Question

What are the two types of scales used in Japanese traditional music? Can you think of how these scales have been used by other cultures to portray a negative stereotypical picture of East Asia?

Answer 1

Ans) Japanese music, the highly eclectic musical culture of the Japanese islands. Over the years, Japan has borrowed musical instruments, scales, and styles from many neighboring areas.

- The Japanese use two basic types of scale, both pentatonic. The first, used in sacred music and common to all of East Asia, has two modes— ryo, the male mode, and ritsu, the female mode. The more frequently used scale, found also in Indonesia and S India, emphasizes semitones and exists in three modes, all used freely within the same composition— hirajoshi, the most important, roughly represented on the piano by the series ABCEFA; kumoijoshi, second in importance, approximated by EFABCE; and iwato, approximated by BCEFAB.

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That's called the Oriental riff. It's a stereotypical Asian-sounding melody actually composed by Western musicians in 1847 who needed something that sounded 'oriental' and exotic for a theater production. The point is, we all know that the music of East Asia, the region including China, Japan, and the Koreas, is different than what we are used to in the West. Western music is built on certain rules and expectations and East Asian music has rules of its own. Now, that's an oriental riff.

Scales & Notes
Let's start at the most basic question of what makes East Asian music sound East Asian. Now, I should preface this by saying that China, Japan, and the Koreas each have their own distinct musical traditions, so these rules do not always apply to all of East Asia. However, in general, East Asian music is based on a pentatonic scale, a musical arrangement of an octave with five notes.

In Western music, we have a heptatonic or seven-note scale. See this scale?

East Asian music
The lowest note is a C, and the highest note is a C. That's an octave. In Western music, there are seven different notes in an octave. In East Asian music, there are five; that's the pentatonic scale and one of the main reasons that East Asian music sounds different to us, since the relations between notes in a scale are different than we're used to.

East Asian music
Like Western music, the East Asian pentatonic scales are actually based on mathematical formulas, in which the distance between notes is decided by ratios of pitches. Also like in Western music, the scale is based off of the first note. So, similar to how our C major scale starts with a C major note, or an A minor scale starts with the A minor, pentatonic scales start with a single note, then add the other four notes in relation to that.