McCoy Tyner/4ths/Hexatonics/Pentatonics
Phew!
I was planning to write about hemiolas, but some study in that area led me on a tangent by way of McCoy Tyner’s playing on “A Love Supreme.”
Check out the 8 bars of McCoy’s opening statement after the bass and drums enter on Acknowledgement, starting at 0:51:
(Thanks to my good friend Omree Gal-Oz for the transcription!)
It generally sounds like 4ths moving around, but what’s going on more specifically?
In the left hand (bass clef) part, McCoy rotates between 3 chords over the bass ostinato.
Notice that each left hand chord is limited to stacked perfect 4ths.
If you take these three chords and form them into a scale, you get a six-note (hexatonic) scale.
Starting on F, the notes of the scale are F, G, Ab, Bb, C, Eb.
From this scale, you could add one more perfect 4th stack, starting on C (C, F, Bb)
So the 4 available perfect 4th stacks are:
F, Bb, Eb
G, C, F
Bb, Eb, Ab
C, F, Bb
(Stacking diatonic 4ths above Ab and Eb would give non-perfect 4ths, so those aren’t options in this perfect 4ths-only approach.)
In the right hand (treble clef) part there are some similar shapes, but often in an inversion.
For instance, F, Bb, C.
This is an inversion of the perfect 4th stack C, F, Bb.
This inverted shape with the 2nd on top appears a few times.
But what else is going on in the treble clef part?
I notice that the note choices are limited to the F minor pentatonic scale.
F, Ab, Bb, C, Eb
No G, so it’s one fewer note than the hexatonic basis of the left hand 4th chords.
He seems to be moving around the pentatonic scale freely in the right hand, sometimes using 4th chords and inversions, but limited to the 5 notes of the scale.
This connects back to my earlier post about hexatonics, where Milt Jackson was supporting a minor pentatonic melody with chords derived from a hexatonic scale, though in that case he wasn’t using 4th chords.
To put this to use, try moving around on those 4 perfect 4th stacks noted above and improvising on F minor pentatonic.
Very McCoy-ish! There’s something about this pentatonic/hexatonic relationship…