Practicing the Whole Tone Scale

A whole tone scale has six notes that are evenly spaced at whole step intervals. The chromatic scale includes all notes spaced a half-step apart, but the whole tone scale skips every other note of the chromatic scale. It is quite different from the major scales that most of our songs and music are based upon, and which have seven notes.

The image at the top of this article shows some whole tone scales. Click on the image to enlarge it and try to play it from the screen, or print it out for practice. The first three tones on the first line, the C whole tone scale, are the same as a major scale. Your ear will first say, "Is that right?" when you play the fourth note, the F#. The fifth note can be written as a G# or an A^b, I find it easier to think of the A^b and follow that by the B^b. The return to the note C sounds odd until you get used to it.

This scale sounds like a piece of space music, that is, it gives me the impression of floating and weightlessness. There is no pull to any tone. If you play a C major scale, and stop on the B, your ear will tell you to go onward and play the C. The B is called a leading tone, and there is a half-step between the B and the C. Your ear is led back to the C. The whole tone scale has no leading tone, and there is no sense of any starting or stopping note at all.

Here is a suggestion on practicing whole tone scales. First play the C scale of line one. When you move to line two, the D scale is one whole note above the C scale, and contains exactly the same notes. On lines three and four, I have written two octaves of the C scale. Start on any note, go up to that note, and back down. Try to play the scales by ear, using the music only as you need it, starting on the notes E, F#, A^b, and B^b.

There are really only two whole tone scales. The bottom half of the music shows the second scale starting on C#. Play these scales using the same method. When you are comfortable playing both sets of scales, here is a musical challenge. By ear, first play the C whole tone scale, then immediately try to play the C# whole tone scale. Keep going up a half step and play all the scales until you reach the top of your range on your instrument.

Whole tone scales are fun, and if you play them rapidly while warming up around other musicians, you are sure to get some strange looks. Enjoy this exercise, and play the whole tone scales occasionally.