Learning to recognise notes by ear can seem overwhelmingly difficult. There’s one way to make it much simpler though: because most notes come from the scale the music was written with, learning to recognise the notes of the scale by ear lets you quickly narrow things down to the most likely right notes.
Inside Musical U we have modules dedicated to the solfa (a.k.a. solfege) approach to scale degree recognition, as well as intervals and extending the skill to full melodies.
In this month’s Instrument Packs our Resident Pros tackled this subject and made it easy for MU members to apply this powerful skill directly on guitar, piano, bass and singing.
It’s always fascinating to see how each of our Resident Pros tackles the same topic from different angles and this month was no exception!
Guitar
Guitarists are used to thinking in terms of scales – the fretboard patterns for a major scale or a minor pentatonic will be familiar to any intermediate-level player. But can you identify all the notes of those scales by ear? Can you go from hearing a tune to playing the right notes of that fretboard pattern.
In this Resource Pack our Resident Pro for guitar Dylan Welsh reveals a clever chord-based way to develop the framework you need to recognise scale degrees flexibly and reliably by ear.
Including:
A simple scale sing-along exercise to get you oriented
How to use the tonic chord to internalise scale degrees
A powerful concept to help you spot the non-chord notes
A play-through exercise you can use in every key to really master this
MP3 Practice Tracks with melodies in three keys to try playing by ear
Piano
To apply scale degree recognition for practical musical purposes you need to get the hang of two things: relating it to your instrument, and actually working out music using scale degrees, note-by-note.
In her Resource Pack this month our piano Resident Pro Sara Campbell tackles both of these, introducing an exercise and variations to help you get the basics of solfa in place, and then valuable tips and tricks for using this to play melodies by ear.
Including:
A quick rundown about how scale degrees (solfa or numbers) can be helpful when figuring out a melody by ear
A simple chords exercise that will help you hone your solfa ears
Two tips that will help you apply your knowledge of solfa to figure out melodies that have tricky leaps or chromatic alterations
MP3 Practice Tracks for the chord solfa warmup exercises
Singing
Using your voice to train your ears is something we’re often recommending at Musical U, and Sara and Dylan both recommended sing-along exercises for their instrument Resource Packs this month. For Clare Wheeler, our Resident Pro for singing, it starts and ends with the voice.
Clare included an essential starter skill in her tutorial: how to find the key (and hence the scale!) by ear. She introduced several exercises you can use, and then two practical applications: finding the correct starting note by ear, and creatively improvising using scale degrees.
Including:
Practicing finding the “one” of the scale by ear
Singing through the scale degrees
How to sing intervals using your knowledge of scale degrees
Finding your starting note for a song
Some handy tips for jumping straight to each scale degree
MP3 Practice Tracks to work on these exercises with more examples
Coming up next month…
As you may know, a huge number of songs are written with just four chords – or even just three! We’ve asked our Resident Pros to come up with creative ways to get deeply familiar with I-IV-V (“one four five”) chord progressions.
Interested in getting access to these resources and much more, with an Instrument Pack membership? Just choose that option during checkout when you join Musical U, or upgrade your existing membership to get instant access!
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As anyone who has ever gone to a symphony concert will tell you, it is an immersive, transcendental experience. To make sense of the multilayered, ever-changing music that the listener is being treated to, orchestras provide program notes to read along to, giving the audience insight into the historical context of the written piece, the arrangement of the music, and the instruments involved.
However, as with most technical writing, these program notes are often complicated, dry, and difficult to keep up with during the performance.
Hannah Chan-Hartley works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to create visually engaging program notes that combine text and graphics to aid the experience of a live performance.
We invited Hannah to join us here at Musical U to share her thoughts on everything from engaging listeners with visuals and the importance of good graphic design, to the secret of striking the balance between accessible and informative, and what sets her guides apart from the rest.
Q: We love your listening guides and are eager to learn more about them!
Typically, when you go to a symphony concert there are program notes describing the music. What are you doing that’s different? Why is this helpful for audiences?
Hannah Chan-Hartley, managing editor and musicologist at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
At the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), where I perform a dual role as the Managing Editor of the TSO’s program books and as a Musicologist, we still use program notes. They’re important not only for giving some general guidance for what to listen for in the music, but also for providing information about the composer’s background and the historical context that shaped the music’s creation. For our notes, particularly in the description of the music, we try to find a balance of being informative and educational and also accessible and entertaining, so that audiences with different levels of experience with classical music can enjoy them.
But sometimes, people want a bit more guidance as to what they’re listening to, or more importantly, how they should listen to a classical music piece, and this means learning and understanding the terms used to describe a work’s structure. Written descriptions about form and structure tend to be dry and can make it difficult for people to understand what’s going on.
This is one reason I created and developed the “Visual Listening Guides”, which aim to show rather than tell about the structure of a symphonic work, so you can learn how to listen to it. Even so, the program notes still provide important information, and in the TSO’s books, the Visual Listening Guide is a supplement to the written notes, not a replacement.
Q: How did the idea of listening guides come about?
Listening guides for musical works have existed in various forms since the 19th century.
Nowadays, you’re most likely to encounter a listening guide in a textbook, since they’re helpful for study and for teaching. In my experience as a music student and teaching university-level music appreciation and history courses, I’ve used various kinds of such guides.
In terms of design, these are usually in some form of a chart or table (occasionally a diagram), which outlines the structure of a work or a work’s movement through a list of themes and other major aural highlights of the piece, along with a brief description of what you’d hear. Sometimes these guides will include approximate timings of when you’d hear these highlights, as well as excerpts in musical notation.
Q: How have these listening guides evolved since their inception? How have you created and developed them for the TSO to make them as user-friendly as possible?
While these guides are certainly functional in the context of textbooks and the like, they’re not particularly engaging visually, and the predominant use of text to explain music can still sometimes create a barrier to understanding the musical score. Therefore, those who cannot read musical notation would not find that aspect of the guides useful. So, I began to think about how to communicate the same kind of information but in a more visually dynamic design.
The opportunity to create and develop my idea for the Visual Listening Guides came about in tandem with the redesign of the TSO’s program books, beginning with the 2015/16 season. At the time, we were re-examining the function of the program book and were seeking to make it more integral to the live concert experience while also providing interesting, informative content for our patrons that would encourage them to use it beyond the hall. The guides fit into this goal, so we began to include them for specific concert programs, and anyone in the audience, if they desired, could use them “in real time” with the performance.
To date, I’ve created 16 Visual Listening Guides (eight for the 2015/16 season, and eight more for the 2016/17 season), focusing on well-known symphonic masterworks of classical music. Over the two seasons, they’ve been refined in a few small, but important ways. For example, the graphic notation used in the guides now more accurately reflects the relative pitch levels and the note durations of the actual music notation (an eighth note, for example, is always represented by a dot). There’s also now a more consistent style in the way the visual and text language appears across the guides.
Depending on the musical work, I’ve experimented with some slightly different formats. For example, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique has an accompanying text by the composer that describes what the music is portraying, so I embedded the description within the guide for this work:
For the guide to Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7, a work with a rather unusual form of a single movement, I included a timeline which indicates approximately when you’d hear key themes:
Q: How do your listening guides work? How do you combine visual elements and words?
The Visual Listening Guide is intended to help you structure your listening of a symphonic work.
It is essentially a kind of map that shows you when the key musical themes and motifs appear in relation to the entire movement and/or the symphony, since the structure of the movement or symphony is dictated by the presentation, recurrence, and development of themes.
For the design, I had a few specific aims, chief among them being I chose to restrict the content of each movement of a work to a single page (or at the most, a two-page spread) in our program book. I wanted people to be able to grasp the entire form of the movement, at least on one level, at a “glance”. This principle basically shapes how everything else is laid out in the guide.
Q: That’s a lot of content to fit into one page! How do you ensure that you give the listener an “at-a-glance” experience while still retaining the important details?
With the limited space, I have to prioritize the information to be included. Thus, I choose to represent the most salient musical landmarks of the piece in the guide. I select them based on what is most obviously experienced aurally, so that the guide reflects as best as possible the listening experience of the work.
