A Short History of Five Notes

[laurie]

Fascinating BBC World Service Documentary which ran in February 2011 which shows how much modern music is traced to a five note pattern from Ghana. Worth a listen if you are interested in historical stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/docume...otes.shtml

I've tested this theory, I played a reaggae track, straight ahead jazz track, a Brazilian track by Black Banda Rio, and a Rock n Roll track from the 1950s and all had a distinctive five note pattern, it was like a revelation!

[JeffW]

These 5?

[Allanvh5150]

Western music only uses a 7 note, heptatonic, system anyway. To drop the fourth and seventh notes from the scale makes for very boring music anyway. Although simplistic does sound ok. "Real" musicians will always endevour to use the in between notes also, giving a total of 12 notes. Makes music very interesting.

Allan.

[laurie]

These 5?

The guitar riff there is employing a distinct five note pattern.

[laurie]

Western music only uses a 7 note, heptatonic, system anyway. To drop the fourth and seventh notes from the scale makes for very boring music anyway. Although simplistic does sound ok. "Real" musicians will always endevour to use the in between notes also, giving a total of 12 notes. Makes music very interesting.

Allan.

I don't know if you've listened to the documentary? Its about 22 minutes. Its best to listen to the documentary first.

Music such as Cuban music which adopted the pattern can be very complex. There is a lot of counterpoint and syncopation, the five notes act as a base.

Jazz is a good example of this, music such as bebop from the late 1940s took blues patterns and improvised around the themes. But to improvise around the themes, you have to start off with a base. Unless you want to talk about free form, which I prefer to avoid.

Bo Diddley is the one of the artists mentioned in the documentary which employed the five note pattern. Listen here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKYSA...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z67s...eature=related

[Bern1]

all true, budding blues guitarists world wide use a pentatonic (that's 5 of course) scale to say virtually everything....years later they use the same five notes to say the same stuff.....but if it's done with emotion......then we buy JBL speakers to listen to it over and over!