The "pentatonic" in ancient my country is the pentatonic scale. According to the order of the five degrees, starting from the palace sound to the feather sound, the order is, Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng, Yu. The pentatonic scale is often called "pentatonic", "pentatonic", etc. in ancient literature. Traditional Chinese music theory often reveals its connotation from different perspectives such as "tone", "temperature" and "sound" for the modern concept of "scale".

The characteristic of the pentatonic scale is that it does not have a chromatic scale, and is specifically called "pentatonic scale without semitones" or "whole-tone pentatonic scale". It is widely popular in Asia, Africa, some islands in the Central Pacific, Hungary, Scottish folk music, and among native American tribes before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Often called the "Chinese scale".

The structure of the pentatonic scale has the following characteristics. There is no minor second relationship between adjacent tone levels. The distance between two adjacent tone levels is a major second or a minor third. The relationship between the palace tones and the horn tones is Major third degree.