Styles of music that use the pentatonic scale?

Answer 1

Okay, either this is a very deep question, or the inquirer is a little confused about what is meant by the term "mode".

If the latter, the quick answer is that the "seven modes of music" aren't typically thought of as having pentatonic scales associated with them. Quite the opposite. It's the pentatonic scales that will have the modes!

Unfortunately, your question is a bit nonsensical. But I still think it's a good question because it highlights the confusion that people have when they're learning about modes. What are those damn things?

First off, the "seven modes of music". I can only assume you're referring to the seven modes of the major scale: ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, and locrian. Yes?

Well, there are actually many many more modes in music than seven! Every type of scale you can think of (major, minor, harmonic minor, harmonic major, pentatonic scales) will all have modes associated with 'em.

Now, modes are very confusing when you first run across the idea. And I think it's because people actually want the answer to be more complicated than it really is. Modes are simply a matter of perspective, they describe different ways of looking at the same thing -- different ways of looking at the same scale.

Take the major scale, for example. It's scale tones are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 (do, re, mi, fa, so, la ti). The intervals between these tones follow the pattern: w,w,h,w,w,w,h (w=whole step, h= half step).

So for the key of C, you set C to be the 1 tone (the root note) and you build the C major scale by following the interval pattern above to give: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. This is a mode! This is the ionian mode of the C major scale. The "C major scale" and "C Ionian" refer to the exact same notes! But what about the other modes?

If you take those same notes (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C) and you just change the root note to the next highest tone -- that would be D -- then you have the D dorian mode. Here's D dorian: D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D. These are exactly the same notes as the C major scale, and the C ionian mode, the only difference is that the first note is shifted.

To find the next highest mode (phrygian) you shift the letters again to: E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E. This is "E Phrygian".

This same procedure is just repeated to find the remaining four modes.

And now you should be thinking, "My god, that's so stupid. The notes are the same for every mode! What evil person decided to give the same exact scale seven different names?!" Well, you should direct your anger at the ancient Greeks. But they had a reason.

Here it is: the difference is in the interval patterns. The interval pattern for the ionian mode goes: w,w,h,w,w,w,h. As stated before, this corresponds to the tone qualities: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1. Now the interval pattern for the dorian mode is: w,h,w,w,w,h,w. And here are its tone qualties: 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, b7, 1. So just by shifting the root note within the same scale, all of the tone qualities are shifted despite the fact that all of the actual "lettered" notes remain the same. This subtle difference has important ramifications for musical harmony. Unfortunately, these ramifications are too manifold for me to describe here, but I'll give you one example:

If you were to play C ionian and D dorian by themselves, they would be indistinguishable -- they consist of exactly the same notes. Context is the name of the game!

Go to your piano and play a C major chord with your left hand. Then run though the C ionian mode with your right hand (just play the white keys). Should sound quite major-y, happy. Now change your left hand to a D minor chord. And continue with the same notes in your right hand. You should notice that your major-y feeling is gone. You're playing exactly the same notes in your right hand, but the feeling is completely changed to a minor-y sound that can only be described as "dorian"! D dorian is NOT the same as D minor, their tone qualities differ by just one tone. But that makes all the difference.

A classic example of the dorian scale in action is Miles Davis' "So What". All of the improvisation is done in the Dorian mode. The song form is AABA, where D dorian is used for the A sections, and there's just a key shift to Eb dorian for the B sections.

On to pentatonic scales:

In a global sense, a pentatonic scale is any scale that contains only five notes (hence the "penta-"). You could literally pick any five tones you like and call it a pentatonic scale. And you can now easily imagine that there are many 5 tone scales. But most musicians, when referring to "pentatonic scales", are talking about either the "minor pentatonic" or "major pentatonic" scales. The reason is simple: these two scales are the most commonly used pentatonic scales for blues, jazz, pop, etc.

To construct the major pentatonic scale you simply remove the 4th and 7th scale degrees from the major scale. This gives: 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (only five tones). And just as the major scale has a mode for every scale degree, the major pentatonic does too. That makes five distinct modes for the major pentatonic scale.

The minor pentatonic has the scale degrees: 1, b3, 4, 5, b7.

It turns out that the minor pentatonic can be nicely derived from the major pentatonic, and vice versa. The minor pentatonic is the sixth mode of the major pentatonic scale! Alternatively, the major pentatonic is the second mode of the minor pentatonic scale. I'll let you work that one out for yourself.

So hopefully you can see that modes are just a matter of perspective. Modes and scales are one and the same. And the importance of modes is in harmony. They tell you which chords will work with which scale. Or vice versa. Eventually you realize that chords and scales/modes are really the same thing, played differently.

Answer 2

Some of the main styles of music using the pentatonic scale are Rock, Folk, American, Chinese, Greek and West African.

Answer 3

I always learnt it to use in blues solo's. (This is on the guitar)

Answer 4

Music types that uses the Pentatonic scale are:

Rock, Folk, American, Chinese, Greek and West African.

Answer 5

Many Chinese and Middle Eastern compositions use the pentatonic scale.

Answer 6

black slaves, if thats a culture- they used the pentatonic scale in the blues