”I aim to show more of the “big picture” of the work. My guides provide a visual “bird’s eye” view so that audiences can see the general idea and how it ties in with smaller details in real time.”
These sonic cues include: the main musical themes or motives of the piece, which are depicted in a graphic notation placed in “pills”; the instruments or groups of instruments that play the themes, as represented by icons; dynamic levels; and main key areas. Text is used sparingly, to label the pills (“Theme 1”, etc.) as well as to clarify what instruments are performing the themes.
I’d like to give a shout-out here to graphic designer Gareth Fowler, who works with me to execute the design of the guides, and who helped develop the graphic notation and created the instrument icons.
Q: Your listening guides seem so accessible and intuitive. How did you achieve that?
Thank you! It was one of my goals. Besides the graphic notation and the icons, I use colour, which I think plays a key role in making the Visual Listening Guides accessible and intuitive. Colour is used judiciously on certain main themes that recur throughout a movement or when applicable, throughout the entire work. On the page, I seek to ensure that the work’s structure is clear, by the arrangement of these themes and their colours. This was used to illustrate Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, 1st movement:
As with repeated listenings to a particular symphony, the Visual Listening Guides contain several levels of detail which I hope reveal themselves as one’s experience with the piece deepens. Somebody with little prior experience may see that Theme 1 (in the Mozart example above) comes back multiple times just by looking at the colours of the guide, and they may choose to focus on that during a performance, while someone with more experience may be interested in following the notation and other finer details in the guide.
The colours in each guide are also specially selected to evoke the general mood of the movement, its themes, and key areas. For example, in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, the guide for the first movement uses very bright colours to convey its bright mood and kinetic energy:
Whereas the more solemn second movement uses darker colours:
Although music-to-colour associations are somewhat subjective, my aim was that their application in the guides would add another dimension of connecting to and experiencing the music.
Q: What makes your listening guides different than others that have evolved in music education contexts?
I should mention that to a certain extent, the Visual Listening Guide is an “analog” response to the growing number of digital apps that orchestras are having created to make the live concert experience more engaging and interactive, and to improve audiences’ understanding of the music.
”While these guides are certainly functional in the context of textbooks and the like, they’re not particularly engaging visually, and the predominant use of text to explain music can still sometimes create a barrier to understanding the musical score.”
While I commend these efforts and appreciate that many audiences do get something out of them, I do see some limitations with these apps. For one, they tend to be more-or-less textual program notes. In real-time, they function as a kind of explanatory subtitle format. However, because they try to avoid overly technical language (and this is a good thing), the descriptions of what you’re hearing are either overly simplistic or too prescriptive. The focus can end up being too much about the minute details of the musical content “of the moment” when sometimes, the most interesting aspects are how these details fit or are worked out within the whole narrative or emotional journey of the entire piece.
In my Visual Listening Guides, I aim to show more of the “big picture” of the work. My guides provide a visual “bird’s eye” view so that audiences can see the general idea and how it ties in with smaller details in real time. With text and visuals supplementing each other, the listener does not need to rely solely on subtitles given in real time.
Q: What are the uses and implications of these guides beyond the concert hall?
The guides were initially published and distributed solely through the program book that you receive when you attend a concert. As we had hoped, people were taking the program books home, and as we’ve found out from audience responses via email and social media, some were using the guides for listening at home, while others wanted them for teaching. We’ve recently made them available as digital downloads for a small fee, so people can use them for these purposes.
Q: How are audiences responding?
So far, very positively! I see them being used in concerts. It’s been observed that younger generations of concert attendees are especially intrigued and absorbed by the guides, following along and even pointing out how it works to their parents and grandparents. Since we’ve made them available digitally, the guides have been purchased by people around the world.
We’ve also had a lot of positive responses and attention from the global design community, I think due in part to the burgeoning industry and interest in information visualization. The guides recently won a 2016 KANTAR Information is Beautiful Bronze Community Award, determined by public vote. Some people have expressed that they love the guides simply as design objects… and would love to have posters of them!
Q: Where do you see this concept going for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and beyond?
