New Video, Pentatonics... Should we care

Discussion in 'Education' started by kjfarrell, Sep 9, 2016.

  1. Zenarcist

    Zenarcist Audiosexual

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    I can't live without the subdominant (and the leading tone) :)
     
  2. The Teknomage

    The Teknomage Rock Star

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    Let my finish that for you...................................
    Many folksongs are pentatonic, or nearly pentatonic. Well-known songs such as "Land of the Silver Birch" or "Auld Lang Syne" are pentatonic tunes.

    Classical composers have sometimes used pentatonic scales, especially Claude Debussy. His piano piece La fille aux cheveux de lin has a tune which is pentatonic except for one note. Maurice Ravel used it to write music which sounded Chinese, and in his Mother Goose suite (Ma Mère l'Oye) which sounds like a fairy tale.
    Funny that you would omit this from your post.:winker:
    Pentatonic scales occur in the following traditions:

    Examples of its use include Chopin's Etude in G-flat major, op. 10, no. 5, the "Black Key" etude,[1] in the major pentatonic.

    Oh. That's what those sounds are supposed to be.
     
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  3. Kwissbeats

    Kwissbeats Audiosexual

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    Kontakt has a function of key constrain in every libary,
    (open the script by clicking on the icon - select a <empty> tab - select the preset - select a key - select a scale)
    it has the option to use the pentatonic scale, so people can listen/play with it, who are interested but don't want to put in all the effort:like:

    Great video :wink:
     
  4. 23322332

    23322332 Rock Star

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  5. Backtired

    Backtired Audiosexual

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    One of my first tracks ever (finished) used a pentatonic major scale and it sounded sooo much oriental that I had to transform it into a chinese-dance song lol (no self-ad, just posting one of my older works :bow:).

    In fact everytime I play something using only those five keys, it has an oriental feeling/sound to it, but then I just discovered it's also used by many other countries. It's the "world" scale, being used almost everywhere it seems (past, present, and probably future). I think it's how you use those notes, because as mentioned above, a lot of pop/folk songs also make use of the major pentatonic.

    Honestly, why they say there's no feeling of a certain key? To me the key is pretty clear if you play a simple melody (as long as you just don't bash mindlessly the keys). Yes, the leading tone is missing, but you still have the dominant and the other tones of the scale (sub-mediant I think it's the sixth, and the second one which should be super-tonic or something like that) that help you define a sense of home, which resolves around the root note. Obviously harmony plays a huge factor too, you can have that :wink:

    Cool vid as usual
     
  6. 23322332

    23322332 Rock Star

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    There is no sense of a home key, because you can repeat fragments of your pentatonic melody and use a different note for a cadence every time.
    You can't do this with a 7 note scales (if you do it, you are basically modulating through the different modes of the scale).
    You can harmonize C maj pentatonic with drones with (any scale degree), power chords, major, incomplete min 7, whole tone trichord, incomplete dom7 chord, sus4, min chord...
    There is a reason why pentatonics are so popular in improvisation and in the 20 century classical music (Stravinsky "Rite of Springs" and so on).
    You can play them over all kind of scales and dissonant clusters and they still sound good. You can find all the pentatonic scales in my previous post - the wiki link lists around 40 pentatonic scales along with all 0 up to 12 note scales playable in 12 TET
     
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  7. Backtired

    Backtired Audiosexual

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    Thanks, makes more sense now!
     
  8. kjfarrell

    kjfarrell Platinum Record

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    Thanks for that post mate, I'll add an annotation to show my error. I said note when I meant harmonic, the problem when trying to simplify a complex problem is sometime you have to balance simplifying things with dumbing it down too much. I probably crossed that line there.
     
  9. kjfarrell

    kjfarrell Platinum Record

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    That's fine, if you watch my video you will find out where that blue note comes from and why it's totally fine to use it, in fact it's encouraged.
     
  10. kjfarrell

    kjfarrell Platinum Record

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    Eventually in the harmonic series you get every key of the scale, including the leading tone. It's just because we hear the first set of harmonics louder than the later harmonics that we perceive those five notes as being 'better' for lack of a better word. :)
     
  11. kjfarrell

    kjfarrell Platinum Record

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    In the harmonic series you get them eventually. You have a good point though, I think it's important to bring a production to the next level to call response and tension release, I may do a vid on it soon.
     
  12. kjfarrell

    kjfarrell Platinum Record

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    Good point, another cool thing about pentatonics is you can leave out the fundamental as it can be implied, so that brings your notes to four. Then you can reduce them to two notes by just playing the quality notes. Which are the 3rd and 7th. So technically you could write a song that as it's cadence has only two notes. Like this song...



    Crazy right?
     
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