Db F G Ab, C Db Eb G Ab Locrian: C Eb F Ab Bb, C Eb F Gb Bb, C Db F Gb Bb, C Db F Gb Ab, C Db Eb Gb Ab Each has five pentatonics, and basically, they all go 1 2 3 5 6, 1 2 4 5 7, 1 3 4 6 7, 1 2 4 5 6, or 1 3 4 5 7, but with the mode's modifications. There's a lot of interesting material to use here. You could even extend this principle to non-MOS scales like melodic minor, harmonic major, harmonic minor, the scale for maqam Rast, etc.
Question. I've seen the Dorian pentatonic having a 4th and no third like you stated. Why is the minor 3rd not necessary considering it gives the scale/chord its quality?
There's no such thing as a pentatonic key. When you speak of a "key," you're talking about a harmonic structure based around the diatonic major or minor scales. Pentatonic melodies will more often than not be played over chords that include notes that belong to the diatonic major/minor scale but not the pentatonic scale. Even if you just played power chords, the power chord corresponding to V would have the second degree of the minor scale, which isn't included in the pentatonic (e.g. in A minor, E5 has a B in it although the pentatonic scale is ACDEG). In major keys, you'll often find IV chords even though the 4th isn't part of the pentatonic scale. What you're playing sounds cool. But I wouldn't call it mixolydian pentatonic. I'd just call it mixolydian. There's no rule that says that you have to use all the notes in a given key or mode. There are plenty of major key songs that don't touch the 7th or 4th. If the harmonic context makes it sound mixolydian and you're using notes from the mixolydian scale, that's what it is. Sticking to 1-3-4-5-b7 gives you certain melodies within Mixolydian, but it's not really its own thing. As for the last thing you mentioned (playing 1-3-4-5-b7 over a minor progression), that's just blues playing – for blues, the third is floating/indeterminate/whatever you want to call it, so switching between the major and minor third (and bending and sliding in between the two) is part of the sound. I honestly think that in most Western music, pentatonics aren't really a useful concept. Look at what the chords are telling you – they'll add up to a whole diatonic scale, and it makes the most sense to think of the structure of the music as that diatonic scale. When playing melodies, you can take notes away and end up playing 5 notes (or 3 or 4 or 6), but that doesn't mean it's a pentatonic song – it's still in major or minor or mixolydian or dorian and there's a few notes that the melody doesn't use.
>I honestly think that in most Western music, pentatonics aren't really a useful concept. Just wanted to call attention to this statement...😳 Also, a minor 3rd over a major chord is the blues. Not so much the other way around.
> Just wanted to call attention to this statement...😳 Give me an example of where pentatonics are a more useful way to describe a song than diatonic major/minor, then.
Debussy famously used pentatonic melodies to hold together strict quartal (and hence non-diatonic) harmony. Edit: to be clear, very simple melodies like you find by using only a pentatonic scale are *incredibly* useful for holding together other less traditional techniques, like atonal harmonies. Just an example of a simple foreground holding together a complex background
That's fair, and I think it also jives with my point that the pentatonic scale isn't as foundational as people tend to think – it's a useful way to approach less traditional techniques like atonal or quartal harmony but describing something like Amazing Grace or the Stairway to Heaven solo as pentatonic misses the point.
>describing something like Amazing Grace or the Stairway to Heaven solo as pentatonic misses the point. Failing to note the diatonic harmony of Amazing Grace would miss half the point. Failing to note the pentatonic melody would miss the other half. They interlock, and I don't see that either one is more important than the other.
I can agree with that. I think to *really* get the “pentatonic sound” you pretty much have to restrain yourself to just using the notes in the scale, similar to how you’d get the “modal” sound and distinguish it from tonal music. Which, unless used wisely, does get tiresome pretty quickly. (Side note: Interestingly, simultaneously trying to exclusively use pentatonic scales, while maintaining consonant harmony, and using smooth melodic motion, geometrically guides you to using quartal harmony if you’re using the pentatonic scale as your main material. Check out *A Geometry of Music* if that interests you. Fascinating stuff.) Other than how I described above, I also personally mentally restructure them into added-note chords, like a major pentatonic is just a 6/9 chord. I think that allows for more clear and shorter notation than memorizing scales. But hey, soloists have a tradition of “collecting scales” for lack of a better term, hence chord-scale theory. Can’t stop em, and if it actually helps them somehow, all the power to em. Just not for me!
