Dogbite's Thread

[DoorMouseForker]

How many scales to practice can increase over time, I would put beginners on the major and minor blues pentatonics and the next level would be I-IV-V progressions of those 2 scales. On the next level I would add 2 of the church modes, on the next level I would add the 2 thirds of the triads. On the next level I would add Byzantine and Diminished and Augmented and repeating intervals and diads and at that level I think 3 octave arpeggios would become important. After that, I would add more weird scales and the weird triads and weird pentatonics. After that, add as many as you want. Alot of good guitarists have practiced weird scales and went on to recommend it, and there isnt any conflict with memorizing too much because there isnt any need to permanently memorize anything about a scale other than what are the notes. Adding extra scales is not going to displace the knowledge of the common ones.

[dogbite]

Originally Posted by michaelsorg

I find the octatonic blues scale so important that I ended up naming it the "OMNI scale." The dorian mode I call Dorian blues or bisected Dorian, since the Ab/G# bisects the inversional symmetry already present.

On the truncated cube if you hold one in your hand to show a head on view of a square, then you also see the large square. This gives you this octatonic scale. Forgive my crude diagram!

This is really the only consistent shape that comes up regardless of polar orientation, other than the squares themselves.

agreed; the dorian blues (1 2 b3 4 #4/b5 5 6 b7) scale is my personal favorite. it is half of a whole/half diminished (1 2 b3 4 b5) and half of a half/whole diminished (#4 5 6 b7 8) and as an expansion of the natural (C major) diatonic scale i simply refer to it as blue, with the added tone (G#/Ab) simply as the blue component.

here's why: i heard of a scale called diminished whole tone once. it is one of aebersold's designations for altered dominant which is also referred to as superlocrian. to say that there are too many syllables here is a gross understatement. russell has one called auxiliary diminished blues. again, too many syllables. i'm not implying, overtly or otherwise, that a player should not know commonly used vocabulary; if you say lydian augmented, i know what you're talking about

but how 'bout this. groove with me here. if C# makes a certain scale and Eb makes another and the combination C# + Eb makes a third expansion, let me introduce the simplest idea a child could understand:

red + yellow = orange

C# (A B C# D E F G) + Eb (A B C D Eb F G) = C# and Eb (A B C# Eb F G)

hence the colors i use for the chromatic cube. you say G7 (as in mixolydian) i say white, you say G7#4 (as in lydian dominant) i say red, you say G7b6 (as in aeolian dominant or melodic major) i say yellow, you say G7#4#5 (as in wholetone) i say orange.

again, C# is the red component and Eb is the yellow...

and G#/Ab is blue

all twelve diatonic scales come in eight colors, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (jeff won't let me call it violet) and black and yes: blue + red = purple and blue + yellow = green. red + yellow + blue = black and for me anyway, this is highly intuitive.

couple of points:

1) old school (slightly incorrect but the way we learned the color wheel in the 1960s) versions of colors as applied to pigment being used here. iow, i'm not using CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) or RGB (red, green, blue) as currently understood in terms of human color perception regarding light and pigment (additive and subtractive colors)

2) i'm not suggesting that the commonly used terms be ignored or denied by the player. i'm just simplifying for my own perception: auxiliary diminished blues (russell) is green, lydian augmented (from lydian) is red. harmonic minor (from aeolian) is blue and i get all of the modes you guys talk about just moving this thing around the circle of fifths.

here's where the beef is:

Fingering Mastery

as well as in Modalogy; however, the fingerings shown in Fingering Mastery are where i spend my time. all positions are shown for string instruments.

yup, this may be too CST-ish for some but it represents the culmination of many years of morphing scales into each other. it is also arbitrary in that the criteria (for choosing the scales) was chosen by me and me alone, but with one thing in mind: usefulness.

i will soon present the evolution of this, because it has manifest in many forms before what you see here now. stay tuned (and in tune)

[Jeff Brent]

Roses are Red
Violets are Purple
Sugar is Sweet
And so's Maple Surple
~ Roger Miller

I noticed that the FingeringMastery.com website got one extra hit from your plug.

[dogbite]

Originally Posted by Jeff Brent

I noticed that the FingeringMastery.com website got one extra hit from your plug.

only one? one can dream...

and now a word from our sponsors about modes. i'll bet y'all know a thing called a dorian scale. you know what my wacky system calls it? dorian; go figure...

