Since Thomas never answered the question posed by Dick about what he means by Penatonic Music, I took a look at the site me mentions.

It is based upon the fact that pentatonic music removes some of the technical difficulties for students learning music. Thus I think all of the types of music mentioned on this thread are candidates to bring to his attention.

I recently noticed, while cleaning the keys of my Clavicord, that the first line of "Keep On the Sunny Side" is pentatonic--it can be played with only the black keys. (They are now the cleanest keys on the instrument.) That is the Chinese pentatonic scale, but it doesn't seem to be the same one as Thomas gives. (It is a 'blue' version of it in that the third interval is diminished :)

John, I had a look at my anthology of slave songs and they aren't pentatonic. I don't think things derived from them would be. Certainly more modern blues (a la Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, etc) are not pentatonic.) I don't have any sheet music, for, and I don't have a good enough ear, to tell if Blind Lemon and those guys are using a pentatonic scale, but I don't think so.

You can, with a MIDI editor, knock out notes and move notes around in a MIDI file. It's easy but tedious. It offers hours of fun if you have harmony. I don't think the result will sound like blues, though.

Murray