Piano Scales Mark II

By: Gavin Swift


Well howdily doodily virtuosos. How are ya?

In todays article we’re going to be looking at Piano Scales: Mark II – This Time It’s Personal.

You might remember an utterly sparkling and frankly luminescent article from this series already focussed on the scales of the piano (you can see that here: Piano Scales), which covered the major scale pattern (that’s major as in major, not just the important ones), the chromatic scale pattern, and the three types of minor scale patterns. Man that was a great article. I’d love to shake the fingers of whichever maestro composed that badboy.

 ‘So why Mark II?’

 Hey! The title is Mark II – This Time It’s Personal, and the reason that we’re doubling up is because actually, there are a lot more scale patterns out there that would be great fun to learn.

Want to learn way faster and avoid any pitfalls? Try a free in-person online lesson from one of our world class instructors today.

 So let’s get into it!

In this article we’re going to learn: 

  • A BUNCH OF COOL SCALES

 See you at the keyboard bro.

 Note-o Bene: If you haven’t read the first Lecture Owl article on Piano Scales you should do that now: Piano Scales; lest your brain squisheth into mush.

 

PENTATONIC SCALES

Probably in my top 5 scales of all time (you’ll get the joke in a sec), these scales are comprised of only 5 notes! [1]

The name of the pentatonic scale gives us a hint to its five-note nature. At school we all learned about pentagrams right? Five sided shapes. And if you were really cool like a certain music writer I know, you might have drawn a pentacle (a five point star) on your skateboard in Tipp-ex. Like I said, real cool. So penta is five, and tonic refers to the first degree - which serves as the tonal center - of a scale. On a side (but interesting) note, we call standard Major scales heptatonic, i.e. consisting of seven notes.

We can have major pentatonic scales and we can also have minor pentatonic scales. Let’s take a look at a couple! For the sake of example, we’ll look at C Major and A Minor, some scale amigos we’re already a bit familiar with:

 

THE C MAJOR PENTATONIC SCALE



Untitled.png

Oh yeah! Less is more with this scale! So as you can see, it’s basically the C Major heptatonic scale, but it’s missing two very important friends – can you see what they are?

That’s right, it’s missing F & B, or in their scale degree terms, notes 4 and 7. And therein lies the key to converting any major heptatonic scale into its pentatonic form – we simply remove the 4th and 7th notes, otherwise known as the subdominant and the leading note.

Have a play through of this scale – how does it sound to you? For a long time, composers used this note progression to evoke ‘Eastern’ sounding qualities in their music (for example Madam Butterfly by Puccini). The thinking behind this was that countries such as China, Japan, and Indonesia use a pentatonic scale as a primary structure in their music. Whilst this is true to an extent, you’d be hard pushed to find a country or culture that doesn’t have some form of pentatonic scale, from Celtic folk music to Indian Raga. Were one to use a pentatonic scale like the one above to express an ‘oriental’ sentiment here in 2021, well, it would be cliché at best, and almost certainly frowned upon – and rightly so. If you were to compose a piece of music strictly using a proper and established pentatonic scale, or mode (which can be used to label certain structures and variations of the pentatonic scale) to imbue the hue of a particular country or culture however, well then you might be able to make something really interesting.  

The final takeaway from the major pentatonic scale is that it maintains the most tonally essential elements of the major scale (the tonic, mediant, and dominant) whilst dispatching the subdominant and leading tone. In spite of this dismissal, the pentatonic scale still sounds tonally complete, i.e., when we hear it we don’t miss the 4th and 7th tones, it sounds whole.

 

EXERCISE

Ok this is a fun one!

  • Get thee to your keyboard!

  • For at least a minute (longer if possible) only play the notes of the C major pentatonic scale!

OK, now that we’ve got the look and feel of major pentatonic scales, let’s look at minor pentatonic scales, starting with A minor!

 

THE A MINOR PENTATONIC SCALE


A minor Pentatonic.png

Okay then! Which scale degrees are missing here??

That’s right! In the minor pentatonic scale we’re lacking scale degrees 2 and 6, otherwise known as the supertonic[2] and the submediant – in the scale above these are the notes B and F. As with the major pentatonic scale, this pattern can be applied to any note on the keyboard to discover its minor pentatonic scale sequence.

Before we look at an exercise based around this scale, I just want us to take a wee peek at the E Minor Pentatonic scale…

 

E Minor Pentatonic Scale.png

Now have you ever seen that sequence of notes before??? I’m looking at those of you who have dabbled in the guitar! The reason being that these are the notes of the strings on the guitar in their most popular tuning system! Coincidence? No way José! The alignment between the guitar strings with this tuning scale is one of the reasons for the instrument’s status in popular music! Awesome!

 

EXERCISE

  • Keyboard time!

  • Play out the A Minor Pentatonic scale as shown above – how does it sound to you? To my ears it has an innately jazzy quality! Indeed, both this scale and the Major Pentatonic are commonly used in jazz – though for whatever reason this feels jazzier to me – what do you think?!

  • If you like (and if you’ve got a guitar kicking about), you can also do this exercise using a guitar, simply limit yourself to using the open strings in the standard tuning system – howzat?

 

FURTHER PENTATONIC SCALES

Reader. Player. Friend. Alas (or rather, huzzah!) the pentatonic scale is not as simple as just its major and minor variations! Also available to the discerning player & composer are:

  • The Egyptian

  • Blues Major

  • And the Blues Minor

 Let’s have a scanty glance and play through these now!

 

THE EGYPTIAN PENTATONIC SCALE

Pyramids! The Sphinx! The Nile! And of course – the eponymous pentatonic scale!

Wait what?

