The Whole Tone Scale

The whole tone scale

The whole tone scale emerged in 19^th Century music, and its distinctive harmony can be found in works by Debussy (e.g. Voiles) and Schoenberg (Chamber Symphony No. 1). Employing the melodic signing technique that has proved most suitable for Harmony Signing (see The full chromatic scale employed in Harmony Signing), the whole tone scale can be represented as follows:

Doh – Re – Mi – Fi – Si – Ta – Doh¹

Exploring the melodic potential of this scale against a drone can provide a new aural experience compared to that of the Major and minor, and also provides a valuable challenge in tuning that requires setting aside ingrained habits of placing semitones in their conventional positions in a scale.

Another exercise that extends this is to introduce free polyphonic exploration: every individual voice, singing to an Aah vowel, determines its own pathway through the texture by moving up and down steps of the scale at different speeds, sometimes pausing and changing direction. In a large group, this gives rise to a memorably hazy texture that provides a clear impression of the distinct harmonic world that the whole tone scale can conjure.