Mustard, Cognitive Psychology and Pentatonic Scales

   Take anything ordinary, something that we use everyday and take for granted, something that's always there and pretty much never changes.......  something that's part of life, we get it, we know it, it is what it is, we think.         Now stand back to really consider how we think about it.  Accept the fact that, no matter what it is, we have already chosen a way to think about it, and we're probably not even aware that this choice has been made - by our parents, TV or corporate ads, convenience or just random chance. 
 

yummy...

Take mustard -- we think of it as a flavoring, a spread,  a condiment to smear onto a pastrami sandwiches ( or in this case, a tuna sandwich),  or on a hot pretzel.  But, now, let's make a conscious decision to think about mustard in a completely different way.  Mustard is also an "emulsifier" - it acts as an agent to enable water-based foods and oil-based foods to mix together, much the way eggs do.    Let's agree to think differently about mustard.  Think function rather than taste.   Just imagine, if every time you reach in the fridge you consciously tell yourself to pull out the mustard, and have a little conversation with yourself like:
   "OK, what am I going to do with this stuff?  Well let's see... I know it's an emulsifier....hmmm"


You will find, through choosing to think a different way about something, that you will begin to USE it a different way. Your habitual ways of thinking will give way to a world with more possibilities.  Who knows, maybe you'll make some amazing mustard gravy then clean your greasy bicycle chain with a dijon slurry. Your salad dressings may never be the same after you change your thinking habits and people may start to comment about the yellow tint of your whipped cream toppings.

                      ( Cognitive Psychologists  think about how we think about things.)


    So, consciously choosing to think a different way, causes you to behave a different way - what a powerful tool THAT is!   To change behavior,  change thinking.  You can change how you act and feel by making a decision to think in a different way.   That, of course applies to all of life, but that topic is a little out of my league  so, onward to music and improvising music......

YES, BUT WILL ALL THIS MAKE ME A BETTER JAZZ MUSICIAN?
       yes


  A pentatonic scale is a series of 5 notes - you can think about those 5 notes as a linear series of notes, one higher than the next   OR    you can  consciously CHOOSE to think about those 5 notes in a multitude of other ways.  This intentional reprogramming of your attention will have everything to do with how you ultimately use those notes.   When you're improvising, this "mental map" will guide you on your way to  greater worlds of "melodic interest", if you're one of the rare people who feel that's important.  And I assume you are, if you're even reading this blog at all.


Here are 8 different ways to think about a C Major pentatonic scale.  Anyone who uses this scale ALREADY thinks about it in ONE of these ways - my suggestion is to reprogram thinking to think about it in a different way.  And ultimately, this is not really just about the pentatonic scale, this is about Everything - the scale is just one small example to make the point.

At the end you will see a melodic line that resulted by thinking about the scale as a series of perfect 5ths. 

  EIGHT WAYS TO VISUALIZE THE PENTATONIC SCALE

THIS MELODIC LINE SEEMS COMPLETELY NATURAL WHEN THINKING OF THE SCALE AS A SERIES OF 3 PERFECT FIFTHS: