Smart Play: The Pentatonic Scale Used In Ancient Chinese

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to the heptatonic scale which has seven notes per octave. Ancient origins articles related to pentatonic scale in the sections of history archaeology human origins unexplained artifacts ancient places and myths and legends.

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The picture on the left shows that the chinese used a variety of different pentatonic scales with different scale.

The pentatonic scale used in ancient chinese. What was the musical scale used in ancient chinese compositions called. The javanese gamelan and the ethiopian krar a five or six stringed bowl shaped lyre from eritrea and ethiopia are tuned in the. The pentatonic scale was used heavily in ancient chinese music.

Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations. Those with semitones and those without. The han chinese use of pentatonic scales is very common.

The pentatonic scale used in ancient chinese compositions is made up of notes 12513034. Since these notes sound great together its almost impossible to create a melody that sounds poor. There are two types of pentatonic scales.

Page 1 of tag pentatonic scale. Many composers have used the pentatonic scale especially in folk traditions from celtic music to gospel music to ancient greek music and from afro caribbean traditions to chinese music and jazz traditions. They are still used all over the world for example traditional music country music blues and metal.

The pentatonic scale which is also used in asian music the black keys on a piano form a pentatonic scale. Since these notes sound great together its almost impossible to create a melody that sounds poor. Give it a shot.

Some may only know the pentatonic scale as a major scale without the subdominant or the leading tone but the han chinese also had four other forms of the pentatonic scale.

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