I’d like to continue to expand the repertory of the guides, and of course, I would love to see other orchestras try them out. I have some ideas about enhancing the original concept to include historical context and explanation as part of the visual design of the guides, and I’m considering experimenting with different ways to visualize other forms and genres. I’m also keen to explore how the guides might work as a digital animation that works with a recorded and/or live performance.
Visualizing music is an excellent way to make sense of the multilayered, multi-part masterpiece you are listening to. Try it out yourself: listen along to your favourite piece and create a visual map of each part of the music. What instruments are involved? How long does each part last? Do some parts repeat? You’ll be amazed by how much you’ll learn!
Major scales, natural minor scales, harmonic minor scales, melodic minor scales, chromatic scales, diminished scales, Lydian augmented scales… Scales, scales, scales! Just how many scales do we really need to know?
What if there was one scale to rule them all?
Well, there is one scale that – while it may not rule them all – is by far the most useful.
Hint: it’s not the major scale!
This is a scale that’s been around a long, long, time – maybe even the first scale ever grunted out by proto-humans back in the day. This scale, found in virtually every culture in the world, is the pentatonic, or five-note scale. And despite its ancient origins, the pentatonic scale is as fresh and new and useful today as it has ever been.
This part of the Start Solfa series, will explore the pentatonic scale and its countless uses. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll understand how to build the pentatonic scale in any key, and layer it over chords and other scales.
Solfa and the Pentatonic Scale
In previous parts of the Start Solfa series so far, we’ve covered the basics of finding “do” and applying solfege syllables in a given key, as well as singing and hearing intervals. Now, we will look at the pentatonic scale, and see how this particular set of intervals can help us recognize even more patterns in simple melodies.
Solfa syllables will be your best friend in remembering and being able to recall the distinct intervals used in the pentatonic scale.
What is a Pentatonic Scale?
By definition, a pentatonic scale contains five pitches per octave. A pentatonic scale can be formed in any major or minor key, but for the purposes of this article, we will focus on major pentatonic scales, which contain the five most commonly used pitches in simple songs and folk melodies. To derive the major pentatonic scale from the major scale, simply remove the 4th and 7th degrees, which leaves you with five notes per octave.
A major pentatonic scale consists of a series of intervals starting from do:
Do-Re
Do-Mi
Do-So
Do-La
Do-Do
Therefore, the pentatonic scale degrees are 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. If we sing a major pentatonic scale, it will sound like this:
The scale has a very distinct, pleasant sound that works great layered over many chords and other scales. As stated above, it contains the most commonly used pitches in many popular songs. Its lack of half-steps contribute to its distinct sound, as compared to a major or minor scale.
There are are countless songs that use the pentatonic scale exclusively; with a quick Google search, you can find a vast number of tunes using the pentatonic scale. Check out this list of songs at Beth’s Music Notes. And if you need more persuasion that this scale has a special significance, just watch this fun video demonstration of the pentatonic scale by Bobby McFerrin:
So why does the pentatonic scale sound good?
Let’s look into precisely what makes this scale so universally pleasant-sounding and easy to layer over chords and other scales.
In a major scale, the fourth and seventh degrees form a tritone. This interval introduces tension and suspense to the scale.
Now, let’s look at the notes involved in the pentatonic scale; the fourth and seventh degrees are missing! The tritone is therefore absent from the pentatonic scale, and the tension and suspense disappears from the scale:
Here’s another way of looking at it: the major seventh and to some extent the perfect fourth intervals are considered to be dissonant in a major scale. Look at the intervals in a pentatonic scale, and going up from the root note you’ll find a major second, major third, perfect fifth, and major sixth.
Both the perfect fourth and the major seventh are omitted in the pentatonic scale, leaving only consonant intervals!
Pentatonic vs. Major
By comparison, the major scale – the scale that we first learn and which “seems” to be the basis of everything – only became popular in the beginning of the 1600s. Let’s have a look at how the major scale compares to the pentatonic.
Each major scale step can be numbered by degrees:
For the major pentatonic simply remove the fourth and seventh degrees:
One of the best ways we can understand this musical powerhouse is through another old system (although not quite so much – it dates to the Middle Ages) – the solfa syllables (aka solfege):
Omit “fa” and “ti” and you transform the major scale into a pentatonic. Add them back in to a pentatonic and you’re back to the major.
