As I understand it, if I restrict the notes I play to the pentatonic scale while playing along with a tune, I should not get any clashes with the notes of the diatonic scale being played by the others. If I look up “pentatonic scale,” however, I find there are lots of them! The most common major pentatonic scale seems to be 1 2 3 5 6. (or in D: D E F# A B). Is that right? What would the corresponding minor pentatonic scale be?
I’ll take all the theory you have but what I’m really looking for is one scale I can use while playing a tune I don’t know with others. In other words, a tool to get started learning a tune by ear without messing up the music in the process. Thanks.
I’m not well up on music theory, but I’m pretty sure that what you’re describing isn’t going to work. The usual advice (in sessions anyway) is not to try to play unless you know the tune. I think that’s true even if you are harmonising rather than playing the melody. If you’ve got some good friends you want to tootle around with that may be a different story.
12356 avoids the semi-tone intervals between 3-4 and 7-8. Semi-tone intervals are (to a Western ear, at least), the most non-harmonic in the scale. However, that doesn’t mean that you won’t have “clashes.” If you’re playing 3, the melody is 4, and someone else is playing 5, there’s gonna be a trainwreck, or blues, or both.
With some practice, you’ll hopefully develop a sensitivity to how chord intervals and progressions resolve, and when you find you’ve played something unplanned, know how to work your way out gracefully.
“calmness can lay great errors to rest.” Ecclesiastes 10:4
Another thought occurred to me (two in a day - scarey), that it’s not just a question of what to play, but when to play it. I’ve worked for years to get better at improvising countermelodies and fills. I’m usually playing in an ensemble where I am the only wind instrument. I have to listen very carefully to what other musicians are doing so that I don’t step on them. If the song is a fast reel or jig, there isn’t going to be a lot of space, rhythmically, for tootling around.
Vocal and choral music, ballads, and airs often have more intricate rhythm at the beginning of the phrase, then longer, held notes toward the end of the phrase. When I hear the lead holding out a note, that’s often where I’ll add in a quick trill or run of notes on the whistle.
i’m thinking from guitar here… but there really is no “one scale” that will do what you seek. a major pentatonic scale (1,2,4,5,6) works in a piece written in a major scale, but you still need to know what the melody is and what (and where) chord changes occur so you can work within the framework of a given chord in the piece being played. Knowledge of chord formulae is fairly important for this to work.
with the minor pentatonic (1,3,4,5,7… if i remember correctly,) the same restrictions as above apply. you gotta know the melody and the chords if you want to avoid those train wrecks.
i think Mark’s advice is spot on. listen to the piece carefully, and fill the open spots. if you want to have a go at the harmonies, you’ll need to brush up on a lot of chord theory… be it diads, triads, stacked minors, stacked majors, or any of something just shy of a bazillion (not to be confused with a Brazilian or a brassiere) combinations with chord names that, by and large, are indecipherable.
the standard minor pentatonic scale is 1 b3 4 5 b7.
if you take the 6 of major pentatonic and make it 1 your new scale using the same notes
evinces a minor pentatonic progression.
So, B D E F# A is B pent. min - the pent. minor relative to D pent. major.
Every major scale has its corresponding natural minor (Ionian/Aeolian complementarity)
as in D/Bmin, C/Amin, Bb/Gmin. The natural minor tonic is at note 6 of the major scale.
Now if you gap your major scale by dropping the 4 and 7 you will get a corresponding gapped scale from the natural minor root note.
Having “one scale” you can jam on works perfectly, but only over some chord changes.
The best example I know of is the piano solo on Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. The black notes on a piano make up a pentatonic scale, and you can play any of them randomly over the changes in Low Spark and sound brilliant.
Probably there’s a reason why tunes like that are few and far between. Probably because not enough of us are stoned enough long enough to keep them interesting.
There are quite a few different “gap scales”, some with five notes, some with six, in traditional Irish and Scottish music.
There are Scottish “waulking” songs in the scale I think of as sounding Native American 1 min3 4 5 min7.
A huge number of pentatonic Scottish pipe tunes are in the scale 1 2 4 5 min7 which is neither Major nor minor, having no 3rd or 6th degree.
Many other Scottish and Irish tunes add the Major 6th: 1 2 4 5 Maj6 min7 (Blarney Pilgrim etc).
