Lesson 2 — Hexatonic means six notes

That’s all the word means. “Hexa” = six.

The full G major scale has seven notes: G A B C D E F#. Over the C chord in a G-C-D-Em song, that F# sounds sour — it clashes with the chord underneath it.

Leave F# out and you can’t hit a wrong note anymore. Six notes left:

G A B C D E

This is the major hexatonic: scale degrees 1 2 3 4 5 6. Two ways to think about the same six notes:

• Major pentatonic (the five-note shape you may already know) plus the 4th
• Major scale minus the 7th