Where does the pentatonic scale come from?
Though it’s commonly used in modern music, the pentatonic scale is a senior citizen in the world of music; musical instruments believed to be 50,000 years old were found to be tuned to the pentatonic scale!
Another reason the pentatonic scale is thought to be an early development in Western music is the ubiquity of it throughout various epochs in music. Early Gregorian chants contained pentatonic melodies, and pentatonic scales in various forms are found in traditional Native American, African, and South Asian music.
Who Uses Pentatonic Scales Now?
The musical concepts of this traditional and folk music formed the basis of genres such as jazz, gospel, and bluegrass, as well as modern folk music. As these styles evolved into modern blues and rock, the pentatonic scale remained as an integral part of those genres.
Today, it’s as ubiquitous as ever, and for good reason; the pentatonic scale offers a fantastic improvisational framework for blues, rock, and beyond! In modern jazz, you’ll often hear amazing pentatonic solos whipped out by pianists, flautists and saxophonists.
The Pentatonic Scale in Modern Rock Music
The popularity of the pentatonic scale in rock and blues is justified, considering how great it sounds with almost everything: dominant seventh chords, minor or major scales, church modes, and more. Soloing with the pentatonic scale over chord progressions is very common in rock, and is an excellent exercise for beginner musicians to start improvising rock solos quickly.
What Can You Do With the Pentatonic Scale?
A quick refresher: the major pentatonic scale contains five notes instead of the usual seven per octave, with the 4th and 7th degrees of the major scale removed.
So, you may ask, if it’s just a “condensed” major scale, why use the pentatonic scale at all?
Turns out, the subtraction of these degrees is exactly what gives the pentatonic its power. Here are just some of the reasons you will want to use it:
1) Versatility in improvisation
You can play the pentatonic scale over a major chord progression – but also a minor chord progression, or a classic 12-bar blues progression. Because its notes are all consonant, it sounds good over nearly everything; try playing the pentatonic scale over a backing track, and you’ll see what we mean!
2) Easy To Play
Memorize certain patterns on your fretboard and keyboard, and you can easily transpose them into any key; see our pentatonic scale tabs below.
3) Play over modes
The church modes are either major or minor. The major modes are Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian, and all contain scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. In other words, the major modes all contain a major pentatonic scale, making it a perfect scale choice for writing or improvising in these modes, or playing over a modal backing track.
Singing the Pentatonic Scale
To really internalise the sound of the pentatonic scale you’ll want to practice singing it. Don’t worry if you’re not “a singer”! Start with our guide to how to sing in tune.
The solfa syllables for the pentatonic scale are Do-Re-Mi-So-La-Do. Sing along with the clip below:
Now try singing the scale without the audio clip. Can you produce the correct pitches without singing along with someone else? It’s harder than it sounds.
A good method for practice is to record yourself and play it back. A tool like Voice Memo on iPhone or Audacity is helpful for this, see our Audacity article for step-by-step instructions. Sometimes your brain will trick you into thinking you’ve sung something correctly, but recordings never lie. Compare your recording with the audio clip above, and see if you can match it yourself.
Playing the Pentatonic Scale
The beauty of this scale is how easy it is to play it, once you know the general pattern. Because it’s so ubiquitous and useful in blues and rock soloing, let’s explore the pentatonic scale shapes as they appear on the keyboard and the fretboard.
The Pentatonic Scale on Piano
Try this: start on F#, and play a scale on black keys only, ascending. What does it remind you of?
We’re guessing you can hear a distinct Oriental feel in the scale you just played, reminiscent of traditional Asian music.
You have actually just played a major pentatonic scale! The F♯ major pentatonic scale, to be precise. The pentatonic scale is often found in synth lines or keyboard parts in modern music; electronic artist Grimes’ song “Genesis” is played in F♯ major, and in fact uses the ascending F♯ major pentatonic scale as embellishment on the synthesizer, starting at [0:12]:
The pentatonic scale is very commonplace in piano music in general. Seasoned piano players: you may have already realized that you can also play “Amazing Grace” by only using the black keys on the piano, as this song is also built on a pentatonic scale! “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is yet another song you can play with just these five notes. Give it a try!
To play the pentatonic scale in any key simply requires you to memorize and apply the scale degree sequence of pentatonic scales.
Remember: the scale degrees used are 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6; this never changes, regardless of key! If you have a known chord progression, you can use chord mapping to determine which key you can play a pentatonic scale in to effortlessly solo over the progression, regardless of key changes.
The Pentatonic Scale and the CAGED System for Guitar
There are five common patterns for the major pentatonic scale on the fretboard. Known as the CAGED box forms, each pattern is named for one of the five open major chord shapes: C, A, G, E, or D.
Take a look at the five ways to play a major pentatonic scale, and see if you can spot the open chord that each is built around!
These patterns are the key to unlocking the power of the pentatonic scale on your guitar. Once you have the patterns down, you can simply move them up or down the fretboard to transpose the scale into a different key. To practice pentatonic scales most effectively, try mixing up the pattern and key you are playing in!
Hearing Pentatonic Scales
One advantage of pentatonic scales is that there are only five different pitches (or six if you’re counting the octave above the tonic). When trying to recognise the scale in a piece of music, you will find you can identify this scale just on the number of pitches, since other types of scales have more notes. However, it is worth using a tool like this one from Teoria.com, because if you can pick out the pentatonic scales from major scales, you will have a great advantage further down the line. To use the exercise, be sure you tick the box next to “Pentatonic Scales”, along with “Major minor”. If you already know major and minor scales, you can try to identify these as well. Challenge yourself to hear the difference between pentatonic and other types of scales.
You can also try playing the scale on your instrument, to get used to the sound of these five notes. Remember, because you know the solfege, you can play a pentatonic scale in any key where you know the major scale. Just use the Do-Re-Mi-So-La-Do notes!
For example, a pentatonic scale starting on D would be:
Here’s the scale in G:
And F:
Beyond the Major Pentatonic
The major pentatonic is a common and useful scale that is excellent to learn for beginners, as it gets you used to the pattern of notes, and gets you on your feet and playing quickly. Once you’ve nailed down the major, it’s time to explore further…
Minor Pentatonic Scales
If you know major pentatonic scales, it’s very easy to derive minor pentatonic scales.
In the same way that each relative minor scale contains the same notes as its corresponding major scale, the minor pentatonic scale will have the same five notes as its major cousin!
A refresher: the first degree (tonic) of the relative minor scale of any major key is found three semitones down from the tonic of the major scale. For example, the relative minor pentatonic scale of C major will be the A minor scale. If you’re familiar with the Circle of Fifths, you can easily use the tool to find your relative minors.
The minor pentatonic scale is well worth learning after you master the major pentatonic. It’s used in pop, rock, country, metal, and beyond. It’s another perfect beginner scale for soloing with.
If you want to whip out beautiful blues solos, the minor pentatonic is a must-have tool you’ll want in your arsenal, along with the major and minor blues scales. Blues and the minor pentatonic scale go together like bread and butter.
Permutated Pentatonic Scales
Yes, “pentatonic scale” does most often refer to the major and minor pentatonic scales. However, you’re not limited to just those two.
Think about it: the only real “requirement” of a pentatonic scale is the presence of five notes per octave. Therefore, there are thousands of possibilities of permutation!
Once you master the major and minor pentatonic scale, experiment with changing up some of the notes. You can even derive your own pentatonic scales from modes, by including the trademark intervals of that mode!
Pentatonic Scale Cheat Sheet
Want to pick up your instrument and get playing as fast as possible? Here’s some shortcuts that’ll get you playing pentatonic scales within seconds!
C Major Pentatonic
The notes used will be Do, Re, Mi, So, and La; in other words, C, D, E, G, and A.
