Workshop 64 — Pentatonic Superimposition: One Five-Note Shape, Many Harmonic Meanings, Modern “Outside” Color, and Improvising Without Sounding Like a Scale Exercise

Workshop 63 compressed seven-note scales into two familiar triads.

Now we compress harmony in another extremely practical way:

What if one familiar five-note pentatonic shape can become several completely different harmonic vocabularies simply by changing the bass underneath it?

You already know the ordinary use of pentatonics:

C major pentatonic:

C D E G A

and C minor pentatonic:

C E♭ F G B♭

Today we stop thinking of them merely as “easy scales.”

Instead, a pentatonic becomes an upper structure.

The central lesson is:

The pentatonic shape may stay identical while the bass determines whether it sounds tonic, suspended, Lydian, altered, dominant, modal, or outside.