How to Understand Pentatonic Scales

Native American Flute Songs, Their Scales, Modes and How They Work

Nov 25, 2008

Native American flute music is usually played in a pentatonic scale. It's not hard to understand the musical theory behind jargon like octaves, scales, and modes

Native American Flute songs follow certain rules. Musicians without musical training often wonder, “Can I teach myself to play Native American Flute music?” Jon Stillwell, noted flute maker remarks, “The Native American flute’s appeal is in its simplicity, and the ease with which a novice can go from his first notes to improvising his own tunes.”

Once a flute player has gained confidence in their new instrument, they may want to delve into the musical mechanics behind their improvised melodies. In this article, the concepts of octaves, pentatonic scales, and modes, are broken down into simple terms.

Native American Flute Music and The Octave

Musicians can think of an octave as twelve musical steps on a spiral staircase. When a musician climbs to the thirteenth step, he’s reached the stair directly above where he started on step number 1. The note of the 13th stair would be the same note as the first step, but higher in pitch. The distance between that first step and the 13th step directly overhead is one octave.

It’s important to note, the numbers of the stairs start over after 12. That’s to say, the step starting the next octave will also be called one, no matter if it’s the 13th or 25th step on the staircase.

Now, a flute player can further imagine this musical staircase as an instrument—each step creating a single note. Which stairs should he jump on to create a pleasing melody? Everyone has discovered random key pushing on a piano doesn’t make for a pretty song. But the Native American flute gives musicians a head start, because it’s tuned to a pentatonic scale. That means musicians only have easiest access to a few of those twelve musical stairs that all sound good together.

Understanding Pentatonic Native American Flute Music

A pentatonic scale has five notes. That means a song in a pentatonic scale will only use five of those musical stairs. During any given song, a musician can hop from the bottom of the staircase to the top, skip around however he likes, and even slide down the banister, but his foot can only touch five of those steps.

Of course, musicians break the rules all the time and hop on a few extra stairs calling those notes grace notes. But as with everything in life, to look good breaking the rules, they have to know what they’re doing in the first place. For a flute player to understand which stairs to step on, and why he steps on those and skips over the seven others, it’s a little like answering a musical riddle.

Wise, musical people of long ago determined a scale of five notes sounds best if those notes are distributed in a pattern. Here are the rules they set down for a pentatonic scale in terms of the spiral staircase.

If a musician starts off with step 1, he’ll need to step on four others to make it to the top of the octave. The first step, plus the other four steps make up the five notes of a pentatonic scale.

From step 1, He must climb the staircase evenly in intervals of either 2 or 3 steps together. So, to find the next step, he can jump either two stairs to the third step, or leap three stairs to end up on the fourth.

To make it to the thirteenth stair, he’ll need to take that three step leap twice.

Basically, a pentatonic scale is five notes separated by intervals of either two or three and the three step intervals can’t be touching. Mathematically inclined musicians can work on this riddle to determine ways of climbing the spiral staircase without breaking those rules. Here’s a hint, there are five, and only five correct ways to do it. These patterns of stepped on stairs and skipped over stairs are called modes, another word for pentatonic scales.

Five Pentatonic Modes

For the flute players tired of number crunching, here are the five pentatonic modes and the stairs they’d step on to hear them.

Flute players with a piano handy can hear each pentatonic mode easily. If they study the five black notes on the piano, they’ll notice they’re grouped in patterns of twos and threes. There are five black notes in all, one for each mode of the pentatonic scale. If they start on one of these notes, and strike the other four in order until reaching the same black note, they’ll hear one of the pentatonic modes. To hear another, they only have to start on the next of the five keys and go up to it’s higher counterpart.

A fun exercise is counting the white notes in between each step from black note to black note. The number of white notes will show just how many steps, or intervals the musician is taking as he climbs the musical staircase. By this method, he should be able to figure out the exact mode he’s hearing.

The copyright of the article How to Understand Pentatonic Scales in Flute is owned by Marcy Paulson. Permission to republish How to Understand Pentatonic Scales in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.