Getting past the "Church Modes"

[philbrown]

Wow guys thanks!!! I didn't expect that - most people think I'm nuts! And may be but a separate issue I figured I'd take some heat for doing it my way and not reading music proper....

Scales Saga
PART ONE
Okay, it all started with finding some Mahavishnu Orchestra sheet music on the web of Birds of Fire during a time of musical searching for something new. I can play some of those songs but I always wanted to know what made that music what it was, aside from time sigs and polyrhythms. I saw a notation about improvising over a section in "Super-Locrian". I took some theory in college and I knew the Church modes very well but what is Super-Locrian I asked? And down the rabbit hole I went. It turns out there are a lot of scales out there (uderstatement!).

Over a period of months I did a LOT of internet research about scales and modes and also learned from the Guitar Grimoire and Keyboard Grimoire. Each chart had a different way of spelling scales like 1 b2 #3... or like 1 2 1 2... (indicating the number of half steps between scales) or C D Eb... (referencing them all to the key of C). There were many discrepancies among the different sources on what a "Japanese" scale was as an example. A lot of sorting and listening and learning during this phase. We started experimenting with jammimg over loops but using various scales and we liked a lot of them and started learning right away various aspects of them and what made them have the various musical qualities they have. I could write many pages about that here, but I need to just hit the high points I think. I'll type some observations about this later on.

Eventually I saw the value of printing them out in all 12 keys and having sheets for every single scale in a punched notebook so they could be pulled out even though it was a tremendous amount of work creating them and printing them (here's where the obsissive part comes in). We jammed every week using various ones and getting a feel for them. Once we had sheets we could pick a scale and key and then look through the book for other scales that used some of the same notes in common. Through experience and research we'd find a scale and try a different root not for the bass and like the sound and I would use my charts to find out that "Changing the root note to F# actually makes this "Major Locrian" and that sort of thing. A lot of it was just learning the feel and mood of a Hindu scale vs a Jewish scale for example. Hindu is interesting -the first half is major and the second half is minor: C D E F G Ab Bb C. And there's another that's the exact opposite (I believe it's Lydian Diminished but will ahve to check myself). Just one example of many. We discarded quite a few we just found completely of no use musically as my books were all getting too huge!

OK I have to get out of the bathtub now. I'll continue this with part 2 in a while and answer some more of your questions and post a couple of examples to try.

Cheers!!
Phil

[philbrown]

PART TWO

I've only made PDF's of some examples so far but here's a zipped folder of an assortment of scales (only in C) for keyboard:

http://idisk.mac.com/doctorvague/Public ... Kybd-C.zip

and guitar:
http://idisk.mac.com/doctorvague/Public ... -Gtr-C.zip

here's the Mahavishnu reference that started it all:




Earler on I had them separated out but ended up condensing most into 2 huges books:




The Interesting and Symmetrical scales were some I was devising myself based on certain parameters, some of which I found out later had already been named (mostly India where they've named a LOT of scales) but some turned out to be original and some more useful than others of course.

Little aside - I was watching a DVD on the life story of Miles Davis (a personal hero) and they were interviewing Chick Corea at the piano. He said Miles had him play a C triad, an E triad and an Ab triad, and that if you made a scale out of that it sounded like Miles (and it does). I immediately dubbed it "The Miles Scale" and into the book it went. It's a 6 note scale that I found out later is actually called "Altered". Just one of my scale stories

FM, you asked about the chart in my first post. The left half shows all the major triads contained in the scale. The right half shows the minor triads. The dark boxes indicate the triad is in the scale. The light and dark horizontal rows are just there for visual contrast so your eye can follow easily from left to right (though I overdid it). For example the top row "Chinese" contains only a C triad and an Em triad as it's only a 5 note scale. "Chromatic Hypolydian" contains a C and E major triad and a C#m and Em triad. I found this helpful when choosing scales and when getting to know a new one as when we would sit down to jam on a scale we found it helpful to first determine what triads were in them as we found that gave us some musical ideas to begin with. A classic example is Lydian mode where (in C) you've got both the C and D major triads which give that scale a lot of it's sound. Neil Finn's "Try Whistling This" starts with this exact figure. Lydian always reminds me of Zappa and Steely Dan.