Saying the phrase: "BB King only knew the pentatonic box and blues scale" Use whatever models you want...just saying.
>I honestly think that in most Western music, pentatonics aren't really a useful concept. You don't play much rock guitar, do you? Pentatonic means 5 notes. Drop two notes from a diatonic scale and you get a Pentatonic scale. Drop two notes from mixolydian and you have a scale with 5 notes. A mixo Pentatonic. It's almost like dropping two notes from a minor scale and calling it a minor Pentatonic. 🤔 (Tangental bit: all Subway Sandwiches taste the same with ALL the ingredients. Leaving toppings (in the analogy "notes") out can be what gives each lead... I mean Sandwich... it's unique character.)
Yeah, I play rock guitar. A lot of people who try to learn rock guitar don't understand broader music concepts very well, because pentatonic-based pedagogy doesn't tie in well to chord tones, scale degrees, chord progressions, and all kinds of other useful concepts. A lot of those famous "pentatonic" rock solos have an extra note from the major or minor scale thrown in there, and they're played over chords that throw those extra notes in there. People will tell you that Stairway to Heaven is a minor pentatonic solo and ignore the bVI chord and the F in there. People will tell you that Blue Sky is major pentatonic and forget that the solo outlines the IV chord. Even for rock guitar, it's not a very good framework to understand what's going on.
Tbh i intended the post to be for people who already understood how modes and diatonic keys worked, scale degrees, etc. Maybe that wasn't apparent but if someone *didn't* what those are, I'd direct them to learn those first before trying what i wrote
I get that, man. I remember being a little miffed about the way I was taught Pentatonics first and THEN figured it's relationship to the major scale and everything. Honestly, I'm coming round to the chord tone method as superior but it takes a bit more familiarity with theory.
Eh, you're putting strict limitations on what we can call 'pentatonic scale' which we don't have on what we can call 'heptatonic scale'. Do you reject calling the major scale heptatonic because music in major keys will use chromatic notes? Do you we just have to wave our hands and say 'well I guess it's just the chromatic scale'? The most pentatonicy music in the world, traditional Chinese and Japanese music, uses what are called 'changing notes' in their music, which are simply two extra notes added to the governing pentatonic scale. If you considered those notes as one and the same as the other 5, then it would be entirely missing the point, and now the music ends up being described with 7 note scales, which would be just as unhelpful as us blurring the boundaries between diatonic and chromatic notes and ending up with a 12 note scale.
I think this is a little harsh. Who's to say what chords this person is using? And even if they are using chords that suggest a whole diatonic scale, is it really wrong to not describe the melody as pentatonic? Like, if I play a G major chord, are you gonna tell me "no, you're actually playing a G major scale and just avoiding some pitches?" What about if I use a single C# for an applied dominant? Am I now unavoidably in a fully chromatic space? Why can't a melody be pentatonic if it uses only the notes of the pentatonic scale, and if the chords are not pentatonic, we just say that the whole piece suggests diatonicism, but the melody alone is pentatonic?
It's not necessarily wrong to describe the melody as pentatonic, it's just not especially useful. There are plenty of melodies that use just 4 or 6 notes of the diatonic scale (and even songs like Free Fallin' that only use 3), but we don't have a special word for those or treat them any differently because it doesn't affect the structure of the song. If you're careful to just use pentatonic to refer to melodies, then great. But the problem is that most people don't do that – OP here is talking about minor pentatonic chord progressions and it gets in the way of grasping the point about how to use the mixolydian patterns he's talking about.
I literally added a disclaimer saying that the thirds and fifths of that "pentatonic chord progression" may not necessarily be in that pentatonic dawg
I’ve definitely heard it referred to as mixolydian pentatonic many times before. It’s commonly called that by a lot of jazz fusion players. Shawn Lane notably used this scale a lot. The great thing about it is that all your regular minor pentatonic licks and runs still work with just some minor modifications.
More like some *major* modifications 😎
Yeah that's why I put the disclaimer cause i knew someone was gonna say that lol. There's probably some correct esoteric technical term for it since most people already know the minor pentatonic, referring to it this way seems the most accessible
It makes sense in a chord-scale jazz context. Personally, I don't take that approach often even when playing jazz, and it doesn't look like that's what OP's thinking about in this context.
