HARMONIC DNAHEXATONICS
wholetone poles (torus hubs)
augmented collections (torus hubs)
lives inside ONE scale type only:
Major
Melodic Minor
Harmonic Minor
Harmonic Major
inside exactly two types (both colours):
Major + Melodic Minor
Harmonic Major + Harmonic Minor
Harmonic Major + Major
Harmonic Minor + Major
Harmonic Minor + Melodic Minor
Harmonic Major + Melodic Minor
inside a diminished collection only
height = F(6): even–odd balance
radius = |F(1)|: evenness, spread centre → clustered rim
ringed nodes share an exact position, nudged apart
Key
Controls
About
Theory
The view
Origins

The hexatonics

Every six-note scale the 2011 drawing rule allows — no two of its semitones adjacent — is here: 282 scales, joined wherever one note moves by a single semitone. 840 connections, one connected world.

The shape

Place each scale by how its notes balance around the circle. The horizontal position is the first Fourier coefficient, so evenly-spread scales gather at the axis and chromatically-clustered ones push to the rim; turning a scale up a semitone turns the whole picture by 30°. The height is the sixth coefficient — how many notes sit on the even semitones against the odd — so the two wholetone scales stand alone at the poles, and moving any note one semitone always changes the height by exactly one step. Distances here are honest: the shortest path between two scales along the edges is exactly the smallest total voice-leading motion between them.

A handful of scales share an exact position — symmetry forces them to — and those are nudged apart and drawn with a ring. That is a compromise the mathematics cannot avoid, so the page marks it rather than hiding it.

Old friends

Six of these scales are already on the torus as hubs: the two wholetone collections at the poles, and the four augmented collections. Every other scale lists which of the 48 parent scales — or which diminished collection — contains it. And remarkably, that accounts for everything: every one of the 282 hexatonics either is a torus hub or lives inside a torus scale or hub. The 48 magenta scales belong to the diminished collections alone, the torus's other symmetric world. There is no hexatonic outside the torus's reach.

Finding your way

  • Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom. Keep zooming and you dive into the centre — the middle of the augmented collections, where the whole lattice wraps around you; scroll back out to return.
  • Move the shape around the screen with a two-finger drag, or with a mouse either by holding shift while dragging or by pressing the scroll wheel and dragging. The arrow keys nudge it. Double-tap (or double-click) empty space to bring it back to the middle.
  • Hover any scale for its notes and number. Click it for the full panel: its clock figure, census, mirror twin, its parent scales on the torus, and every scale one semitone-move away.
  • The chips along the bottom open Key, Controls and this page. One opens at a time.

The clock figures

Click a scale and its figure is drawn from the notes: the polygon on the twelve-hour clock, semitone edges red. The tension spikes lens redraws it under the 2011 rule, each semitone corner replaced by its spike — the same figures the torus panel draws, for the same reason. The tritones lens draws the tritone diameters dotted through the centre. When you jump to a neighbour the moving note slides along the rim; with spikes on, the rule figure is redrawn live as it goes, so spikes grow, travel and shrink with the motion.

Origins

The 2011 rule — a scale is drawable when no two of its semitones sit adjacent — comes from the same kitchen-table diagrams as the torus. Applied to six-note scales it admits exactly these 282, and the structure they form has been verified computationally from every angle: the counts, the connections, the Fourier geometry, the voice-leading distances. This page is the hexatonic sibling of the Harmonic DNA Torus, built to the same design, and will in time join it as a second tab.