I've been told by several players that these books are a marketable product but I'm not into that much labor-intensive work, as I don't see how it could be mass produced in any efficient way (I have a background in printing). What makes them hard to mass produce (3 ring binder) also makes them useful as you can pull out various ones

To MM, It will be a lot of work turning all these into PDF's but with some enthusiasm here and elsewhere I think I'll start working on it as a labor of love. Lord knows I've downloaded enough schematics, recipes, scale charts, and Barely Legal stuf etc in my life so I don't mind giving back, especially to the fine folks around here, who I appreciate dearly. Right now they are all in Adobe InDesign format so my next task is seeing if there's a way to batch-convert these to PDF rather than one at a time. You can see I'm pretty good with tedious tasks so it will be just a matter of getting down to business and doing it. Another friend here locally is pressing me for this so I have some motivation now!

Questions?


Cheers
Phil

[Phil O]

Wow! If I were half that organized, I'd be half organized.
Great stuff Phil.

Phil

[FMiguelez]

Wow! If I were half that organized, I'd be half organized.
Great stuff Phil.

Phil



That's exactly what I thought too when I saw them!

FM, you asked about the chart in my first post. The left half shows all the major triads contained in the scale. The right half shows the minor triads. The dark boxes indicate the triad is in the scale.

Ach, so!!!
Ok. Duh! Got it now. I thought they meant individual note degrees.
Makes sense now

[philbrown]

Wow! If I were half that organized, I'd be half organized.
Great stuff Phil.

Phil

ba-da-bing
I always hear Jackie Mason delivering those zingers
funny how we translate the written word
my wife loved that line too

thank you kind sir

[Kubi]

Thanks for posting the PDFs. Very useful! Experimenting with scales doesn't sound 'crazy' to me, or at least I hope it isn't... I've developed a few of my own, but they're not in any electronic form (I do still work a lot with pencil and paper, and all my sketches are, uh, old skool... ) Once I found the time to get them translated into bits, I'll gladly share them. BTW, I do have all of them in DP as custom scales, so I can easily transpose around. Does Logic allow for global custom scales...? He he...

Phil (and Fernando...), you would love this book. Highly recommended!

Two more books that, while not solely about scales, do cover them to an extent, in interesting ways, at least I think so: Lou Harrison's Music Primer, and Olivier Messiaen's "Technique of my Musical Language". Both of these really opened up entirely new and different horizons for me.

You'd have to learn to read music a little bit for these books, but with all the work you've already done thinking about scales, note names etc. I don't believe it'd take you more than two weeks to fill in that last blank...

Thanks again for sharing!

[FMiguelez]

.

Hello, Kubi.

Thanks for sharing those books. I was attracted by the Messiaen's.

BTW, I DO read music...



One thing I'd like to emphasize is, all the scales are great and everything. But most often it's best to NOT think of them as just scales. The way I like to look at them is as a temporary diatonic system from which to write or play, either, melodically and/or harmonically. The latter is always great as a temporary mode to get new progressions for short sections of longer pieces.

One book I'd like to recommend is the Ludmila Ulehla:

http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Harm ... 896&sr=1-6

It is DEEP. Not only because of scale stuff, but in general. The concepts of linear roots are great.

Just curious. Continuing with Kubi's recommendations, what harmony/composition books do you guys find (found) most helpful, and why??

I could mention:

The Persichetti
The Ludmila Ulehla
The Steffan Kostka (the one for modern harmony)
The Leo Dallin
The advanced texts from Berklee

What about you?

[Kubi]

.
BTW, I DO read music...

I knew that... but I thought I'd bring up that IMHO someone like Phil, who has put in so many years of thinking about music and notes and scales, wouldn't take very long to figure out what's merely an alternate way of representing that which he already knows so much about. That's all.

[Kubi]

The Persichetti
[...]
The Steffan Kostka (the one for modern harmony)
The Leo Dallin

Titles please?

Thanks!

[FMiguelez]

.

I knew that... but I thought I'd bring up that IMHO someone like Phil, who has put in so many years of thinking about music and notes and scales, wouldn't take very long to figure out what's merely an alternate way of representing that which he already knows so much about. That's all.

Good point.



About the Messiaen's book... I am just very curious as to what he calls his harmonic language. If you have a couple of minutes, could you just briefly describe what he calls his harmonic language, porfavor?

I guess what I want to know is if his book talks about his way of looking at known techniques, or is it really different from the other textbooks?

Also, most of my textbooks are already a bit old. Does anyone here know if any of the regular books' newer editions come with accompanying CD's to listen to the examples cited? Kind of like the Adler, but for harmony. I mean, now a days I'd see no reason for editors and book authors to just cite examples without the music... I know it must be hard to get all the permissions and everything... but Adler did

Kubi, I'll get you the titles in a second... Let me go dig them up. Oh, and probably get a dust mask too

[FMiguelez]

.

