I love composing songs that incorporate different scales and modes and I often use them with my adaptive lesson students. In this video Jacob is reading a song set in a pentatonic scale. The notes include A, B, C#, E, and G# and is sometimes called a “summer pentatonic scale”. The Zaphir windchime that Jacob uses in the beginning was purchased from the Peaceful Puddle website. The notes and chords created by the scale presents a feeling of space, warmth, calmness, tranquility, and satisfaction. After playing the melody line I created, Jacob then improvises on only the notes of the summer pentatonic scale. He ends the song by repeating the melody line again. This provides a nice A B A form for the song. I like to accompany the song on either guitar or piano. If using only the notes in the scale to create your chords, you will discover a few basic and extended chords like: A, Amaj7, Asus2, A5, C#m, C#m7, C#5, E, Esus4, Eadd4, and E5. I have also used this scale with my Suzuki handbell groups. I pass out only the notes in the scale and then accompany them on piano. I divid the song up into different sections like:
Section A: play your bell anytime you would like to in the song
Section B: play bells in a certain sequence, or, simply right down the line of players from one player to the next
Section C: play in contrasting ways (loud then soft), (higher notes then lower notes), (long notes then shaking notes), etc.
Have fun exploring this summer pentatonic scale with any kind of pitched instrument before the summer is over!
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