Kumoi

Minor without the weight

The minor third makes it minor; the natural sixth keeps it from being sombre. There is no half step above the root and no flat sixth, so none of the tension that defines in-sen, hirajoshi and iwato is present. Among the Japanese pentatonics it is the outlier, and it belongs closer to the yo group.

Compared with the minor pentatonic, it trades the fourth and the flat seventh for a second and a sixth. That exchange is the whole difference: the same minor quality, arrived at with the other set of neighbours.

The Dorian connection

All five notes of kumoi are in the Dorian mode, and the two notes Dorian has that kumoi does not are the fourth and the flat seventh. This makes it a Dorian pentatonic in the same sense that the minor pentatonic is an Aeolian one, and it is the most direct way for a jazz player to use it.

Over a minor seventh chord it sounds like a considered choice rather than a default, because the sixth is the note that identifies the mode and running the ordinary minor pentatonic would have hidden it.

How it is used

In Japanese practice it is another tuning-derived mode, related to hirajoshi by rotation. In Western use it appears wherever a minor tonality wants brightness: modal jazz, contemporary songwriting, and scores that need warmth in a minor key rather than mourning.

It also works over major seventh chords a minor third below its root, where its notes become the ninth, third, sharp eleventh and so on — a standard pentatonic substitution.

Confusions and neighbours

Sources disagree about kumoi more than about any other scale in this family: some list it with a flat sixth, which makes it a rotation of hirajoshi, others with a natural sixth as here. Both are in use, and a reference that does not state its intervals explicitly is not usable.

Its neighbours are hirajoshi and iwato within the tradition, and the minor pentatonic and Dorian outside it. Against Dorian it is Dorian minus two notes; against hirajoshi it is one note brighter.

Frequently asked questions