Hardwired for Hooks: Is the Pentatonic Scale Part of Our Musical DNA?

Are we hardwired to respond to specific musical hooks? I'm fascinated by the idea that there are some hooks that resonate with us at a primal level, independent of preferences we've learned. When I saw the video below, it got me excited about the possibility of the pentatonic scale being one of those primal hooks.

First, let's define the pentatonic scale. I wish I knew enough music theory to really do justice to it in 20 words or less, but here's a definition that should do the trick: the black keys on a piano keyboard. The five black keys play the notes C#, D#, F#, G# and A#, which is one arrangement for a pentatonic scale.

Now, back to the video. It's Bobby McFerrin at the World Science Festival, on June 12 of this year. It's totally worth the 3 minutes and change, if you can spare it. McFerrin is clearly suggesting that the pentatonic scale is more than a learned modality, and that the crowd's response to his actions shows an innate understanding of the pentatonic: “Regardless of where I am, anywhere, every audience gets that. It doesn't matter. That's just... the pentatonic scale, for some reason...”

So where do we find the pentatonic scale as a hook? Here are some quick and dirty examples. Forgive the crummy piano playing – I banged these off rather than putting up recordings, so that we could hear all of them in the same key.

Let's start with the Temptations:

Hear the hook: My Girl             Copyright info

The bass line from “My Girl” is an ascending pentatonic run, pure and simple.

Let's go back a bit further:

Hear the hook:              

The melody of “Amazing Grace” is totally in a pentatonic scale.

As is “Old Man River”:

Hear the hook: 

“Those Were the Days” (the theme from “All in the Family”) is a simple pentatonic plus a couple of stray notes falling off the scale:

Hear the hook: 

Same goes for “Someone to Watch Over Me”:

Hear the hook: 

Any beginning guitar player will learn that soloing on a pentatonic scale is a safe way to go, because most of the notes will fit well over your melody. Does this mean that pentatonic is in its way a baseline (not bass line) for music, the simplest common denominator on which musical communication is built? I wonder...

Apparently the creators of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” thought so. The musical sequence of notes which they use to finally communicate with an alien race comes from the pentatonic scale.

Hear the hook: 

Worth noting, too: I've made a case for the I-IV-V progression of notes or chords as something else we might be hardwired for. Not surprisingly, I-IV-V can be found within a pentatonic scale.

Lots more on the theoretical and cultural background of the pentatonic at Wikipedia.

And this guitar theory page lists a bunch of contemporary songs whose riffs, melodies or bass lines are pentatonic.

Since all the examples I give above are at least a couple of decades old, it's killing me that I can't immediately think of any contemporary examples. Help! Please post your thoughts below.

P.S. Yeah, baby, SongwritingHooks.com is back! Sorry for the prolonged absence.

P.P.S. Special thanks to TheSameOldSong for the nudge.