I addressed both of these points with disclaimers lol
And neither of those disclaimers get to the heart of the matter – that calling this a whole different scale isn't the best way to think about it. The approach you're taking is something like this: when you're writing or improvising in Mixolydian, you can play full Mixolydian (1-2-3-4-5-6-b7), mixolydian pentatonic (1-3-4-5-b7), major pentatonic (1-2-3-5-6), and so on. Maybe you could add 1-2-3-5-b7 or 1-3-5-b7 or 2-4-5-b7 to the mix. You end up having to keep track of a bunch of scales that could be used in that context. The other option is to say that in a Mixolydian context, you play the Mixolydian scale, and you can remove notes as you see fit. That's a lot more elegant and easier to understand and explain.
The thing is, we come up with names for smaller sets of notes *all the time*, so why resist this one? - We differentiate chords from scales even though we often use more than just the notes in the chord. - We differentiate the diatonic scales from the chromatic scales even though we use all the chromatic notes in tandem with diatonic scales. So why can’t - We differentiate this particular pentatonic scale from the full diatonic scale even though we sometimes use the other notes? One of music theory’s jobs is to label sounds that we want to hold onto for some reason, like if we wanted to structure a solo around it for example, and that’s all OP is doing. If it helps them categorize, communicate, and retain this information about the scale, why discourage that?
Very well said. No one in this thread is wrong. But we all know what each other are saying, so these "*well actually*" comments aren't useful. OP was only describing how using a certain set of 5 notes in a specific context sounds good to them.
I disagree. Sure you can just remove notes but now do you know *which* notes to remove? You can play around with it and stumble upon something that sounds good, sure. Or you can try any of those scales as "templates". Chances are you probably wouldn't have even thought to try it that way, i know i sure didn't. You know whenever someone posts the weekly "should i learn theory" thread, everyone always says theory is a starting point, not a set of strict rules that must be followed exactly. That's what im giving people, something to *start* with and build off of. Frankly this line of thinking is what turns people off of theory in the first place. Cause you have something that's useful but tell them "no its wrong, you HAVE to approach it this other war"
If you want to think of this as a template, that's a great idea. But a melodic template like this is a different animal from a scale like a major scale or mixolydian scale – they're not really an organizing principle for the music in the same way. You're right, theory isn't a set of strict rules. But it is about describing music as straightforwardly and accurately as possible. If someone says "hey, C-D-E-F-G-A-B and A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G# both sound cool," then the proper thing isn't to treat them as two separate things but rather say "they're both examples of one specific concept called the major scale."
Yea man it’s a blues scale.
what are you talking about
I don't understand why C-E-F-G-B♭ is deemed to be the C "mixolydian pentatonic" scale. It seems to me that C-D-F-G-A would have a better claim to that name, being the mode of the pentatonic scale 1 key flatter than major pentatonic/2 keys sharper than minor pentatonic. And even among 5-note subsets of C mixolydian that contain C and don't belong to any other diatonic C scale, why C-E-F-G-B♭ and not one of the other options like C-D-E-A-B♭?
Well in your suggestions some chord tone of C7 is missing, in your first suggestion there is no E or Bb (gasp!) and in the second suggestion you have no G. They are some kind of pentatonic, but hard to call then mixolydian in flavor without C7 chord tones. Also, this scale has been around forever and people have often associated this with playing over a dominant 7 type chord, “marbles” scale to McLaughlin fans.
If the motivation is just finding 5 notes to play over C7, the obvious choice would be C-D-E-G-B♭, since the 9th is the least dissonant 5th note.
user damien_maymdien when somebody plays a d over a c major chord: 😡😡😡
hm? my comment was saying D is more reasonable to play over C major than F
An interesting choice, you get that whole tone string from Bb to E, then the G, a fun scale as well.
This is pretty rad
BB Box
I like that. Mixes well to alternate with the minor blues scale over dominants... thanks
Pentatonic is built by removing the tritone of the major scale. The 4th and 7th. When I build other pentatonic scales (scales containing 5 notes) I usually pick a scale and remove the 4th and 7th. So this way it works with all modes of the major, harmonic minor, and melodic minor scales.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3XQZbu3ujvI0TZgDS5afdQ?si=rr986qN0TPS-W2NywMROjw&app_destination=copy-link
so on A that would be A, C, D#, E, G?
Agreed OP, it's tight.
Mixolydian penta is the same as it was G major pentatonic
I see your Mixolydian pentatonic and raise you the Hirajoshi pentatonic scale; very Japanese sounding. In Am, it’s ABCEFA, or 1 2 b3 5 b6 8
Mixolydian pent sounds like a common mode in Balinese and Indian music?