What is "pentatonic"

Usage examples of "pentatonic".

The four-tone scales used by the forge-folk may have derived from one of the pentatonic scales.

Cleindori playing a small harp which she held on her lap, and singing in a soft pentatonic scale some endless ballad about a lake of cloud where stars fell on the shore and a woman walked, showered in stars.

In the hands of a skillful player, a full five-note pentatonic scale could be drawn from the simple instrument.

New York and the Ninth Avenue El was still news, she had heard something similar one evening as she walked past the closed door of a black tavern: the sound of steel strings plucked and stretched in a bleak, minor pentatonic scale that somehow managed to sound joyful, as though even the deepest sorrow might be surmounted with the aid of a guitar and the will to make music.

The music was old age, a twenty-first-century blend of synthesized sounds and harsh percussive beats revolving vaguely around a pentatonic scale.

They probably heard, faintly piping in the distance, the pentatonic scales of Moussorgsky and Debussy, the scales of Scriabine and Strawinsky and Ornstein, the barbarous, exotic and African scales of the future, the one hundred and thirteen scales of which Busoni speaks.

Sometimes, however, the full gorgeousness of Byzantine art shines through this music, and the gold-dusty modes, the metallic flatness of the pentatonic scale, the mystic twilit chants and brazen trumpet-calls make us see the mosaics of Ravenna, the black and gold ikons of Russian churches, the aureoled saints upon bricked walls, the minarets of the Kremlin.

Chinatown, stared at by surly youths in tight black pants and white T-shirts, passing pagodaed restaurants and record stores with pentatonic music tinkling from their loudspeakers.

Tamara theme, and, like Balakirev, Rimsky used the pentatonic scale to create an authentic oriental feel.

Rimsky had become a professor at the Conservatory and, like many professors, was rather too conformist to experiment again with pentatonic harmonies or oriental programmes for the plot.

He argued that Russian folk music was essentially derived from the pentatonic scale - an argument he based on the observation of the simplest peasant songs.

She was aware of the pentatonic cadences of the tune, of the rising and falling of the sound as though it were coming from an inestimable distance, carried on the desert wind.

Sometimes, however, the full gorgeousness of Byzantine art shines through this music, and the gold-dusty modes, the metallic flatness of the pentatonic scale, the mystic twilit chants and brazen trumpet-calls make us see the mosaics of Ravenna, the black and gold ikons of Russian churches, the aureoled saints upon bricked walls, the minarets of the Kremlin.

During the flight to Port Mey, a man carrying a musical instrument made from a stick, an old wooden box and some tongues of scrap metal tuned to a pentatonic scale, struck up a song in a wailing voice.

Ry Diem hummed and sang a sequence of clear notes on a pentatonic scale, and all around the circle, others joined in, tuning themselves to the instruments and Ry Diem.