Other Scales

Objectives

• Students will be familiar with artificial scales, such as the blues scale.
• Students will be familiar with non-heptatonic scales, such as pentatonic and octatonic scales.

Resources

Readings

• Wikipedia: Blues scale
• Hutchinson, Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom:
  • Chapter 31: Introduction to Jazz Theory
    • 31.9: Scales
    • 31.10: How to Determine Chord-Scale Relationships
    • 31.11: Harmonizing the Bebop Scale
• Peres, Top 40 Theory:
  • “Why Pentatonic Scales are So Popular in Pop Melodies”
• Wieland, Minor Pentatonic Scale and Blues Scale
• Shaffer, Wharton (eds.), Open Music Theory: "Collections and Scales"
• Hein, The Ethan Hein Blog.
  • "The Blues Scale."

Tools

• Munster, Hardaker, Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition
• Ring, A Study of Scales
• PianoScales.Org

Class Activities

• Discussion and definition of artificial and non-heptatonic scales
• Writing and playing a given artificial or non-heptatonic scale on a given note
• Composing or improvising a melody which uses and emphasizes the unique characteristics of a given artificial or non-heptatonic scale

Assignments

• Writing specified scales
• Identifying and analyzing scales used in written and recorded music

Files

• Scale analysis: Mikrokosmos, no. 136 (excerpt) by Bela Bartók (Finale | MusicXML | PDF)
• Scale analysis: Mikrokosmos, no. 101 (excerpt) by Bela Bartók (Finale | MusicXML | PDF)
• Scale analysis: "Do Not Look Down" (excerpt) by Meshuggah (Finale | MusicXML | PDF)