Ok, Kubi. This is what I found (they were almost growing trees out of them )

Ludmila Ulehla- Contemporary Harmony. Romanticism Through the Twelve-Tone Row (This one is my favorite one. DEEP like hell)
Leo Dallin- Techniques of 20th Century Composition
Stefan Kostka- Materials and Techniques of Twentieth Century Harmony.
Vincent Persichetti- Twentieth-Century Harmony
Walter Piston /de Voto Harmony (This one is mostly about traditional harmony, but has good introductory chapters on 20th century stuff.

There's also the Schoenberg one, but that one is at my studio.
And I lent someone a very good one whose title I can' remember that is an analy deep analysis ( ) of Bartok's techniques/music. Man, I am SO getting it back now, like tomorrow.


The Berklee ones are just called Harmony 1 through 4, and Advanced Modal Harmony, and Reharmonization Techniques. These, at the time I was a student there, were not really books per se, they were like packages you got at the start of the semesters, but I'm almost positive they sell them as books now through Berklee press at their bookstore. These were more like contemporary harmony targeted at Jazz music, but very good ones. It was always great to compare these against the regular textbooks to see how some things were similar, but with different contexts.

We can add to that list the ones you recommended.

I found this link to the Ulehla:

http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Harm ... 896&sr=1-6


Anyone wants to recommend a few others?

[Kubi]

About the Messiaen's book... I am just very curious as to what he calls his harmonic language. If you have a couple of minutes, could you just briefly describe what he calls his harmonic language, porfavor?

It's his 'musical language', and it is very much him listing in rather random order things he likes to do with harmony, rhythm and melody. Which makes it very very cool, it's very much a master talking shop, rather than a scholar talking, well, scholarship. Plenty of music examples (they used to be in a separate book, which is a pain in the ass, but now they're in the same book on the same page, which is much nicer.)

I'm going to check out the Ulehla book, thanks for that tip! Theodore Front has it for $35, while Amazon has it for $123... And thanks for the other titles as well. Looks like Kostka is out of print. This kind of stuff is going the way of the dodo...

[monkey man]

To MM, It will be a lot of work turning all these into PDF's but with some enthusiasm here and elsewhere I think I'll start working on it as a labor of love. Lord knows I've downloaded enough schematics, recipes, scale charts, and Barely Legal stuf etc in my life so I don't mind giving back, especially to the fine folks around here, who I appreciate dearly. Right now they are all in Adobe InDesign format so my next task is seeing if there's a way to batch-convert these to PDF rather than one at a time. You can see I'm pretty good with tedious tasks so it will be just a matter of getting down to business and doing it. Another friend here locally is pressing me for this so I have some motivation now!
Questions?
Cheers
Phil

I can't tell you how much it would mean to me to be able to check these out, Phil.
My mind boggles when I think about it.
Just to be able to play (slowly!) and hear the "sound" of these things would surely open up many new vistas for me.
Hey, given time, it may even help set me up for learning to read the "dots" one day.
It's really embarrassing, but as I said previously the horizontal stave does my head in.
If music had been written grid-editor style but scrolling vertically, much how I imagine a piano roll would be, I'd have had no problem.
I'm a "patterns guy" in the way that I think, but am sort of allergic to unnecessary complexity and especially spacial distortions such as the 90 degree discrepancy between the way the keyboard is presented and how it's rendered on the stave.

I hope I'm making sense. Nevertheless, I do feel that your logical layout of the scales will hugely contribute to my musical growth.
I'd feel indebted to you to the point that a large pecuniary reward would surely ensue down the track.

Do it man, do it! Hopefully, as you say, these things can be batch-converted.
There should be a way - that's what computers are for really, even though you're much like me (it's a typical virgo trait) in that you seem to be willing to perform the laborious tasks others wouldn't have a bar of.

[Tonio]

PART TWO


Questions?


Cheers
Phil

QUESTIONS?, questions?

That chart is awesome, I never seen anything like it.

T

[bdr]

Ulehla book is seriously deep.
David Cope has quite a few books, some seem to cover similar areas. I have 'New Music Composition' and 'Techniques of the Contemporary Composer''

Bill Russo "Composing Music' has some good exercises for people at all levels.

Reginald Smith-Brindle has a handy, easy to read introduction to 20C composing. Can't find the title, something like 'Musical Composition',

There's some interesting theory books put out by Advance Music.