Minor Pentascales

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
Today we're learning about a new kind of pentascale: the minor pentascale,
which is used most often in more dark and sinister sounding music, like:
But minor doesn't have to always be haunted or mysterious sounding.
It can also sound beautiful and a little bit sad, like this minor song:
Or, minor can also be adventuresome and exciting, or kind of wild,
like this theme to Pirates of the Caribbean:

So, let's learn about what makes a minor pentascale.
Actually, first let's back up and review the word pentascale.
I realized that I might need to clarify this word when I recently received a comment
on our website from a user referring to Pentax's ale. An understandable mistake,
but I assure you we're not talking about a tavern drink here.
Remember that "penta" means five, and a "scale" is a family of notes
all a step apart. So, a pentascale is a family of five notes all one step apart.
For example, let's take the C major pentascale. We've got these five notes,
all one step apart: DO RE MI FA SO. You'll recall that most of these steps
are called a whole step, which means there is one key in between,
like, from DO to RE. You'll see there's this black key in between,
and that is what makes this a whole step. RE to MI is a whole step.
There is, however, one half step in a major pentascale.
Right here, between MI and FA, there's no black key in between,
so they're actually closer together sonically. MI–FA,
and then FA to SO is another whole step, because once again,
there's a black key in between.

Now, here's the super simple way you can turn any major pentascale
into a minor pentascale. Pay close attention.
All you have to do is take the third note of the scale, which is MI,
and lower that note by one half step. Now, how do we do that?
You just find the nearest note to the left, and that's one half step down.
In this case, that's this black key right here, which we call E-flat.
Whenever a note lowers one half step, we call that a flat. And, in music,
a flat symbol looks like this. So, before we had an E, and then if we want to do this,
now we call it E-flat. This black key's name is E-flat written like this.
So, once again, to turn C major into C minor, we took the third note, which is MI,
one, two, three, DO RE MI–we lower it a half step. Nearest possible note to the left,
which is, in this case, E-flat, and now we have C minor, which sounds like this:
DO RE ME FA SO. You'll notice, when MI goes down a half step, we call it ME:
DO RE ME FA SO. Now, can you point and name each of the notes
in the C minor pentascale with me? Let's say them together: C D E-flat F G.
Now, let's try stepping back down: G F E-flat D C. Good.

And now you have a great pentascale for playing all your creepy or exciting
or sad music you want. You can hear that minor sound in that pentascale.
Now, the words I like to use for practicing the minor pentascale:
we're going to play the same notes as "Chocolate,"
but, because now we're in minor, I've changed the words to this:

♫ Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, ♫
♫ little monster feet. ♫

And we're going to play kind of quietly, like creeping little goblins in the basement.
Makes a good little Halloween song. Okay now, so, try to place your right hand
in the C minor pentascale, like this. So, you're going to put finger 3 on E-flat.
No finger is going to be on E. Finger 4 will be on F, finger 5 will be on G,
and let's try to play "Monster Feet" Ready, start on finger 1, go:

♫ Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, ♫
♫ little monster feet. ♫

Good, now let's try it with your left hand. Take your left hand, finger 5 is on C.
Finger 3 will be on E-flat. Fingers 2 and 1 on F and G,
and let's try to play 'Monster Feet'. Ready, go:

♫ Creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, ♫
♫ little monster feet. ♫

Good. Now, press pause and try that on your own a couple of times,
and, for an extra challenge, you can try it hands together.
Then, press play when you're ready to go on and learn the D minor pentascale.

Now I have the D major pentascale here.
Can you point and say the letter names with me? D E F-sharp G A.
Good, now, which note did I say we needed to change to make it minor?
If you said the third note, you're correct. It's always one, two, three, or DO RE MI.
This note we need to lower a half-step. You'll notice it's already on a black key,
so how would we lower it a half-step? Well, doesn't matter if it's black or white.
Lowering a half-step means find the nearest note down to the left, which,
in this case, means putting it back on the white key. So D minor is all white keys,
or,  we could say, all naturals. A natural simply means ...