Template:Short description In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole-tone scale, C D E FTemplate:Music GTemplate:Music ATemplate:Music C; the augmented scale, C DTemplate:Music E G ATemplate:Music B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E FTemplate:Music A BTemplate:Music C; and the blues scale, C ETemplate:Music F GTemplate:Music G BTemplate:Music C. A hexatonic scale can also be formed by stacking perfect fifths. This results in a diatonic scale with one note removed (for example, A C D E F G).
Whole-tone scaleEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The whole-tone scale is a series of whole tones. It has two non-enharmonically equivalent positions: C D E FTemplate:Music GTemplate:Music ATemplate:Music C and DTemplate:Music ETemplate:Music F G A B DTemplate:Music. It is primarily associated with the French impressionist composer Claude Debussy, who used it in such pieces of his as Voiles and Le vent dans la plaine, both from his first book of piano Préludes.
This whole-tone scale has appeared occasionally and sporadically in jazz at least since Bix Beiderbecke's impressionistic piano piece In a Mist. Bop pianist Thelonious Monk often interpolated whole-tone scale flourishes into his improvisations and compositions.
- <score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 1 = 120 \relative c' {
\cadenzaOn c1 d e fis gis ais \bar "|" c
} } </score>
Mode-based hexatonic scaleEdit
The major hexatonic scale is made from a major scale and removing the seventh note, e.g., C D E F G A C.<ref name="songwriting">Template:Cite book</ref> It can also be made from superimposing mutually exclusive triads, e.g., C E G and D F A.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Similarly, the minor hexatonic scale is made from a minor scale by removing the sixth note, e.g., C D ETemplate:Music F G BTemplate:Music C.<ref name="songwriting" />
Irish and Scottish and many other folk traditions use six-note scales. They can be easily described by the addition of two triads a tone apart, e.g., Am and G in "Shady Grove", or omitting the fourth or sixth from the seven-note diatonic scale. Template:Citation needed
| Mode | I | II | III | IV | V | VI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Major hexatonic | Minor hexatonic | Ritsu Onkai | Raga Kumud | Mixolydian hexatonic | Phrygian hexatonic |
| Notes | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | Template:Nowrap | 1 Template:Music2 Template:Music3 4 Template:Music6 Template:Music7 | 1 2 3 5 6 7 | 1 2 4 5 6 Template:Music7 | 1 Template:Music3 4 5 Template:Music6 Template:Music7 |
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| Omitted note | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
Augmented scaleEdit
Template:See also The augmented scale, also known in jazz theory as the symmetrical augmented scale,<ref name="Secrets">Workman, Josh. Advanced: "Secrets of the symmetrical augmented scale", Guitar Player 41.7 (July 2007): p108(2).</ref> is so called because it can be thought of as an interlocking combination of two augmented triads an augmented second or minor third apart: C E GTemplate:Music and ETemplate:Music G B. It may also be called the "minor-third half-step scale", owing to the series of intervals produced.<ref name="Secrets"/>
- <score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 1 = 120 \relative c' {
\cadenzaOn c1 ees e g gis b \bar "|" c
} } </score>
It made one of its most celebrated early appearances in Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony (Eine Faust Symphonie). Another famous use of the augmented scale (in jazz) is in Oliver Nelson's solo on "Stolen Moments".<ref name="Secrets of">Advanced: "Secrets of the symmetrical augmented scale". Josh Workman. Guitar Player 41.7 (July 2007): p108(2).</ref> It is also prevalent in 20th century compositions by Alberto Ginastera,<ref name="ic">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Almeida Prado,<ref name="usp">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Béla Bartók,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Milton Babbitt, and Arnold Schoenberg, by saxophonists John Coltrane and Oliver Nelson in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and bandleader Michael Brecker.<ref name="Secrets"/> Alternating E major and C minor triads form the augmented scale in the opening bars of the Finale in Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio.Template:Citation needed
Prometheus scaleEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The Prometheus scale is so called because of its prominent use in Alexander Scriabin's symphonic poem Prometheus: The Poem of Fire. Scriabin himself called this set of pitches, voiced as the simultaneity (in ascending order) C FTemplate:Music BTemplate:Music E A D the "mystic chord". Others have referred to it as the "Promethean chord". It may be thought of as C Lydian-Mixolydian.
It can also be though as a triad pair: a minor triad and an augmented triad 1/2 step up. For example, A minor triad and B flat augmented triad.
- <score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 1 = 120 \relative c' {
\cadenzaOn c1 d e fis a bes \bar "|" c
} } </score>
Blues scaleEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The blues scale is so named for its use of blue notes. Since blue notes are alternate inflections, strictly speaking there can be no one blues scale,<ref>J. Bradford Robinson/Barry Kernfeld. "Blue Note", The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Second Edition, London (2002)</ref> but the scale most commonly called "the blues scale" comprises the minor pentatonic scale and an additional flat 5th scale degree: C ETemplate:Music F GTemplate:Music G BTemplate:Music C.<ref>Ferguson, Jim (2000). All Blues Scale for Jazz Guitar: Solos, Grooves & Patterns, p.6. Template:ISBN.</ref><ref name="Arnold">Arnold, Bruce (2002). The Essentials: Chord Charts, Scales and Lead Patterns for Guitar, p.8. Template:ISBN.</ref><ref>Harrison, Mark (2003). Blues Piano: Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series, p.8. Template:ISBN.</ref>
- <score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 1 = 120 \relative c' {
\cadenzaOn c1 es f ges g bes \bar "|" c
} } </score>
Tritone scaleEdit
The tritone scale, C DTemplate:Music E GTemplate:Music G(Template:Music) BTemplate:Music,<ref>Busby, Paul. "Short Scales", Scored Changes: Tutorials.</ref>Template:Unreliable source? is enharmonically equivalent to the Petrushka chord; it means a C major chord ( C E G(Template:Music) ) + GTemplate:Music major chord's 2nd inversion ( DTemplate:Music GTemplate:Music BTemplate:Music ).<ref>C–GTemplate:Music is a tritone interval.</ref>
- <score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 1 = 120 \relative c' {
\cadenzaOn c1 des e ges g bes \bar "|" c
} } </score>
The two-semitone tritone scale, C DTemplate:Music D FTemplate:Music G ATemplate:Music, is a symmetric scale consisting of a repeated pattern of two semitones followed by a major third now used for improvisation and may substitute for any mode of the jazz minor scale.<ref name="Dziuba">Dziuba, Mark (2000). The Ultimate Guitar Scale Bible, p.129. Template:ISBN.</ref> The scale originated in Nicolas Slonimsky's book Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns through the "equal division of one octave into two parts," creating a tritone, and the "interpolation of two notes," adding two consequent semitones after the two resulting notes.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Page needed</ref> The scale is the fifth mode of Messiaen's list.
- <score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 1 = 120 \relative c' {
\cadenzaOn c1 des d fis g aes \bar "|" c
} } </score>