George Gershwin and Summertime

George Gershwin and Summertime

George Gershwin employed the pentatonic scale in a number of his works, most notably in Summertime, as John Goldsby writes below. And, while Summertime is based entirely on the the pentatonic scale - except for one note in measure 7 - Gershwin also makes use of the emotional directness of the pentatonic in pieces such as Someone to Watch Over Me.

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Ravel, Debussy, and the Pentatonic Scale

Ravel, Debussy, and the Pentatonic Scale

By the end of the 19th Century, composers, in search of new ways to organize the harmonic content of their music, composers stumbled onto an ancient solution; the pentatonic scale.  Pianist and writer Marius Nordal describes the effect that hearing the pentatonic for the first time had on the French composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.

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Improvisation and the Art of Dreaming

Improvisation and the Art of Dreaming

Charles Limb, a surgeon and research scientist at the University of California, San Fransisco, (as well as an accomplished jazz saxophonist) demonstrated in a 2008 study that musical improvisation produces a neural state that is "uncannily similar to REM sleep", a time when the brain is at it's creative peak.

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A 40,00 Year Old Flute and the Pentatonic Scale

A 40,00 Year Old Flute and the Pentatonic Scale

The pentatonic scale, which fossil evidence suggests is over 40,000 years old, is found in traditional music all over the world and remains at the heart of music we love today. Jazz, Blues, Rock, Soul, R&B, Folk, Gospel, Bluegrass and many other genres. Bone flutes have been found in China, South America, and Africa, but the flute made from a griffin bone, discovered in the the Hohle Fels cave in Germany, is the oldest known intact pitched instrument.  Tom Service, writing for the Guardian observes...

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