'nuff said, but:

over a tonal environment of "A," as in A bass, A major, A minor, A dominant or diminished or whatever, you have the choice (and always had) of playing anything at all over it. i used to be one of the "you can't play a major third over minor" purists but no longer. it's now one of my favorite things to toy with but let's get back to those key sigs and the major scales they represent. over a tonal environment of "A," the following diatonic scales are given with their modal designations:

E major / A lydian
A major / A ionian
D major / A mixolydian
G major / A dorian
C major / A aeolian
F major / A phrygian
Bb major / A locrian

and before any ninteenth century purists throw me under the bus about not using the authentic and plagal conventions of plainsong or gregorian chant, i might remind us that not only did i learn this stuff in the twentieth century, it is now the twenty-first century and i stopped caring about how monks view this stuff half way through my music history class. in other words, all bets are off and i will even go as far as to say that you can play any scale over any tonal environment. frags and combos (fragments and combinations) too which means arpeggios both defined or otherwise, pentatonics both anhemitonic or otherwise - hell if you can make it sound good, who gives a poo how you came up with it.

there are five major scales that don't have "A" as one of their components and if you define A dorian as "G major, mode 2 (or ii to use triadic jargon) then these five scales arise as "chromatic" modes:

Eb major / mode #4/b5
Ab major / mode #1/b2
Db major / mode #5/b6
Gb major / mode #2/b3
B major / mode #6/b7

and for my own sanity, i use only the flat designations and call them modes "b5, b2, b6, b3 and b7." jeff used a very specific criteria in Modalogy to name the five chromatic modes (pages 57-65) and i wanted to explain that my names are similar but not identical. i still use the ones i've been using since before Modalogy was published by Hal Leonard...

examples in real world:

diatonic scale in C is A B C D E F G
red component is C#, red scale is A B C# D E F G

after transposing to other keys,

Am7 = A dorian or G major
diatonic scale in G is A B C D E F# G
red component is G#, red scale is A B C D E F# G# (jazz minor)

A7 = A mixolydian or D major
diatonic scale in D is A B C# D E F# G
red component is D#, red scale is A B C# D# E F# G (lydian dominant)

Amaj7 = A lydian or E major
diatonic scale in E is A B C# D# E F# G#
red component is E#, red scale is A B C# D# E# F# G# (lydian augmented)

Am7b5 = A locrian or Bb major
diatonic scale in Bb is A Bb C D Eb F G
red component is B, red scale is A B C D Eb F G (locrian natural second)

example of chromatic mode:

A7#9 = A superlocrian or Ab major (mode b2)*
diatonic scale in Ab is Ab Bb C Db Eb F G
red component is A, red scale is Ab Bb C Db Eb F G (altered dominant)

*named different in Modalogy. jeff and i had much (rather spirited and extensive, actually) discussion about this and i think the important point here is not so much what you call it but that there is in fact a mode b2 where the diatonic scale (in this case played against "A") does not contain the root (bass note) of the prevailing tonal environment.

but look what i have gained. in the few short examples (there are many many more) i have played jazz minor (ascending form melodic minor) lydian dominant, lydian augmented, locrian nat 2 and even altered dominant (diminished whole tone) and all i had to do was play a simple chromatic alteration of a major scale that i now call simply: "red." one syllable, a bargain at any price.

add yellow and orange (red + yellow), blue, green (blue + yellow) and purple (red + blue) and eventually, black (red + yellow + blue) and i got everything that all of those syllables gave you (and a whole lot more) by merely expanding the diatonic major in what for me anyway is a logical and intuitive process.

should you know all of those scale names with all those syllables. yup. i do; however, now i got a way to see them all as natural expansions from the simplest diatonic scales. if this is not your cup of tea or otherwise doesn't float your boat: like i said before, i have no quarrel with you. is there anything i am trying to say is justified or otherwise "proven" by this multi-dimensional (and even symmetrical) expansion of diatonic scales? again, nope. it's just imho a real cool way of integrating multiple resources into one scenario.

i'll just let myself back into my cell if you don't mind. chew on this though; i think i've shown enough as to let you know whether the trip is worth your while. by the way, red, yellow, blue could be described just as well as x, y, and z or any tri-colored or tri-directional system of graph: three variables each with two conditions for a total of eight possibilities. arbitrary? you bet it is; i left out anything i deemed "unuseful."

g'day from the doghouse

[DoorMouseForker]

Yagapriya scale system right here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYDjd51smYQ

[dogbite]

pythagorean comma = 531441/524288 or 3^12/2^19 or "3 to the twelfth power divided by 2 to the nineteenth power," which works out to approximately 0.2346 half steps or 23.46 cents. this is the difference between twelve 3:2 ratio perfect fifths and an octave or more specifically, seven octaves and twelve fifths, reduced to a single octave.

one twelfth of the pythagorean comma is 3/(2^19/12) which works out to 1.955 cents, the difference between an equal-tempered fifth and the 3:2 JI fifth...

this one "comma" of 1.955 cents is the only comma necessary to describe pythagorean (3:2) fifths and JI intervals based upon stacks of fifths.

syntonic comma = 81/80 or 3^4/(5x2^4) which works out to approximately 21.5063 cents. the 5:4 JI major third has a comma of 13.6863 cents and the syntonic comma is actually a compound of four 1.955 commas and one of these 13.6863 commas:

