Learning pentatonic and blues scales is a milestone moment for piano students. It’s not a complicated concept, but it’s a significant step in composition and improvisation. Countless melodies and piano solos are rooted in these scales, and you don’t have to be a pro to make them sound amazing!
What is a pentatonic scale?
As the name suggests, a pentatonic scale is a five-note scale. We create pentatonic scales by taking notes from the major and natural minor scales, giving us major and minor pentatonic scales.
Knowing the major and minor scales well is important before you start working on pentatonic scales. If you don’t know the diatonic scales well, it makes life more difficult down the road.
Why do pentatonics sound so good?
It’s difficult to make a pentatonic scale sound bad; that’s how cool they are. No matter what order you play the notes in or what shapes you come up with, it always sounds melodically pleasing, and there’s a simple way to test that theory.
If you play only the black keys in any order and style you like, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Try playing Eb octaves with your left hand, and move your octaves up, one black key at a time, every two or four beats. In your right hand, play any black keys you like over the top of those octaves, and you should hear something that sounds far more complex than it is.
Admittedly, the more you do it, it can sound a little unpolished or even messy, but nothing will sound too harsh or dissonant. The reason all the black keys sound so good together is that they form two pentatonic scales.
If you start on Eb, playing only black keys, you have the Eb minor pentatonic scale. Starting on Gb, all black keys, you have the Gb major pentatonic scale.
One of the main reasons pentatonic scales sound so pleasant without harshness or tension is that they contain no semitone intervals. There are no harsh clashes, and that’s why I say it’s hard to make a pentatonic sound bad.
Like everything in music, too much of a good thing is bad, so as great as they sound, pentatonic scales aren’t the answer to everything. The trick is to know them well enough to have them at your disposal at the right times.
Major and minor pentatonic scales
As I said above, we have major and minor pentatonic scales, so let’s take a look at them.
Major pentatonic scale
Building major pentatonic scales is easy, but this is where your knowledge of diatonic scales pays off.
The major pentatonic includes the following degrees of the major scale:
1st(root) – 2nd – 3rd – 5th – 6th
As you can see, we’ve lost the 4th and 7th degrees of the major scale, which removes any semitone intervals.
Try playing up and down the C major pentatonic and get used to the notes. Once you get used to the notes, try playing them over a C chord in your left hand. Play the notes in random orders, and play around with improvised melodies.
Whatever you play, you should hear a lovely, bright, joyful melody.
Now, let’s think about taking the scale beyond one octave. I won’t give you specific fingering for the pentatonic scale because it’s a subject that splits opinion. Many pianists say that the most efficient method uses just three fingers:
However, many others feel that the three-finger method limits your ability to create interesting shapes while improvising. I have to agree; I regularly use my fourth finger, especially when descending.
My only advice is to find the fingering that feels most comfortable (I wouldn’t be so strict about following textbook fingering here as I would be with diatonic scales).
Once you’re comfortable playing over two or three octaves, add more interesting harmony. Position your left hand over the C major pentatonic scale below middle C. Now, try giving yourself a bassline to improvise over using the five notes of the scale.
It doesn’t need to be fancy; you could even hold each note for an entire bar. I just want you to hear the major pentatonic over different bass notes.
You should get hours of practice out of that simple routine; it will build confidence in your left hand while you become comfortable with the pentatonic scale and improvisation.
Minor pentatonic scale
The minor pentatonic scale is no more complicated than the major; it takes five notes from the natural minor scale:
1st(root) – 3rd – 4th – 5th – 7th
This time, we lost the second and sixth degrees of the natural minor scale to remove any semitone intervals.
Take everything you just did with the major pentatonic and apply it to the C minor pentatonic (replacing the Cmaj7 chord with a Cm7).
Enjoy practicing!
Relative minors
I’ve talked about relative minors when we covered diatonic scales (major and minor), and the same applies here.
If you start on middle C and drop a minor third (three semitones), you’ll land on A, the relative minor of C.
Now, if you build an A minor pentatonic using the scale degrees mentioned above, you’ll see that the A minor pentatonic includes all the same notes as the C major pentatonic. The only difference is that you start on the A note.
Understanding relative majors and minors cuts the workload in half because they share the same key signature.
Blue notes
You might have heard musicians talk about blue notes, and I know from my experience as a beginner I imagined it was some esoteric musical concept reserved for virtuosos. But I soon discovered that blue notes and blues music have little to do with technical brilliance.
Of course, blues musicians can be virtuosos, but that doesn’t define the essence of the blues; it’s about the feeling.
The blue notes add some tension to our pentatonic scales because they give us a semitone interval, but they are not diatonic semitone intervals.
Blues scales are six-note scales.
In the major blues scale, we add the flat third degree to the major pentatonic.
For the minor blues scale, we add the flat fifth degree to the minor pentatonic.
Major blues scale
Minor blues scale
Using the blue notes
So far, we’ve been used to the smooth, tension-free sound of the pentatonic scales. Adding these blue notes is a bit of a shock because they can sometimes sound harsh.
There are many ways to put the blues notes to good use, but let’s start with a couple of simple tricks.
As you can see, the blues notes are directly between two other notes.
Rather than fully playing the blue notes, try sliding from the blue note to the note on its left or right. The note you land on provides the defining tone, but you still get the tension and embellishment from the blues note.
If you want a little more tension, playing the blue note and the note to its immediate right together produces a lovely crunchy sound.
Try your pentatonic practice routines from earlier, but add some blues notes this time. Don’t add the blue notes every time; use them when you want to embellish your lines.
Conclusion
As you progress, you’ll see there are various levels of using pentatonic scales, but there’s no need to rush. For now, enjoy this introduction, get used to these five-note scales, and never be afraid to experiment with improvisation.
