Chinese music sounding scales

[ROWLANDS1070]

My question might sound a bit silly. but is there a music scale that when the notes are played will sound like eastern or oriental music such as Chinese music?

[CSchlegel]

... is there a music scale that when the notes are played will sound like eastern or oriental music such as Chinese music?
I recently covered this topic in detail in my instructors forum:

http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28322

[EPISODER]

I believe you are referring to the "Pentatonic Scale"

It's progression is...

Wholestep
One-and-a-half-step
Wholestep
Wholestep

So if you start on C#, the notes you use would be C#, D#, F#, G#, and A#.

I hope this helps!


@Anybody: If I'm wrong, please tell me. It's been a while since I've used pentatonic scales, lol


-Andrew

[hunter1801]

I thought Pentatonic was
Whole Step
Whole Step
Whole and a Half Step
Whole Step

[CSchlegel]

Pentatonic refers to any scale with five notes. One can split the intervals in a variety of different ways. The primary ones we use in Western music are major pentatonic and minor pentatonic. See here:

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=296

Some Oriental systems (and therefore Eastern music) use different arrangements of intervals. See here:

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=40

[Hamberg]

My question might sound a bit silly. but is there a music scale that when the notes are played will sound like eastern or oriental music such as Chinese music?

There are scales which are supposed to sound eastern or oriental.

When discussing this theoretically, however, it is nearly imposssible to replicate arabic music using western instruments.

Their instruments have 24 notes (i think) while ours have 12 notes. There entire theory is completely different from ours. I don't know as much about oriental music so to speak.

However, if you mix in physical technical aspects of music, then a musician may be able to emulate arabic sounds.

[Hamberg]

Pentatonic refers to any scale with five notes. One can split the intervals in a variety of different ways. The primary ones we use in Western music are major pentatonic and minor pentatonic. See here:

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=296

Some Oriental systems (and therefore Eastern music) use different arrangements of intervals. See here:

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=40

While this is 100% right I would like to add that the pentatonic scale also occurs in 5 scalar patterns over the fret board before repeating an octave. While this may be obvious to some, I belive that this information may add some clarity to the definition for others.

[Tommy S.]

I'm not much into music theory but on the keyboard if you play all of the black notes on the keyboard, you'll definitely get a "happy asian-sounding" sound, as funny as that may sound lol.

Hope that helps:

F#> G#> A# > C# > D# (then repeat up the scale as much as you can)

Or you can even play it backwards to go down the scale.

Kind of like that :)

[t.k. gardner]

Until the East was opened up to the west (maybe the last hundred years or so?) both Japanese and Chinese traditional music used forms of the pentatonic scale much like what we use, although the temperament of the tuning was different. This is why in old Charlie Chan movies the music uses what Tommy S. has described (You can get a sad sounding asian-like scale by playing the black keys only, but always landing on Eb instead of Gb). This is most effective if the melodies are played over a root/5 drone with no changes, to firm up the pentatonic sound. But let's get away from cultural stereotypes and realize that if you want to make music that sounds "asian", the best way is to listen to the actual music of the culture you are trying to emulate. All countries and cultures have diverse and rich musical traditions that too centuries to develop, and simply playing a pentatonic scale and calling it "asian-sounding" is not going to cut it. Get out there and listen to some other cultures' music and you will be surprised what you can learn. There can be no doubt that Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, and Malaysian music (among others) are all dramatically different, and expressive of their own culture's struggles and triumphs.