There’s Even More to Playing the Piano


Chapter 16 - Jazz Scales

The modes described in the previous chapter were codified in 1547 by Henricus Glareanus. There are plenty more scales. Pentatonic scales use only 5 distinct notes. The major pentatonic is C, D, E, G, A: The minor pentatonic is C, Eb, F, G, Bb: The blues scale is a modified version of the minor pentatonic: C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb: In the 1940s and 1950s, jazz musicians began to practise modified scales whereby each chord-tone falls on a down beat. The scale of C...

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