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A variety of musical scales are used in traditional Japanese music. While the Chinese Shí-èr-lǜ has influenced Japanese music since the Heian period, in practice Japanese traditional music is often based on pentatonic (five tone) or heptatonic (seven tone) scales.^[1] In some instances, harmonic minor is used, while the melodic minor is virtually unused.

Pentatonic scales

• Japanese mode: a pentatonic musical scale with the intervals of the scale a major second, minor second, major third, minor second, and major third
• Akebono scale
• Hirajōshi scale
• In scale
• Insen scale
• Iwato scale
• Ritsu and ryo scales
• Yo scale

Further reading

• Koizumi Fumio. Musical Scales in Japanese Music. Heibonsha, Tokyo, 1977
• Sir Francis Taylor Piggott, Thomas Lea Southgate. The Music and Musical Instruments of Japan. B.T. Batsford, 1893
• William P. Malm. Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments. Kodansha International, 2000. ISBN 4770023952, 9784770023957
• Cargill Gilston Knott. Remarks on Japanese musical scales. Asiatic Society of Japan, 1891

References