Here’s a China-style jam using a Chinese keyboard. The scale is C Major Pentatonic, the most popular key in China.
Below you can hear both the 7-note and the 5-note major scales. The major scale is known as the happy scale, because it has less natural dissonances than the sad minor scale. The Major Pentatonic scale sounds even more like a happy dream for it lacks any semitones. A semitone is the smallest interval, that produces the sharpest dissonances. In a C Major scale, the F and B provide semitone intervals with the E and the C respectively.
Chinese harmony favors the fourth. Chords built on 4ths are a chinese trademark. Call them sinosonics if you will. They play sinusoids.
You can hear the Major Pentatonic scale in action in the intro lick to My Girl by the Temptations. Can anyone think of a Beatles song that uses this Major Pentatonic a lot? George liked Mixolydian. Lennon loved his Minor. Paul was Major boy all the way. If there was one, it’d be a Paul song.
So tootle your horn melodiously at first!
This China post is dedicated to all my dear dear homeys at Snake B-tt. :-}
