Pentatonic scale

In music, a pentatonic scale is a scale with five notes per octave. Pentatonic scales are found all over the world: in the tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan, in the melodies of African-American spirituals and of composer Claude Debussy.

One of the most common pentatonic scales, sometimes called a major pentatonic scale, can be constructed in many ways. A simple construction takes five consecutive pitches from the circle of fifths: if starting on C, {C, G, D, A, E}. This leads to a Pythagorean scale of {1/1, 9/8, 81/64, 3/2, 27/16}. A more complicated construction, derived from Western European classical music, begins with a major scale and omits the fourth and the seventh scale degrees: a C major scale is {C, D, E, F, G, A, B}, so a C major pentatonic scale would be {C, D, E, G, A} which leads to a just scale of either {1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 3/2, 5/3} (a 5-limit pentatonic) or {1/1, 9/8, 21/16, 3/2, 7/4} with blue notes of the flatted fourth and flatted seventh.

The major pentatonic scale is the basic scale of the music of China and one of the most important scales in jazz. It is also very common in Scottish music