It’s true, you probably would not associate a pentatonic scale with Egypt, but remember what we said above about near enough every country in the big wide world having its own particular scale or mode? Voilà mon amis. Let’s have a play through this scale and see what we’ve got. Lucky for you and me, if we start this scale on the note D then we get to play it on only white notes – D-ivine. Let’s play!

Egyptian Pentatonic Scale.png

Okay! So you know the deal. Let’s work out the pattern. Now unlike the relative major minor and scales we looked at above, we don’t really have a reference for this scale (unless you’re familiar with the Dorian mode – but let’s assume you’re not), so we’ll take it apart by looking at the tonal intervals between the note. That way, we can then apply that same pattern anywhere we like on our keyboards and have a PHARAO-cious[3] time tearing it up.

So we have:

TONIC – whole-tone – SUPER TONIC – 3 semi-tones (a minor third) – SUB DOMINANT – whole tone – DOMINANT – 3 semi-tones (a minor third) – LEADING TONE – whole tone – TONIC

And how does that sound to you? It’s definitely got a flavour of the exotic about it right?! The reason we call this pentatonic ‘Egyptian’ is because it is the tonal basis for a lot of traditional Egyptian or Arabic Music. Whilst it’s definitely not traditional Arabic music, you might remember this scale from the openining song to the Disney film Aladdin!

 

EXERCISE

 

  • Surely you’re already at your piano right?

  • Go ahead and spend some time messing around with the Egyptian pentatonic scale! Either using the white notes listed above, or, for extra brownie points, exploring the pattern of the scale on other notes! See what kind of music you can write using this guy!

 

THE BLUES MAJOR PENTATONIC SCALE

Feeling kind of… blue? Well not for much longer! Below is a diagram of the Blues Major pentatonic scale,  also beginning on D:

Blues Major Pentatonic Scale.png

Why D? Why not an all white key or all black key pentatonic scale?! Well, unfortunately, there just isn’t an all white key or all black key blues scale going! Why? I’m glad you asked!


THE BLUE NOTE

Great name for a bar right. But it’s so much more than that! The blue note is the very crux behind Blues music! And indeed there lies the history of all Jazz!

Now bearing in mind that today we’re looking at pentatonic scales is there anything that strikes you as odd about the above scale? Maybe like the fact that it has SIX NOTES?! The blue note is the culprit re both lack of an all white or all black scale, and the reason that this is scale has six notes! You see a blue note is the term given to a pitch played outside the ‘standard’ scale. Generally created by lowering a third, a fifth, or a seventh, these notes give the blues scales their jazzy quality!

 

THE PATTERN OF A BLUES MAJOR PENTATONIC SCALE:

So we have:

D (TONIC) – whole-tone – E –  semi-tone – F – semi tone – F# – 3 semi-tones (a minor third) – A – whole tone – B - 3 semi-tones – D (TONIC)

And that is the pattern for all blues major pentatonic scales! You already know what the exercise is going to be, but before that – who can identify ‘the blue note’ in the sequence? 

Have a play through of the scale….

Now have a play through without the F natural….

Doesn’t that sound… pretty normal?! Well heavens to Betsy, that’s the blue note! In the case of the blues major pentatonic scale, we add a flat third. Wild.

So to sum up, this scale is exactly the same as the Major pentatonic scale pattern, with the addition of the flat third, or blue note.

Exercise!

  • Put on your finest stereotypical blues sun glasses and get yourself to the keyboard – time to party.

  • Have yourself a little jam session using this scale progression! As ever feel free to explore other keys as well.

And finally, moving onto the….


THE BLUES MINOR PENTATONIC SCALE

So you kind of have a vague idea what’s coming up because you’re sort of genius and everything, but we’ll talk through it just to get you feeling real peppy and awesome.

Fill in the blanks:

The blues major pentatonic scale is simply a ……….. pentatonic scale with the addition of a …………

If you filled in word the first with ‘major’ and word the second with ‘blue note’ you get a medal! I’m so proud! I’d also have accepted ‘flat third’ for the second word (ya heard). 

Now we can apply that same logic to the blues minor scale, i.e:

The blues minor pentatonic scale is simply a MINOR pentatonic scale with the addition of a BLUE NOTE.

Or, in this case, we could also replace the word ‘blue note’ with ‘FLAT FIFTH’. Takes take a peek at the old lady in E♭:

Blues Minor Pentatonic Scale.png

Any ideas which our friend ‘the blue note’ is? I’ll give you a clue, the fifth note, or ‘dominant’ of the E♭minor scale is B♭, so you just go one semi-tone down from there….

That’s right! It’s A natural! No, YOU’RE A NATURAL!

Let’s wrap up by observing the pattern, and then having a play…

 

THE PATTERN OF A BLUES MINOR PENTATONIC SCALE:

E♭ (TONIC) – 3 semi-tones – G♭ –  whole tone – A♭ – semi tone – A ♮ (big daddy blue note) –  semi-tone – B♭ – 3 semi-tones – D♭ - whole tone – E♭ (TONIC)

 

THE FINAL EXERCISE!

You already know what’s on!

  • Piano

  • This scale

  • Party on Wayne

 

CONCLUSION

I can’t tell you how proud I am of you, you rock! We’ve covered a lot of ground today, and if anyone’s thinking: ‘hey! This was just pentatonic scales!’ well buddy let me tell you there are worse scales to know. And technically even though in theory we call the blues scales pentatonic scales they’ve actually got six notes and some musicologists classify them as HEXATONICS, so there!

I’ve had a blast, we’ve all learnt a lot, see you next time! And remember…

…scales rock!

[1] I said you’d get it, I didn’t say it would be good.

[2] My favorite scale degree name

[3] Like ferocious, I actually feel bad about myself for that one

Gavin Swift is a film and media composer based in London, England