Harmonic Pentatonic Minor

just wondering, why is there no such thing as a harmonic pentatonic minor scale? like take the pentatonic scale and raise the seventh, or is there and its just called something different? ive been jammin a bit with it and it sounds pretty dang sweet if you ask me

Well, I'm sure people have used it before ^^ I haven't used it before, will do so soon. But well, it's pretty similar to the harmonic minor scale you just leave out 2 notes.

ive actually thought about that myself. ive messed around with it before but never used it in compositions.

well you can pretty much do what you want there cause if someone gets all nitty and say it just an arpeggio just laugh and walk away. Chords and scales are basically the same thing anyway.

but why pentatonic is common, you need to know a little on how western scales first came about. Long story short Greek math guy (A^2 + B^2 = C^2) gets fractions of a sting name 2/3 or what we call fifths and stacked them to build scales. so you start on a tonic say F and get the fifth, C, then again G and so on and so on. Well what your try to do is get back to the tonic, but you never do you just get close(why we have equal temperament so we can now) Well if you line the fifths up (F,C,G,D,A,E,B) You see after 5 fifths you get close which is A (a sixth away) which gives major pentatonic, but he continued two more and get even close 7th. Now you can keep going but he didn't(or it didn't become popular[at lest in the west]), and we can't keeping going with are system (12-tone equal temperament) because since the mid-evil/Renaissance/common practice area we(westerners) have standardized are scales. The Greeks then developed more scales, but they did it with chords and I'm not getting into it.
Now you may say hey there is a large gap. This is based of math and fractions not what it looks like on your fret bored/ key bored.

Now north African is very influenced by Indo-European thinking so they also base there scales of fifths just some groups of people didn't go all the way to 7 and stopped at 5. That doesn't mean others didn't look at the Kora music, and all Europeans went to 7. there are many instances of the pentatonic scale use. But this a had a strong influence on American music, so one and the main reason for it popularity.
others being, less harsh notes, so crummy players don't sound as bad, and black keys on the piano, but the above is the main reason.


now why no such thing for harmonic minor, well first it is not made of fifths, but thirds (doesn't add up the same) , and it was developed in western music(common practice) for different reasons, and only used as harmonic minor no modes. your type of thinking as only be around for a hundred years or so starting with modern classical(think Satie, Debussy, Bartok).

so the point you can do what you want, just classical theory has been shoot to *** and everything is confusing/in shambles just look at the arguments for the names of melodic minor modes. Theory hasn't really caught up yet but it's getting there tough. my point was just to tell you why there no name/ain't really talked about, you haven't discovered something no one else has/thought of(sorry) but pentatonics built on fifths have been around in western thinking for a long long time while your type thinking is relatively new. Look at classical Indian(there model type music) they got names for every Thing.

As John Cage said, that his generation and preceding knocked down the house and built new types of blocks, it is are generation and future ones who are going to rebuild a house or something.


bit on scale construction I just found maybe he says it better for you.(click on "Symmetric Scale" & "Lydian-Dominant Theory" under "music theory files"

>--- http://www.lydiandominant.com/studio.html ---

that was interesting. i'm sorry, i just had to laugh, i wasnt expecting a history answer haha

i thought it was needed it answered you question right?

and the link is a good read if your interested

Amen!
...and thanks fer inadvertently, saving me a pile of key-pounding!
where ya been Bro?

and as RA eluded too...
...there is a reason its called Theory and not Fact.

RAWK!
Cs

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Thank you so much for that link!!