What is the Bb Hirajoshi Scale?
The Hirajoshi scale is a five-note scale from Japanese traditional music with a haunting, otherworldly quality that immediately evokes Eastern atmosphere. Its distinctive pattern of a major 2nd, minor 2nd, major 3rd, and minor 2nd creates wide leaps and tight clusters that sound unlike anything in Western tonality. Here's how the Bb Hirajoshi Scale lays out on the fretboard. This scale is enharmonically equivalent to A# Hirajoshi.
Notes and Positions
Japanese pentatonic with hollow minor mood. On guitar, you can treat this as both a lead vocabulary and a way to see chord tones inside common shapes. Start with one box, then connect it to the nearest root on the next string set. In the key of Bb, the notes are: Bb, C, Db, F, Gb.
How to Use It
You'll often hear it in Film, Ambient, and Metal. A good way to internalize the sound is to sing the root, then sing a few scale degrees before you play them.
Start by playing one position slowly and saying the note names or degrees out loud. Use the interactive fretboard above to spot repeats of the same note on different strings and frets.