E Major & Minor Pentascale

Hello, and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
Today we're learning how to play another new pentascale, the--

EEE!!!

Yes, Princess the E major and minor pentascale, so let's come to the piano to--

EEE!

...to get started. In past lessons we've looked at the C major pentascale,
also the C minor pentascale.
We've also looked at the D major and D minor pentascale,
and we've looked at the G major and G minor pentascale.
Today however, we're going to put DO on E and try and figure out the E major and minor pentascale. So what if we just used all white keys?
We've seen that the C major and G major pentascale use all white keys.
Would that work for E? What do you think? Let's listen to it.

Mmm, definitely doesn't sound major or minor.
Can you find where the half-step is if we were to use all white keys like this?
That's right. The half-step is right here.
A half step is when there's no note in between.
Now if you put the half step between the first two notes of a scale,
it actually makes a pentascale called "phrygian" which has that really unique sound. That's called E phrygian, but today, we're trying to make E major,
so we actually need a whole step between DO and RE.
Since this is a half step,
we're going to have to use an F-sharp to get a whole step between DO to RE.
You can think of a whole step as two notes with one key in between.
Exactly one key. Could be a white or a black key to make it a whole step.

So from E to F-sharp would be a whole step.
That's DO to RE, DO RE. Now RE to MI is also a whole step.
Right now we've got a half step, so we need to raise this pitch as well to a sharp.
So we have F-sharp, and now here we'll have a G-sharp,
and now you can see that between F-sharp and G-sharp this is now a whole step, because there is one key in between.
So we have a whole step from DO to RE, from RE to MI,
and now for MI to FA is supposed to be a half step.
Remember MI FA, those are our best friends, and indeed we have a half step here. There's no key in between G-sharp and A,
and then FA to SO is also supposed to be a whole step.
Is this a whole step? If you said yes,
you're correct because it has this black key in between we can tell that that's a whole step.

So this would make the E major pentascale,
and I kind of talked you through how I found that.
Now let's point and name each note using their letter names.
Ready, try to say it with me. E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A, B, and in solfège that would be: DO RE MI FA SO.
Now do you remember which pitch we have to change to make it minor?
In solfège, which is the solfège syllable that we have to change?
If you said MI, you're correct.
It's always the third note of the scale that we have to lower a half step,
so we're going to take this G-sharp and make it G natural.
Natural just means the white key,
so now this would give us E minor in a minor pentascale.
It's the second and third note or RE and ME.
MI lowered a half step becomes ME.
Now this gives us an E minor pentascale.

Let's point and name these notes, ready, go.
E F-sharp G A B.
Very good. Okay, let's practice playing both the E major and E minor pentascale.
Let's start with your right hand and see if you can cover up E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A, B. Now because you've got two fingers up on the black keys,
you might want to take finger 4 and slide it in between the black keys a little bit so your hand position feels comfortable.
All right, so with your right hand in the E major pentascale,
let's try to play Chocolate in E major.
Ready, go. Yum yum yum yum yum, chocolate I have some.
Good, now let's try it with your left hand as well.
Place your left hand finger 5 on E. Then F-sharp, G-sharp, A, B.
Two black keys, now, ready, go. Yum yum yum yum yum, chocolate I have some. Great. Now let's try to make it into E minor.

So now from where your hand was before,
we're going to take that 3rd finger and lower it a half step,
so now let's just do right hand once.
We'll have finger 1 on a white key, finger 2 on F-sharp, finger 3 on G.
So now we can have creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, little monster feet.
In our E minor pentascale. Can you try that with me? Ready, right hand go.
Creep creep creep creep creep, little monster feet.
Now left hand in E minor, ready, go. Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep,
little monster feet. Good.

Now can you point to the three notes that will make the I chord in E major? Remember the I chord is built on DO, MI, and SO.
That makes the I chord, or in minor, DO, ME, and SO.
So here would be our E minor chord,
or if we wanted E major we just move the G to G-sharp,
and that gives us E major.
Now can you try playing both of those chords?
Let's try E major ...