Hexatonic Scales
BY BRUCE SAUNDERS
Bruce Saunders is an award-winning guitar-
ist, composer, author, and educator. He has
recorded, performed, and toured with some
of the world’s best jazz musicians, including
Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Bill Stewart,
and Peter Erskine. Saunders has been a fac-
ulty member at the Berklee College of Music
since 1992 and has also taught at New York
University and The New School, and conduct-
ed clinics and concerts in many countries. Visit
brucesaunders.com for more information.
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Advanced
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Create hexatonic scales
based on two major triads
• Learn to simplify altered-dominant sounds
• Develop vertical improvisational ideas
Click here to hear
sound clips of
these examples.
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 applica-
tion 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 neigh-
boring scale tones, depending on what type
of sound we want. For example, over Cm7,
we’ll use the E% and F major triads, and for
Fm7, we’ll use A% and B% major triads. On
the altered-dominant chords in measure 4,
10, and 12, we use triads built off the 5
and the 6 scale degrees. The same concept
works over minor 7 5 chords, as you can
see in measure 9.
Fig. 1 Fig. 1
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44 & ˙˙˙
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oeoeoe# oe
oe
oeoe# oe
oe
oe
oeoe
5
8
5
7
8
5
4
2
5
7
˙
8
7
5
5
7
5
7
9
