Triad Pairs from Hexatonics PARTS 1 & 2

Just in case you’re wondering, “what on earth is a hexatonic scale?”, let me answer that first. Being a guitar player, I’m sure that you’re familiar with pentatonic scales which consist of 5 notes. Well, a hexatonic scale simply consists of 6 notes!

So, why would you want to learn a hexatonic to begin with? One answer is based on the fact that most 7 note modes derived from the natural major scale, include 1 note that often clashes with its related chord. This is the infamous “avoid note”. For the most part it resides a half step above a chord tone, like in the case of the “4” in a major scale. If we exclude just that one note from our natural major scale, we end up with a major hexatonic and no longer have to worry about playing that clashing note!

Nonetheless, the most powerful reason for turning ANY 7 note scale into a hexatonic, is that you’ll be able to extract from it 2 triads. The superimposition of these triad pairs over any given chord, is something you’ll hear in every post bop player’s vocabulary to create added harmonic motion and color. Among guitarists, some that come to mind are: Jim Hall, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, John Abercrombie and Mike Stern, to name just a few.

In this lesson which is PART1 of a 2 part series, we are going to learn the procedure to come up with triad pairs from any scale. In PART 2, I am going to teach you 6 cool II-V-I “ready to play” licks, based entirely on this concept, however the download contains a total of 16!!! But today I recommend you first learn the procedure so you can start practicing the fundamentals in preparation to learn the vocabulary.

PDF & AUDIO DOWNLOAD:

The Triad Pairs from Hexatonics files can be downloaded for $10.00 . Your contribution is much appreciated, as it helps support the site and allows me to keep investing the long hours required to produce these lessons. The download includes all the files for PARTS 1 & 2:  PDFs with both regular notation and TAB containing all the step by step instructions & a total of 16 phrases, MP3s of the 16 phrases, and 4 Band in a Box files to practice the exercises and the phrases.