Comments on: Why the Lydian flat-7 mode is so cool

By: Roger Bourland

Roger Bourland — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:39:13 +0000

I think I know what all this adds up to: Lydian flat 7 is a very rich collection to use. It can conjure many, many moods.

Thanks for your very generous and smart post nocal!

By: nocal_composer

nocal_composer — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:32:58 +0000

ps html parsing stripped the interval vectors above. Here are the most important of em…I also missed out 7-27 so I expect some east coast theorist to get all huffy

[344451] (24) 7-27: (0,1,2,4,5,7,9) [0,2,4,5,7,8,9]
[336333] (24) 7-31: (0,1,3,4,6,7,9) [0,2,3,5,6,8,9]
[335442] (24) 7-32: (0,1,3,4,6,8,9) {harm-min} [0,1,3,5,6,8,9]
[262623] (12) 7-33: (0,1,2,4,6,8,A)
[254442] (12) 7-34: (0,1,3,4,6,8,A)
[254361] (12) 7-35: (0,1,3,5,6,8,A) {diatonic}

By: nocal_composer

nocal_composer — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:26:12 +0000

Forgetting the functional references for a minute, here is a catalog of Forte analysis which shows some of the interesting subsets and their interval vectors. I didn’t look at supersets

3-6 (0,2,4)
3-6 (0,2,4)
3-2 (0,1,3) [0,2,3]
3-2 (0,1,3) [0,2,3]
3-2 (0,1,3) [0,2,3]
Interval Vector Total:

4-21 (0,2,4,6)
4-11 (0,1,3,5) [0,2,4,5]
4-10 (0,2,3,5)
4-3 (0,1,3,4)
Interval Vector Total:

5-24 (0,1,3,5,7) [0,2,4,6,7]
5-23 (0,2,3,5,7) [0,2,4,5,7]
5-10 (0,1,3,4,6) [0,2,3,5,6]
Interval Vector Total:

6-33 (0,2,3,5,7,9) [0,2,4,6,7,9]) {dom11}
6-Z24 (0,1,3,4,6,8) [0,2,4,5,7,8]
Interval Vector Total:

7-34 (0,1,3,4,6,8,10)

Interval Vector Total:

What does this tell us? well, for one – its the closest 7 note set to it’s neighbor 7-35 – the diatonic – only one 1/2 step moved.

[What makes the diatonic interesting boys and girls? Well, the alchemist think its the only set that has a completely uneven number of intervals (e.g. no two intervals have the same number) which may make it more distinct to our hearing? Personally, I think its the placement / seperation of the minor seconds which have the least number of intervals in the collection outside of the Tritone.]

Hmmm I wonder, what other sets are closely related to 7-35 by only 1/2 step difference?

(24) 7-29: (0,1,2,4,6,7,9) [0,2,3,5,7,8,9]
(24) 7-30: (0,1,2,4,6,8,9) [0,1,3,5,7,8,9]
(24) 7-32: (0,1,3,4,6,8,9) {harm-min} [0,1,3,5,6,8,9]

I’ll have to hear what these sound like. I’m sure there are other closely related family members that might be interesting to look at outside of the obvious WholeTone and Octatonic collections

And then there are the lovely subsets and partitions which might have some fun melodic play and pattern in them when working together in those 7-34 scaly modes.

Anyway, the chain of discovery and analysis can go on in many ways based on the toys in the composers west coast sandbox…Overtones of overtones; Tartani tones bring it on…

By: Roger Bourland

Roger Bourland — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:10:45 +0000

Stravinsky referred to the octatonic scale as “the Rimskii scale.” You’ll hear it in Sadko as major-minor 7th chords (dominant 7th chords) descending in minor 3rds. You’ll hear it also pop up in young Igor’s “Fireworks” as well.

