Pentatonic Scales
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Pentatonic Scales
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to heptatonic scales, which have seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations and are still used in various musical styles to this day. As Leonard Bernstein put it: "The universality of this scale is so well known that I'm sure you could give me examples of it, from all corners of the earth, as from Scotland, or from China, or from Africa, and from American Indian cultures, from East Indian cultures, from Central and South America, Australia, Finland ...now, that is a true musico-linguistic universal." There are two types of pentatonic scales: Those with semitones (hemitonic) and those without (anhemitonic). Types Hemitonic and anhemitonic Musicology commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either ''hemitonic'' or ''anhemitonic''. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic sc ...
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John Tyrrell (musicologist)
John Tyrrell (17 August 1942 – 4 October 2018) was a British musicologist. He published several books on Leoš Janáček, including an authoritative and largely definitive two-volume biography. Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Zimbabwe and worked as a professor of music and executive editor of ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. He died in 2018, aged 76. Early life and education Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), he studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. He graduated Bachelor of Music at the University of Cape Town following which he moved to the University of Oxford to pursue a doctoral degree under the supervision of Edmund Rubbra. Career Tyrrell started his career working in an editorial capacity at '' The Musical Times''. He was a Lecturer in Music at the University of Nottingham (1976), becoming Reader in Opera Studies (1987) and Professor (1996). From 1996 to 2000 he was Executive Editor o ...
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Funky
Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the mid-20th century. It deemphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove (music), groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a drum kit, percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with Rhythm section, rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. It uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, and dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths. Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the Beat (music)#Down ...
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Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (; Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American and Ghanaian singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Wonder is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, R&B, Pop music, pop, Soul music, soul, Gospel music, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of contemporary R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LP record, LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions. Visual impairment, Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder. Wonder's s ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or Plucked string instrument, plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either Acoustics, acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or Amplified music, amplified by an electronic Pickup (music technology), pickup and an guitar amplifier, amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone, meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood, with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteen ...
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Blues Scale
The term blues scale refers to several different scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. A blues scale is often formed by the addition of an out-of-key " blue note" to an existing scale, notably the flat fifth addition to the minor pentatonic scale or the addition of the minor third to a major pentatonic scale. However, the heptatonic blues scale can be considered a major scale with altered intervals. Types Hexatonic The hexatonic, or six-note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 5th degree of the original heptatonic scale.Arnold, Bruce (2002). ''The Essentials: Chord Charts, Scales and Lead Patterns for Guitar'', p. 8. . This added note can be spelled as either a 5 or a 4. The first known published instance of this scale is Jamey Aebersold's ''How to Play Jazz and Improvise Volume 1'' (1970 revision, p. 26), and Jerry Coker claims that David Baker may have been the first educator to organise this particular collection o ...
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Natural Minor Scale
In Western classical music theory, the minor scale refers to three scale patterns – the natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode), the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale (ascending or descending). These scales contain all three notes of a minor triad: the root, a minor third (rather than the major third, as in a major triad or major scale), and a perfect fifth (rather than the diminished fifth, as in a diminished scale or half diminished scale). Minor scale is also used to refer to other scales with this property, such as the Dorian mode or the minor pentatonic scale (see other minor scales below). Natural minor scale Relationship to relative major A natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) is a diatonic scale that is built by starting on the sixth degree of its relative major scale. For instance, the A natural minor scale can be built by starting on the 6th degree of the C major scale: : Because of this, the key of A minor is called the ''relativ ...
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Étude Op
An étude (; ) or study is an instrumental musical composition, designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of études from that era some are still used as teaching material (particularly pieces by Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi), and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Claude Debussy, achieved a place in today's concert repertory. Études written in the 20th century include those related to traditional ones (György Ligeti) and those that require wholly unorthodox technique (John Cage). 19th century Piano Studies, lessons, and other didactic instrumental pieces composed before the 19th century are extremely varied, without any established genres. Domenico Scarlatti's ''30 Essercizi per gravicembalo'' ("30 Exercises for harpsichord", 1738) do not differ in scope from his o ...
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Scale Degree
In music theory, the scale degree is the position of a particular note on a scale relative to the tonic—the first and main note of the scale from which each octave is assumed to begin. Degrees are useful for indicating the size of intervals and chords and whether an interval is major or minor. In the most general sense, the scale degree is the number given to each step of the scale, usually starting with 1 for tonic. Defining it like this implies that a tonic is specified. For instance, the 7-tone diatonic scale may become the major scale once the proper degree has been chosen as tonic (e.g. the C-major scale C–D–E–F–G–A–B, in which C is the tonic). If the scale has no tonic, the starting degree must be chosen arbitrarily. In set theory, for instance, the 12 degrees of the chromatic scale are usually numbered starting from C=0, the twelve pitch classes being numbered from 0 to 11. In a more specific sense, scale degrees are given names that indicate their ...
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Diatonic Scale
In music theory a diatonic scale is a heptatonic scale, heptatonic (seven-note) scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps. In other words, the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The seven pitch (music), pitches of any diatonic scale can also be obtained by using a Interval cycle, chain of six perfect fifths. For instance, the seven natural (music), natural pitch classes that form the C-major scale can be obtained from a stack of perfect fifths starting from F: :F–C–G–D–A–E–B. Any sequence of seven successive natural notes, such as C–D–E–F–G–A–B, and any Transposition (music), transposition thereof, is a diatonic scale. Modern musical keyboards are designed so that the white-key notes form a diatonic scale, though transpositions of this diatonic scale require one or more black keys. A diaton ...
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