Amazing Grace, Kesh Jig, and many other tunes are in the pentatonic scale 1 2 Maj3 5 Maj6.
BUNESSAN (Morning Has Broken etc) adds the Maj7 to that scale, in other words in a normal Major scale but lacking the 4th.
Lots of Scottish pipe tunes, old hymn tunes, etc go 1 2 Maj3 4 5 Maj6, in other words lacking only the 7th degree (ST COLUMBA etc).
But to try to answer your question, there’s no one universal good-for-everything scale… when you’re picking up a new Irish reel or jig by ear one of the first things you hear is the scale it’s in. So many trad tunes are in gap scales, and if you’re playing in the right scale it cuts down on the number of possible notes in any given phrase, so you pick up the tune faster.
Likely no one wants to hear this but the answer to playing along is to learn more tunes, and a lot more tunes. Learning and recognising musical patterns, such as scales, do help us quickly adapt to the piece of music at hand. In Irish trad, most of the musical vocabulary (melodic, rhythmic, and even ornamental patterns) are embedded in the commonly played session tunes.
I’ve recently returned to session playing after a very long hiatus. There are a lot of new tunes but the good news is many are oldies and many of those new tunes are “variations” of the oldies. So long as I’m not drunk, I often find myself playing along with a new tune after hearing it once or twice (or maybe I was drunk!). In a larger session / noisy pub, you can sit off to the side and play along, hopefully without too much disruption.
I learn tunes on the fly but find that homework is also necessary.
The pentatonic trick works much better with old-timey music than with the irish things for several reasons. I’d not try it in a session, but maybe in a jam…
Thanks panceltic piper for your nice post.
What you write as “min3” I am writing as “b3” etc.
For walri I am providing the following info on all the modes of standard pentatonic major. I don’t know how to do table format here so I am just going to lay it like this -
on the left going down the page I am going to write major pent series in the D and to its right in Bb (as random examples)
next to that down the page I am going to write the degree of the major scale they represent in Hindu-Arabic numerals
next to that down the page in Roman numerals I will write the note number of the scale
then for each row, going horizontally I will spell the mode you get if you use that particular degree as your root note or tonic.
degree note spelling example
D Bb 1 I 1 2 3 5 6 D E F# A B
E C 2 II 1 2 4 5 b7 C D F G Bb
F# D 3 III 1 b3 4 b6 b7 D F G Bb C
A F 5 IV 1 2 4 5 6 A B D E F#
B G 6 V 1 b3 4 5 b7 B D E F# A
D+ Bb+ 8
Neat chart, thanks. It looks to me like you also randomly picked the examples in the last column with the 1st, 4th and 5th rows coming from the D scale and the 2nd and 3rd rows coming from the Bb scale, true? Also, does the “note” column refer to the place in the pentatonic scale? Is that why “degrees” 5 and 6 match up with “notes” IV (4) and V (5)?
Regarding the first yes I did the examples random from 2 different key signatures just because they were there. I could have used all the examples from the D major pent. series or from the Bb or from one of the other 10 key possibilities.
I noticed he uses C major pentatonicfor illustrationg. People often consider the white keys more convenient as a template to explain something simply. Personally, from a keyboard angle, I find using the black keys only as a more convenient illustration of the scale (ie. F# pentatonic major and its 5 modes).
Any way, back to that article - I hope you enjoy it. Let me know.
Thank you, learnéd people, for lovely information.
I’ve noticed one or two of the features you mention, but was too ignorant to understand what I was noticing.
For instance, most of the overtone flute tunes I’ve learned can be played on a Native American Flute.
MacCrimmon’s Lament comes out really easily on a Native American Flute…
CORRECTION TO TABLE
Thanks for the appreciation.
Unfortunately there was a simple typographical error in the first row example in the table.
The F in that should have been F#.
I cannot edit that post because of the time elapsed.
Its an obvious error because the example is meant to be the same as the scale in the first column going down.
Here it is corrected:-
degree note spelling example
D Bb 1 I 1 2 3 5 6 D E F# A B
E C 2 II 1 2 4 5 b7 C D F G Bb
F# D 3 III 1 b3 4 b6 b7 D F G Bb C
A F 5 IV 1 2 4 5 6 A B D E F#
B G 6 V 1 b3 4 5 b7 B D E F# A
D+ Bb+ 8