By: Brad Wood

Brad Wood — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:17:02 +0000

Thanks for the terminological clue-in Robert. A little wikipedia entry informs me that “…(there are other possible eight-tone scales, but the diminished is by far the most common). The latter term (’octatonic pitch collection’) was first introduced by Arthur Berger in 1963 (van den Toorn 1983). …”

I see also that Rimsky-Koraskov claimed to have invented it, although the entry mentions its formulation by Arab musicians in the 7th century, and cites Liszt’s use in No. 5 of the Transcendental Etudes.

By: arezeeman

arezeeman — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 03:29:42 +0000

Yep. I suspect that, like me, Brad may have spent hours and hours (and hours) practicing diminished scale patterns (”diminished scale” is jazz-speak for octotonic). After a while you only have to hear a few notes and your ear reflexively fill in the rest. Your quote from “Pretty Ballerina” has just one gap–fill it in one way (with a D) and you have the Lydian flat-5, fill it in the way Brad suggests, and you have pure octotonic (and you also have jazz cliche). It’s a very useful ambiguity.

There are a few recordings of the song on iTunes (none by Left Banke). One of them (from Chinese Puzzle) starts with an instrumental variation of the line you quoted that fills in the gap and is unambigously Lydian flat-7. The one by Alice Cooper has a guitar riff that uses the octotonic part only in a fairly pungent way. Guess I’ll have to find this song somewhere or another and hear the whole thing.

By: Brad Wood

Brad Wood — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:30:06 +0000

Also not acquainted with Ballerina, when I looked at the example I heard it (with my “jazz” ears) as a descending incomplete diminished scale (alternating whole tones and semitones)—that is, if the fragment had only shown the first eleven eighth notes, I would have guessed the next four might be D#-C#-D#-C#.

By: PK

PK — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:34:37 +0000

Just for sake of argument, considering how high up the series the raised 4th shows up (and my old ears ain’t what they once were), might part of its interest come from the implied harmonic ambiguity created by the leading tone to the dominant? Kind of like the frisson of the major/minor shift in the Theme from Exodus (you wrote about a few posts back), the veil dance of what is dominant to what, implied by this scale, might make for a richness.

By: Roger Bourland

Roger Bourland — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:04:46 +0000

Thanks for your comments Robert. I never considered trying the “modes” of that mode. I knew about the melodic minor mode on the 5th scale degree, but never looked at the one starting on 4.

I don’t hear Ballerina as octatonic, or “implied” octatonic as Peter Van Den Toorn calls it. I really DO hear Lydian flat-7.

I think every mode has its own taste or flavor or mood, but I think you’re probably right that it is always subjective, and what a student hears is likely not the same as what I hear. We are using the Marvin Clenndining theory text book. They break up the modes into tetrachords to get the students to hear them better. My TAs had good luck with their technique of learning the modes.

By: arezeeman

arezeeman — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:42:24 +0000

I love this scale, too, but I internalized it in a different form, and think about it in somewhat different (but complimentary) terms. Take the mode starting on the 4th note of your Lydian flat-7 and you have what my jazz improvisation teacher called an “augmented scale,” which fits perfectly with a number of altered dominant chords, especially #9 (which, to jazz musicians, usually implies either a raised or lowered 5th). The mode starting on the 5th note is the (ascending) melodic minor scale.

The excerpt from “Pretty Ballerina” (a song I’m sorry to say I don’t know) could be interpreted as purely octotonic. But in my mind that’s how this note collection works–depending on how you approach it, it can be almost whole-tone or almost octotonic. My entirely subjective feeling is that its coolness comes more from that aspect than from the way it projects the overtone series. And trying to talk, in fundamental terms, about how or why a scale “works” is such an exercise in subjectivity–not a bad one, at all, but one that ends up saying more about individual ways of hearing and understanding than about physics and acoustics.

I appreciated reading your thoughts, though. I often find myself struggling, especially when I’m teaching, to verbalize my impressions of the distinct personalities of certain scales and modes. Ultimately there may not be much point to it–they’ll hear it, or not, and in their own way–though my hope is always to get them listening more closely.