First thanks for the love in all the ways it was shown.
I tend to treat theory more as a set of guidelines and explanations than rules.
Most people, however, tend to see it as black white "do this...., don't do that....." sort of stuff.
When actually what theory says is "if you are doing something like this ...., then these approaches .... are known to work well; these ..... work less well and these ..... should be avoided"
I cannot imagine anyone who would ignore signposts if they are trying to get somewhere. Where I live, I have 7 buses I can catch in to the local railway station or another one two stops nearer to the center of Sydney. Now it would be pretty stupid of me to head in the opposite direction to where I was trying to go, so I generally catch the 808 or the 806 as they stop nearer to my home, but I can also catch the 804, 805, 807, 815, and 816 if I need to. On a cost effectiveness note, it will cost me $2.10 to catch the 804, 805, 806, 807 and 808 to get to railway; it will cost me $3.90 to catch the 815 and the 816, so, again, I would have to be wanting to waste money (and time as they are both a longer walk to catch) to get on them.
The same thing goes with theory - why would I want to work against what is the best and usually quickest way to do what I am trying to do????
Pentatonic (five tones) scale
2 2 m3 2 2
that means whole step, whole step, major third, whole step, whole step
a major third is three semitones
Sorry, no, a minor 3rd (m3) is 3 semitones, a Major 3rd (M3) is 4 semitones, e.g.
C-Eb is 3 semitones and is a minor 3rd, m3.
C-E is 4 semitones and is a Major 3rd, M3.
2 2 m3 2 2 m3
C-D-E-G-A-C
is the major pentatonic
m3-2-2-m3-2
A-C-D-E-G-A
is the minor pentatonic
You can also have other pentatonic scales based in other cultures such as that used in Balinese Gamelan
m2-2-M3-m2-M3
E-F-G-B-C-E
Pentatonic simply means 5-notes (
penta=
Greek for 5), it does not define what notes it should contain, which is why we need to name the type of pentatonic scale
A scales "relative minor" can be found by moving three semi tones down from the tonic of the scale
the tonic of a scale is the base note...in CM scale (c major) it is....c (imagine that
)
This stuff is not hard to learn. I have been learning a lot and teaching myself.
I feel bad for putting him out there, but talk to bandcoach. Hes an expert on theory.
Don't, it's one of the things that I do here......
Anyways, don't be afraid to ask questions on here, and Bandcoach's presence pretty much validates this forum since he's the most knowledgeable person here as far as I can tell, so you'll always have answer to those burning theory questions ("What are these chords?").