Now let’s look at the notes in the remainder of the major pentatonic scales in each key:
C♯ Major Pentatonic: C♯, D♯, F, G♯, A♯
D Major Pentatonic: D, E, F♯, A, B
E♭ Major Pentatonic: E♭, F, G, B♭, C
E Major Pentatonic: E, F♯, G♯, B, C♯
F Major Pentatonic: F, G, A, C, D
F♯ Major Pentatonic: F♯, G♯, A♯, C♯, D♯
G Major Pentatonic: G, A, B, D, E
A♭ Major Pentatonic: A♭, B♭, C, E♭, F
A Major Pentatonic: A, B, C♯, E, F♯
B♭ Major Pentatonic: B♭, C, D, F, G
B Major Pentatonic: B, C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯
A Minor Pentatonic
The notes used will be La, Do, Re, Mi, and So, or A, C, D, E, and G:
Notice that the A minor pentatonic scale is the relative minor scale of C major, and therefore uses the same notes, but starting on a different pitch.
Here are the notes used in each different key of the minor pentatonic scale:
B♭ Minor Pentatonic: B♭, D♭, E♭, F, A♭
B Minor Pentatonic: B, D, E, F♯, A
C Minor Pentatonic: C, E♭, F, G, B♭
C♯ Minor Pentatonic: C♯, E, F♯, G♯, B
D Minor Pentatonic: D, F, G, A, C
E♭Minor Pentatonic: E♭, G♭, A♭, B♭, D♭
E Minor Pentatonic: E, G, A, B, D
F Minor Pentatonic: F, A♭, B♭, C, E♭
F♯ Minor Pentatonic: F♯, A, B, C♯, E
G Minor Pentatonic: G, B♭, C, D, F
A♭ Minor Pentatonic: A♭, C♭, D♭, E♭, G♭
Five Notes to Rule Them All
With its myriad of uses and its special place in nearly every genre of mainstream modern music, the pentatonic scale’s usefulness cannot be overstated. Learn its patterns on your instrument, and most importantly, practice singing along with solfege syllables to cement the pitch pattern. Producing the scale with the corresponding solfege helps connect the sounds of each scale degree with a syllable, making it more likely that you will instantly recognize the notes of a scale because your brain will process them based on their solfege identity.
Now that we’ve learned about intervals and the pentatonic scale, it’s time to move on to chords. Chords are the basis of harmony, and for anyone interested in improving their ability to hear harmony or improvise harmonies with melodies, hearing chords is vitally important. Check out the next part in this series to go even further with solfa!
It’s true what they say: all things worth doing take time and effort. Learning to play a musical instrument is an endless process. There are no shortcuts – you just have to keep on practising. However, bad practice won’t get you to where you want to be. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/practice-session-tips/
The question isn’t about whether you’re practising enough. Rather, it should be about how to practise smart so your hard work will pay off. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of every practice session.
– Set Aside a Specific Time
– Always Warm Up First
– Learn to “Hear” the Music in Your Head
– Work on What You Can’t Do (Yet)
– Practise Smarter, Not Harder
– Relax and Reward Yourself
Life is short and isn’t meant to be wasted on bad practice. So make the most of your valuable time by practising smarter.
We hope you find these tips helpful. If you have any other suggestions to optimise your music practice, share with us in the comments below!
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/making-sense-of-polyrhythms/
What is a Polyrhythm? Find out more about this fascinating rhythmic device in this article! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/making-sense-of-polyrhythms/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/what-is-solfa-and-why-do-i-need-it/
Everyone can enjoy and benefit from singing. This form of music-making is the most basic instrument we can “play.” You can improve your singing experience with a powerful tool: Solfa. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/what-is-solfa-and-why-do-i-need-it/
Hannah Chan-Hartley works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to create visually engaging program notes that combine text and graphics to aid the experience of a live performance.
The opportunity to create and develop my idea for the Visual Listening Guides came about in tandem with the redesign of the TSO’s program books, beginning with the 2015/16 season. At the time, we were re-examining the function of the program book and were seeking to make it more integral to the live concert experience while also providing interesting, informative content for our patrons that would encourage them to use it beyond the hall. The guides fit into this goal, so we began to include them for specific concert programs, and anyone in the audience, if they desired, could use them “in real time” with the performance.
These patterns are the key to unlocking the power of the pentatonic scale on your guitar. Once you have the patterns down, you can simply move them up or down the fretboard to transpose the scale into a different key. To practice pentatonic scales most effectively, try mixing up the pattern and key you are playing in!
