What are the five ancient tones?

The five tones of antiquity are Gong, Shang, Horn, Zheng, and Feather.

Pentatonic scale, the ancient Han Chinese meter. It is a five-tone scale that starts with the Gong tone and ends with the Fei tone, in the following order: Gong - Shang - Jiao - Zheng - Fei; if arranged in pitch order, it is: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng (zhǐ), Fei. In the Tang Dynasty, "合、四、乙、尺、工" was used.

The pentatonic scale is often referred to as "five tones" and "five notes" in ancient literature. The traditional Chinese music theory of the modern concept of "scale" often reveals different perspectives such as "sound", "law", "sound", and so on.

The traditional Chinese music theory of the modern concept of "scale" is often revealed from different angles, such as "tone", "law" and "sound".

In the "Ling Shu - evil guest" in the Palace, Shang, Angle, Chanting, Feather five sounds, and the five viscera: the spleen should be Palace, the sound of the diffuse and slow; lungs should be Shang, the sound of the promotion of clear; liver should be Angle, the sound of the call to the long; the heart should be Chanting, the sound of the male to the bright; the kidneys should be Feather, the sound of the deep to the thin, which is the right sound of the five viscera.

Features of the pentatonic scale

The traditional Chinese pentatonic scale does not have intervals of semitones (minor seconds), and is called the "pentatonic scale without semitones" or the "whole-tone pentatonic scale".

Similar scales were also widely practiced in Asia, Africa, some islands of the Central Pacific, Hungary, Scottish folk music, and among Native American tribes before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. The intervals are organized as three whole tones within each octave, divided into two strings (Gong-Shang-Horn) and a single one (Leung-Feather), separated by a □-tone, and each tone in the scale can be used as a dominant to establish a modulation, which can result in five different pentatonic modes.

On the basis of the pentatonic scale, different additional tones (partial tones) can be inserted in each interval of the □ tone to form a seven-tone scale with five tones as the main tones, and the partial tones are: Gong, Zheng, Horn, and Feather, and the additional tones can be inserted in three different ways to form three different scales (see Gong Tuning). The pitch of the additional tone can often be shifted, sometimes dividing the interval of the □ tone into two intervals of about three-quarters of a tone each.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Pentatonic Scale