Minor Pentascales – Piano Lesson 38 – Hoffman Academy
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Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman. Today we're learning about a new kind of pentascale: the minor pentascale, which is used most often in more dark and sinister sounding music, like: But minor doesn't have to always be haunted or mysterious sounding. It can also sound beautiful and a little bit sad like this minor song: Or, minor can also be adventuresome and exciting or kind of wild like this theme to Pirates of the Caribbean: So, let's learn about what makes a minor pentascale.
Actually, first let's back up and review the word pentascale. I realized that I might need to clarify this word when I recently received a comment on our website from a user referring to Pentax's ale. An understandable mistake, but I assure you we're not talking about a tavern drink here. Remember that 'penta' means five, and a 'scale' is a family of notes all a step apart.
So a pentascale is a family of five notes all one step apart. For example, let's take the C major pentascale. We've got these five notes all one step apart. DO RE MI FA SO You'll recall that most of these steps are called a whole step, which means there is one key in between like from DO to RE, you'll see there's this black key in between, and that is what makes this a whole step.
RE to MI is a whole step. There is however one half step in a major pentascale. Right here between MI and FA, there's no black key in between so they're actually closer together sonically. MI FA and then FA to SO is another whole step, because once again there's a black key in between. Now, here's the super simple way you can turn any major pentascale into a minor pentascale.
Pay close attention. All you have to do is take the third note of the scale which is MI, and lower that note by one half step. Now, how do we do that? you just find the nearest note to the left, and that's one half step down. In this case, that's this black key right here, which we call E-flat. Whenever a note lowers one half step, we call that a flat.
And in music, a flat symbol looks like this. So before we had an E, and then if we want to do this, now we call it E-flat. This black key's name is E-flat written like this. So once again, to turn C major into C minor, we took the third note, which is MI, one, two, three, DO RE MI, we lower it a half step.
Nearest possible note to the left, which is in this case E-flat, and now we have, Now we have C minor, which sounds like this: DO RE ME FA SO You'll notice when MI goes down a half step, we call it ME. DO RE ME FA SO Now can you point and name each of the notes in the C minor pentascale with me? Let's say them together.
C D E-flat F G Now let's try stepping back down. G F E-flat D C Good. And now you have a great pentascale for playing all your creepy or exciting or sad music you want. You can hear that minor sound in that pentascale. Now, the words I like to use for practicing the minor pentascale, we're going to play the same notes as 'Chocolate', but because now we're in minor, I've changed the words to this: ♫Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep,♫ ♫little monster feet♫ And we're going to play kind of quietly, like creeping little goblins in the basement.
Makes a good little Halloween song. Okay, now so, try to place your right hand in the C minor pentascale like this. So, you're going to put finger 3 on E-flat. No finger is going to be on E. Finger 4 will be on F, finger 5 will be on G, and let's try to play 'Monster Feet'. Ready, start on finger 1, go: ♫Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep,♫ ♫little monster feet♫ Good, now let's try it with your left hand.
Take your left hand, finger 5 is on C. Finger 3 will be on E-flat. Fingers 2 and 1 on F and G, and let's try to play 'Monster Feet'. Ready, go: ♫Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep,♫ ♫little monster feet♫ Good. Now, press pause and try that on your own a couple of times, and for an extra challenge you can try it hands together.
Then press play when you're ready to go on and learn the D minor pentascale. Now I have the D major pentascale here. can you point and say the letter names with me? D E F-sharp G A Good, now, which note did I say we needed to change to make it minor? If you said the third note, you're correct. It's always one, two, three, or DO RE MI.
This note we need to lower a half-step. You'll notice it's already on a black key, so how would we lower it a half-step? Well, doesn't matter if it's black or white. Lowering a half-step means find the nearest note down to the left. Which in this case, means putting it back on the white key. So D minor is all white keys, or we could say all naturals.
A natural simply means the plain white key, with no sharp or flat. So, in D major, we need an F-sharp, but in D minor we use F natural. Now we have: DO RE ME FA SO On: D E F G A Now we're going to try to play 'Monster Feet' in D minor, like this: ♫Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep,♫ ♫little monster feet♫ Remember, we're going to play it softly and detach the notes a little bit like you're tiptoeing.
Now, press pause and try your right hand once, left hand once, and then try it hands together, then press play when you're ready to go on. Now let's figure out the G minor pentascale. Here we have G major. DO RE MI FA SO Now, point to the note I need to change to make it minor. If you're pointing here you're correct it's always the third note: DO RE MI MI goes down a half step.
So, can you point to the note I should move this to make it minor? You should have been pointing right here. We're going to turn this B into B-flat, which you would see like this: Now these notes make G minor. DO RE ME FA SO So let's go ahead and place your right hand in the G minor pentascale, and give it a try.
Let's sing the letter names as we play each key. Go: G A B-flat C D Now try and name them stepping down with me, go: D C B-flat A G Great, let's try it with the left hand. Finger 5 on G. Your finger 3 is on a B-flat. Let's play and name the keys, go: G A B-flat C D Now stepping down. D C B-flat A G Great! Now we've learned three new minor pentascales today.
C minor, which has that E-flat. You'll notice that one feels very similar in your hand to G minor because in both cases your finger 3 has had to move over down a half step for that flat. And then D minor, with all natural or white keys. One way I'd like you to practice these everyday, is using your 'Stepping and Skipping' exercise.
Like in G minor we could do: ♫Stepping up, and stepping down, and skipping up and down♫ Then play your three note chord. You can also try contrary motion. ♫..and stepping in, and skipping out and in♫ So now you know six pentascales I believe. C major, C minor, D major, D minor, G major, and G minor.
Now that you know about minor pentascales, I encourage you to experiment maybe make up your own Halloween or haunted song using either the C minor or the D minor pentascale. Just experiment with these notes, and you'll find all kinds of ways that you can make interesting, mysterious sounds. Another fun thing you can do with minor pentascales is take old songs.
Now you can kind of do like the sad version. Like if the mouse in the house is feeling kind of sad instead of: ♫Mouse, mousie in the housey♫, Now the sad mouse would sound like this: ♫Mouse, mousie in the housey♫ ♫Hurry, hurry do♫ You can take any song that used to be major, and turn it into minor and hear how it kind of changes the sound.
Thanks for learning about minor pentascale with me today. For fun, I hope you'll experiment with the C and D minor pentascales, and even try improvising your own songs in C and D minor. practicing and see you next time Okay class, please show me the D minor pentascale. Everybody help! There you go Parrot, Monkey, Frog.
Hmm, let's take a look now! hmm It seems we have a major problem here.
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