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Introduction
In Music theory part I: Tones and Scales we looked at major and minor scales. In this part of the course we'll look at varations of these scales, and we'll look at some scales that follow different rules. We'll start with the major scale. For the sake of simplicity we'll look at C major (and later A minor) only. Following the rules as stated in part I the scales can be easily transposed.
The Pentatonic Major Scale
To recap, this is the scale of C-major:
In practice, not many variations of the major scale are used. There is however one variation that is very common and widely used: the pentatonic major scale. "Pentatonic" comes from the Ancient Greek word "Pente", which means "five".
The pentatonic scale consists of five tones.
The "normal" major scale has seven tones, so we need to get rid of two of them. This is done be removing the fourth and seventh tone:
This results in the scale of C major pentatonic:
Just as any other scale, the pentatonic scale can be repeated above the octave:
This is how it sounds:
C Pentatonic Major on guitar
The Major Blues Scale
An extra tone can be added to the pentatonic major scale. It is placed between the second and third note, like so:
This extra tone gives the scale a bluesy sound. The added tone is called a blue-note. It causes some friction, which gives a pleasant twist. Sometimes this scale pentatonic major is refered to as the "Country Scale".
This is how it sounds:
C Major Blues/Country on guitar
On the next page we'll look at the minor pentatonic and blues scales.