section_path: Post-war jazz/African-inspired/Pentatonic scales
section_name: Pentatonic scales
paragraph_text: Pentatonic scales
  
  The use of pentatonic scales was another trend associated with Africa. The use of pentatonic scales in Africa probably goes back thousands of years.
  
  McCoy Tyner perfected the use of the pentatonic scale in his solos, and also used parallel fifths and fourths, which are common harmonies in West Africa.
  
  The minor pentatonic scale is often used in blues improvisation, and like a blues scale, a minor pentatonic scale can be played over all of the chords in a blues. The following pentatonic lick was played over blues changes by Joe Henderson on Horace Silver 's "African Queen" (1965).
  
  Jazz pianist, theorist, and educator Mark Levine refers to the scale generated by beginning on the fifth step of a pentatonic scale as the V pentatonic scale.
  
  Levine points out that the V pentatonic scale works for all three chords of the standard II–V–I jazz progression. This is a very common progression, used in pieces such as Miles Davis' "Tune Up". The following example shows the V pentatonic scale over a II–V–I progression.
  
  Accordingly, John Coltrane's " Giant Steps " (1960), with its 26 chords per 16 bars, can be played using only three pentatonic scales. Coltrane studied Nicolas Slonimsky 's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which contains material that is virtually identical to portions of "Giant Steps". The harmonic complexity of "Giant Steps" is on the level of the most advanced 20th-century art music. Superimposing the pentatonic scale over "Giant Steps" is not merely a matter of harmonic simplification, but also a sort of "Africanizing" of the piece, which provides an alternate approach for soloing. Mark Levine observes that when mixed in with more conventional "playing the changes", pentatonic scales provide "structure and a feeling of increased space".