Western instruments, such as the piano, guitar, trumpet, xylophone, etc., all use a 12-note scale.

Hexaphone instead uses a simplified 6-note scale:

• To make better use of the limited screen size
• To eliminate "wrong notes"
• To increase the "octave range" of the keyboard

Hexaphone was designed with the Hexatonic (6-note) Blues Scale in mind - but it was easy to see how other types of music could be adapted to use a 6-note scale.

This page discusses the origins and characteristics of the various scales in Hexaphone, and provides tips and tricks on how to play them.

Much of contemporary music owes its roots to the blues - rock, bluegrass, r&b, hip hop, jazz, funk, soul, and many types of dance music all borrow heavily from the musical intervals and patterns pioneered by the early blues artists in America's Deep South.

Hexaphone's design -- and the app's name itself -- come from the Hexatonic Blues Scale. This scale lends itself perfectly to a six-note keyboard:

The distinguishing characteristics of the Blues Scale are found in the top row of keys:

• The 3rd and 7th are both minor, giving it a forlorn, contemporary feel
• The dark blue note is the Tritone - also known as the "devil's note". Use this to create tension or to lead to the 4th or the 5th - but avoid it unless you know what you're doing.

One of the great things about the Blues Scale is how forgiving it is - every note is OK to play at any point in the blues form.

To get started, stick to the 1 and the 4, using the 3rd and 7th to create melodic interest. Try playing over the traditional "twelve-bar blues" form: {1, 1, 1, 1}, {4, 4, 1, 1}, {5, 4, 1, 5}

While there is no official "dance scale" in music theory, Hexaphone's Dance Scale provides a set of musical intervals that are suitable for many types of latin music, as well as for an industrial sound suitable for metal and techno music.

Compared to the Blues Scale, we've dropped the Tritone in favor of the minor 2nd, and slid the 3rd and 4th up one spot to accommodate the arrival of the 2nd.

The minor 2nd makes all the difference in this scale - this note is just half a step away from the root, and thus creates tension when played in sequence with the root.

Here's a latin riff played with the Dance Scale:

Here's a more "industrial" sounding riff played with the Dance Scale:

Hexaphone's Trance Scale is a selection of 6 notes from a plain-old minor scale. It can be best understood by looking at the top and bottom rows as two distinct triads:

The top row is a minor triad starting on the 5.

The bottom row is a major triad starting on the 6.

It just so happens that the notes from these two chords can be used to produce a "typical" trance form: