McCoy Tyner is to be found in some of these meditations.

Dominant 7 chords, tritone substitution

Root in the left hand, 3rd and 7th in the right hand.

  • Left hand moves by tonal gravity, playing all 12 roots around the circle of fifths.
  • Right hand descends by chromatic half-steps. Pattern repeats: 2 groups of the same 6 tritones.

McCoy Tyner, quartal voicings, major pentatonic scales

Following the motion of gravity by 4ths creates the “quartal voicings” that so clearly call forth McCoy Tyner. Add major pentatonic scales on top.

For example, (LH: C♯ F♯ B OR LH: E A D) + RH: A B C♯ E F♯ (A major pentatonic) both sound good.

Those two quartal — half-way around the circle of fifths — LH voicings account for half of all available notes. And 5 of 6 of the notes are in the pentatonic scale (which obviously explains why they sound good below the scale). What’s interesting is that this one scale has a strong relation to half of all of tonality. To explore: each of these 2 groupings against all 12 major pentatonic scales.

The other 2 sets of 3 sound more dissonant with A major pentatonic — at this point, not clear how they would be useful.