Connecting Pentatonic Scales - Like Nobody Used Them Before

"Penta" means five, so pentatonic translates freely to "five tones". Numerous scales meet that requirement, and you should know at least the three most important ones. In particular, that's the major pentatonic, the minor pentatonic, and the Lydian dominant pentatonic. Let's talk about some Interval Theory first so you understand what we refer to with "like nobody used them before".

The Major Pentatonic Scale

Most composers know this scale as an extraction from the Ionian mode. And while this is a valid point of view, the major pentatonic scale also connects strongly to the Circle of Fifths. Pick one starting tone, which becomes your root tone, and go four more steps in the clockwise direction. That's your major pentatonic scale.

Here's how this all translates into music notation. Simply go up from your root tone in perfect fifths (or 7s for seven half-steps), and you'll get to the tones needed for the major pentatonic scale. Diatonically-speaking, we end with scale tones 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 from the major scale (Ionian).

This scale alone opens up enough musical material for a lifetime, and the sound of it is beautiful to our ears. Partly because you can't create any bad notes when only using the major pentatonic (this is also true for the other two that we are going to explore in a second).

The idea of why this scale sounds good becomes even more apparent when we look at the horizontal formula.

The Minor Pentatonic Scale

The major and minor pentatonic scales are strongly related as they share the same set of tones but organized differently and over another root tone. You probably came across the A minor pentatonic scale as an extraction from the Aeolian mode. The A minor pentatonic scale is the pendant to the C major pentatonic scale. However, for our explorations, we want to build the minor pentatonic on the same root tone as the major one.

In contrast to the major pentatonic, the minor one is a succession of ascending perfect fourths (or 5s for five half-steps), but there's one more crucial difference between the two.

Similar to the C major pentatonic scale, the horizontal formula only returns 3s and 2s, which makes this scale very easy to use in composition. We'll discover what that means a bit later in this article.

The Lydian Dominant Pentatonic Scale

This five-tone scale lives on a succession of 2s (or major seconds), and again, the second note in that sequence becomes the root tone. It's interesting to see that all those scales connect to the equivalents, which are notes (horizontal or vertical) that are spaced in equal distances.

Connecting the Pentatonic Scales

The most straightforward approach to using the various pentatonic scales is to stick to your root tone and switch between the major, minor, and Lydian Dominant.

The changes in sound are apparent and very colorful, but the chances are high that almost every composer would use them this way! So, let's do something else instead that leads to fresh musical results using a bit of Interval Theory-magic! That's the moment when we want to use them as you've never done before! 

Let's have a closer look at all the horizontal formulas so that we find out what notes to alter to make a chromatic transition from one scale to the next. Don't think in an overall tonality as this will get in your way and make things more complicated in the application. Let's focus on the numbers only as it's just a matter of getting from one horizontal formula to the next by moving some notes around chromatically (no matter what the actual pitches are later).

I'm giving you a full chart of all the steps needed to transition between the various pentatonic scales freely below, but let's look at some concrete examples first so that you can follow the process. Actually, you can apply this concept to any set of scales freely; it's not limited to pentatonic.

Here's one possible way how we can move from the C major pentatonic into the minor one by aligning the numbers from the horizontal formulas.

Now, let's explore how we can get from the major to the Lydian dominant pentatonic.

And finally, here's the transition from the minor to the Lydian dominant pentatonic.

Of course, all the steps and transitions are reversible, meaning there are six transformations in total when we look at three scales as starting material. Again, don't let this confuse you as you can (and should) use the cheat sheet below to put this all into action!

Here's the abstract chart that helps you maneuver through the three pentatonic scales. 

Here is an example so you know how to use this cheat sheet:

Let's pretend that we've used the Lydian dominant pentatonic scale on an E root tone. Hence, we get the notes E, F#, G#, A#, and D. Now, we want to move into the minor pentatonic. From the chart, we know that we have to lower the first and the last scale step. So, let's bring down the E to an Eb and the D to a Db. We don't touch the remaining notes, only the spelling changes with the root tone. So, we end up with the notes: Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb, and Db. Everything is connected in a chromatic way!

Musical Demonstration

It's time to bring everything together and into the form of something that we can listen to using the concepts explained so far! In the video below, we show the result of some applied interval theory magic in an orchestral context.

Have fun listening to the piece "M.O.M. Is Calling".

Feel free to use (or abuse) any of the concepts in your own works and make them fit into your workflow and palette!

Now it's your turn to create some great and fresh music using a bit of the pentatonic spice!

VIP Content for Academy Members

Sometimes, the steps from the initial sketch to the finished music can be quite overwhelming. Even the sketch on its own can become a problem.

You know that our Academy is all about transparency and sharing. All of our Academy members enjoy access to some wonderful and exclusive VIP bonus content.

• A complete walkthrough of the gathering, so you know the initial musical ideas
• An in-depth look at the sketch that shows how to organize the musical ideas
• The rendering of the sketch and the stems (woodwinds, brass, and strings) in MP3 format
  

Join me on this exciting journey, and experience how Interval Theory inspired me to turn these techniques into action step by step.

And if you are not a member yet but thinking about it, now is a good time to invest in yourself and your skill sets by joining the Academy and become part of the inner circle!

Summary

The world of Pentatonic is a vast but beautiful subject, and if you haven't dug into it, be sure to do this today by starting to explore the techniques from this article!

As usual, here's a quick summary of the main takeaways that you should remember.