In this lesson, I’m going to focus on some of the interesting sounds you can get from hexatonic

scales. A hexatonic scale—which can also be thought of as a combination of two triads—is a six-
note scale. To keep things simple, we are going to investigate how to combine major triads a
whole-step apart, but there are a number of other commonly used triad pairs. If you are interested
in learning more about triad pairs, I can recommend Hexatonics by Jerry Bergonzi (Advance
Music Press).

Fig. 1 shows an example of a hexatonic scale constructed from C and D major triads. There are a
few ways you can conceptualize these scales. The first is to view it from the lower triad. For
instance, in Fig. 1 you can see this as a C Lydian scale without the 7th scale degree. The other
way of looking at it would be from the upper triad—a D Mixolydian scale without the 6th. I hear
this scale as somewhere between a scalar sound and an arpeggio, although it doesn’t have as
much of an arpeggio sound as a pentatonic scale. It’s an angular, edgy sound I associate with
musicians such as trumpeter Woody Shaw and pianist McCoy Tyner. If you check out Kurt
Rosenwinkel’s intro to “How Deep is the Ocean” on his wonderful recording Intuit, you can hear
how he uses this idea over an altered-dominant chord.

Next, we’re going to look at the application of this scale over both a minor and major jazz-blues
progression. Fig. 2 is an étude I wrote based on a blues in the key of C minor. Over each chord,
we focus on the notes from major triads built on two neighboring scale tones, depending on what
type of sound we want. For example, over Cm7, we’ll use the Eb and F major triads, and for
Fm7, we’ll use Ab and Bb major triads. On the altered-dominant chords in measure 4, 10, and
12, we use triads built off the b5 and the b6 scale degrees. The same concept works over minor
7b5 chords, as you can see in measure 9.
The minor blues in the jazz repertoire has a long history. John Coltrane (“Equinox”), Grant
Green (Duke Pearson’s “Minor League”), Joe Henderson (“Granted”), Jim Hall (“Big Blues”),
Dizzy Gillespie (“Birks Works”), and many other jazz giants have all written and improvised on
a minor blues.

In Fig. 3 you can see how this works over a major (or dominant) blues. Over the dominant
chords, we’ll use triads built on the root and b7 of each chord. As you can see, we outline an Eb
major triad with the first three notes in the first measure and then move to a first-inversion F
major triad. Hear how this creates a big, bright sound?