C major pentatonic over C
Same five notes as A minor pentatonic
C6/9
Home, stable
BassPentatonic
One Shape, Twelve Colors
C major pentatonic held still. Only the bass moves.
Choose a pentatonic shape and a bass note. The bass decides what the five notes mean.
No sound on an iPhone or iPad? Turn off Silent mode (the ring/silent switch) and turn the volume up, then press Play again.
C major pentatonic held still. Only the bass moves.
Pick a chord, and all 24 pentatonic shapes are ranked from inside to outside. Pick a melody note, and every shape is voiced with that note on top.
| # | Pentatonic | Notes | Over C | Implies | Fit |
|---|
Inside: only chord tones and tensions. Color: adds altered or darker tensions, no clashes. Tension: one rub to treat as a passing note. Outside: clashes, for side-slips that resolve back in. Ranked by the lab's own chord-tone and tension weighting, after Ramon Ricker's inside-to-outside idea; the melody-note voicings follow the top-note approach in mDecks Music's pentatonic voicings course.
Nine seventh-chord shapes, ranked by how evenly they split the octave. Put one over a bass and it becomes a five-note chord that lives inside a parent scale.
| Shape over C | Degrees | Implied chord | Parent scales |
|---|
Twin swap and root walk are on the left. These two play a sequence over the current bass:
Tier climb: tier 4 to tier 1 over a held bass, one bar each. Diminished hub: one °7 turns four basses a minor third apart into 7♭9 chords.
Stack two shapes as a polychord and they spell a whole parent scale. No shared notes fills an eight-note octatonic; one shared note fills a seven-note mode. Click a row to hear the lower shape in the left hand and the upper one in the right.
| Lower + upper | Result | Notes |
|---|
From the Four-note shapes superimposition map. Area is the area of the polygon the four notes make on the pitch circle: the more even the steps, the larger the area. Rows marked ★ are the standard, most-used sounds.
Choose a chord root and a grip. The right-hand pentatonics that fit load straight into the lab above.
Load a common progression or build your own, choose the grip for every chord, and hear it loop. Swap any dominant for its tritone sub or its backdoor dominant with one click, and set the top note of every chord to shape your melody.
Three diminished 7ths, two whole-tone scales, four augmented triads. Each one repeats inside the octave, so a handful of shapes covers every dominant in every key.
Same five notes, starting on the 6th. C major pentatonic (C D E G A) is A minor pentatonic (A C D E G). So "minor pentatonic on X" is the major pentatonic on the ♭3 of X, and every row above can be read with either name. In the pentatonic family names (key below), Solar on C is Shadow on A, and Radiant on C is Forest on A.
C F B♭ E♭ A♭, folded into a scale: C E♭ F A♭ B♭ (1 ♭3 4 ♭6 ♭7, the Ritual family). The same five notes as F minor and A♭ major pentatonic, rooted on C, where it sounds as the dark minor, Cmi7♭13. Named after Raga Malkauns.
Major pentatonics on its 1st, 4th and 5th degrees, which are also three minor pentatonics. C Dorian (parent B♭ major) holds B♭, E♭ and F major pentatonic: G, C and D minor.
| Mode | On degrees | C major family |
|---|---|---|
| Ionian | 2, 3, 6 | over C: D, E, A minor |
| Dorian | 1, 2, 5 | over D: D, E, A minor |
| Phrygian | 7, 1, 4 | over E: D, E, A minor |
| Lydian | 6, 7, 3 | over F: D, E, A minor |
| Mixolydian | 5, 6, 2 | over G: D, E, A minor |
| Aeolian | 4, 5, 1 | over A: D, E, A minor |
| Chord | Minor pent. on | Over C |
|---|---|---|
| maj7 | 3, 6, 7 | E, A, B (♯11) |
| mi7 | 1, 2, 5 | C, D, G |
| 7sus | 2, 5, 6 | D, G, A |
| Dominant 7 | 1 (blues), 5, 6, ♯9 (alt) | C, G, A, D♯ |
| mi7♭5 | 4 | F |
| ii–V–I | 3rd of the key | E over the cadence |
| Melodic minor | a whole step above its tonic | C mel. minor → D |
Placements after Whit Sidener's pentatonic guide.
Ten five-note shapes, each with a name for its color. Shown on C.
| Family | Degrees | On C | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar | 1 2 3 5 6 | C D E G A | Major: bright, open |
| Sky | 1 2 4 5 ♭7 | C D F G B♭ | Suspended, floating |
| Pastoral | 1 2 4 5 6 | C D F G A | Modal major, no 3rd |
| Radiant | 1 2 3 ♯4 6 | C D E F♯ A | Lydian: bright with a halo |
| Regal | 1 2 3 5 ♭7 | C D E G B♭ | Dominant |
| Shadow | 1 ♭3 4 5 ♭7 | C E♭ F G B♭ | Minor: the classic |
| Ritual | 1 ♭3 4 ♭6 ♭7 | C E♭ F A♭ B♭ | Malkauns: deep, nocturnal |
| Forest | 1 ♭3 4 5 6 | C E♭ F G A | Dorian: cool, grounded |
| Veiled | 1 2 4 ♭6 ♭7 | C D F A♭ B♭ | Suspended minor |
| Abyss | 1 ♭3 ♭5 ♭6 ♭7 | C E♭ G♭ A♭ B♭ | Locrian: darkest |
Order the rows from stable to outside, chromatically up or down, or around the circle of fifths in either direction (↻ rises a fifth each step: C G D A…; ↺ falls a fifth: C F B♭ E♭…). In Hold the shape the bass moves; in Hold the bass the pentatonic root moves. Step moves one row at a time (the arrow keys work too), and Walk the table plays all twelve from the selected row. Chord names describe the five notes heard over the bass; "sus" means the shape has no 3rd over that bass. The color words are tendencies. Tempo, register and sound change how any of them lands, so trust your ear. Click a row to select it. Fourths stacks are the perfect-fourth triads inside the shape. In the Grip Lab, grips are written low to high from the Quartal & Pentatonic Voicing Dictionary; the bass plays the chord root. In The Symmetrical Families, click a row to hear the shape over that dominant; Play the resolution lands on the home chord as major (Grip 3, 6/9), minor (Grip 1a, mi9), or both in turn, and Slide it moves the left-hand grip by its own interval to show the notes don't change. Right-hand voicings are tightened to sit within one octave just above the left hand. LH tight keeps the grip's bottom note and closes the rest into the octave above it (G13: F A B E). Simplified triad swaps each right-hand pentatonic for the triad on its root: minor 1–♭3–5, major 1–3–5, Lydian 1–3–♯4, Malkauns 1–♭3–♭6. The Trinity of Diminished and the Adam and Eve names follow Alan Jay Palmer's presentations. In the Progression Sequencer, each chord's grip menu lists the grips that fit its quality, Plain chords plays simple closed triads and sevenths, TT sub swaps a dominant for its tritone sub (same 3rd and 7th, a tritone away), and Backdoor swaps it for the dominant a whole step below its target (G7 → B♭7 into C). ⤓ MIDI saves what you're hearing as a MIDI clip at the walk tempo, with the bass, left hand and right hand on separate tracks (inside a .zip on claude.ai; unzip it and drag the .mid into your DAW).