Equipentatonic

Equipentatonic scales are pentatonic scales with 5 roughly equally spaced tones per octave.

They are usually not exactly equally spaced, but deviate from equal by small amounts, usually to improve the tuning of 3/1.

Musical traditions that make use of equipentatonic scales include:

• Aka music from Central Africa
• Dagarti, Lobi and Senufo music from West Africa
• Indonesian gamelan music (slendro scales)
• Southern Ugandan music
  • Baganda music

Note that just because a tradition has an equipentatonic scale doesn’t mean it uses it exclusively. Indonesian gamelan for example uses equipentatonic slendro scales, but also far-from-equal pelog scales too. Also, the term “scale” here is used loosely, because many, perhaps the majority, of musical traditions don’t use scales, but use something else like tetrachords, raag, etc. that scales can only loosely model.

An exactly equal equipentatonic scale equals 5edo, which is popular with modern Western xenharmonic composers. Sevish recommends 5edo as a tuning for those newly exploring beyond 12edo.

See also

• Equiheptatonic
• African music
• Macrotonal NEJI edos: the 5-tone ones are examples of equipentatonic scales