Last month I presented the six-note E minor hexatonic scale (E F# G A B D), which has a dark, serious quality that’s ideal for creating a pensive, reflective mood.
I’d now like to turn you on to another, equally appealing and useful hexatonic scale (depending on your musical tastes), one that is comprised of the very same notes, which would qualify it as a mode, but sounds completely different—beautifully bright and joyous—and that is D major hexatonic (D E F# G A B).
To illustrate, FIGURE 1 shows E minor and D major triad inversions “leapfrogging” each other up the neck on the top three strings, just like FIGURE 1 from last month’s lesson, only now we’re starting and ending on D instead of Em. (To get the sound of the D root note in your head, pick your open D string before strumming the chords.)
To hear the scale played as single notes, play only those on the B string, then try adding finger slides and vibrato and pairing any two of the three strings to create some “down-home,” heart-warming, gospel-flavored harmonies. As an additional resource, FIGURE 2 shows D and Em triads passing each other up the neck on the D, G and B strings.
Here’s another way to think of D major hexatonic: take D major pentatonic (D E F# A B) and add G, the fourth, or take the D major scale (D E F# G A B Cs) and omit the seventh, C#. The resulting scale formula is 1 2 3 4 5 6. FIGURE 3 illustrates a set of two-octave fingering patterns for D major hexatonic played across all six strings in a variety of positions, all of which are based on the D major pentatonic “box” shapes, with a G note added in every octave. As with last month’s E minor hexatonic shapes, you’ll no doubt find that the compact ones that don’t require any wide stretches or rely much on the pinkie are the most comfortable and useful, or that just a portion of a particular shape works well across a smaller group of strings.