4 x 1.955 + 13.6863 = 21.5063 (rounded as approximations)

now a little sarcasm: isn't the above dialog (or monologue if you will) which is mathematically quite correct, the most compelling argument for equal temperament? just play the twelve tones of the chromatic scale and be done with it

is there any practical value to all this? for guitar players and any string instrument really, one can find unusual harmonics at precise locations of the fretboard:

Natural Harmonics for Guitar

other than that, it's a great way to fill up a thread now i have to go back and proof the post to that other thread where i probably put a decimal point in the wrong place at least a couple of times...

bottom line: i fully embrace twelve-tone equal-temperament. i left the math a long time ago when it comes to music; it's all academic at this point!

ps and btw: since R = 2 raised to the power of (F/12) where R is a harmonic ratio such as 3:2 or 1.5 and F is the number of frets (12TET half steps) between the two frequencies represented by the ratio R, F = 12 log R / log 2. you'll need a scientific calculator, better still a programmable one; you can even do it in excel spreadsheet but in any case, you can do the math yourself with that last formula. for example, for R = 1.5, F = 7.01955. for cents instead of half-steps, use F = 1200 log R / log 2 because there are 1) 12 half-steps in an octave or 2) 1200 cents in an octave.

[Ken Valentino]

So after all that detail we realize that the ear may be rounding off in a way. I very much agree with this. That being said I've been working with 11:12 which I realized I had already naturally doing in a positive way, but now I have several double negative ideas with it. Once it's like 125:158 who cares, but one man's trash etc.

[dogbite]

now look at this (JI, equal-tempered or whatever) series of fourths and fifths:

F C G D A E B

memory trick: Five Cats Got Drunk At Eddie's Bar

and its subsets:

F C G D A E B, my favorite pentatonic, A C D E G

and step it up a fifth:

F C G D A E B

or down:

F C G D A E B

and transpose up a whole step for Em7 A7:

G D A E B F# C#

and another fifth for Dma7

D A E B F# C# G#

and see the pentatonic subs for the ii V7:

Em A7
G/Em pentatonic, D/Bm pentatonic, A/F#m pentatonic

Dma7
D/Bm pentatonic, A/F#m pentatonic, E/C#m pentatonic

(bold simply to show the RS* pentatonic)

snarky: for those who accuse me of reinventing the wheel i say you're seeing jesus in your corn flakes. i've done nothing but show you the circle of fifths. nothing new, nothing grotesque, nothing bizarre; basic concepts from hundreds of years ago. i'm talking aboutstructure, not tonality.

hey, i like to make melodic minors out of them by changing

G D A E B F# C#

and

D A E B F# C# G#

into

G D# A E B F# C#

and

D A# E B F# C# G#

as well as

G D A E B F C#

and

D A E B F# C G#

do i do this all the time? nope. once in a while maybe, but the option is always there. i hope you see that RS* is not attempting to define tonality but simply to illuminate structure.

*RS - radial symmetry

and that minor pentatonic from the IV (A B D E G, E F# A B D, B C# E F# A) is proving to be a great "non-specific" jumping off point for modal grooves:

Em A7
G/Em pentatonic, D/Bm pentatonic, A/F#m pentatonic

Dma7
D/Bm pentatonic, A/F#m pentatonic, E/C#m pentatonic

because once established, the pitch collection may be transposed either up or down a fifth without undue dissonance. like a bug on the edge of a clock, all i'm doing is "working the circle," the circle of fifths with triads, pentatonics, diatonics, whatever you can think of and with little effort. perhaps the sound is more appropriate for fusion instead of straight jazz but the option is always there.

[dogbite]

Originally Posted by Ken Valentino

So after all that detail we realize that the ear may be rounding off in a way. I very much agree with this. That being said I've been working with 11:12 which I realized I had already naturally doing in a positive way, but now I have several double negative ideas with it. Once it's like 125:158 who cares, but one man's trash etc.

"So after all that detail we realize that the ear may be rounding off in a way."

absolutely. thanks for getting at what i believe to be the heart of the matter. 12:11? the three-quarter tone between the half-sharped fourth and the fifth - do tell more!

[Ken Valentino]

Thanks Dogbite. Here's more info,

So the positive way on a 11:12 is to point to the higher note, but that being said it doesn't end up as simple as many other ratios. Meaning 12 is not as simple as 4 or 8 in a ratio. In the perspective that you were referring to: 1/4 step above the tritone to the 5, it works very easily. Though the TT would usually resolve to the 5 anyways.

The combinations that started to make me believe that my ear was really perceiving a 12:11 ratio are more negative ones:

A double negative strategy with b6' 5 to 3. Normally if I did b6 5 to 3 the 5 would've been a stronger resolution from being simpler, close and not apart of the b6 3 1 augmented. If I was really perceiving it as a 6 5 3 then still the 5 would have been the simplest way out as long as long as other tendencies agreed. But instead the b6 bent a 1/4 step hurt the 5 enough to make the 3 resolve.

The sound of a 4 in a dom7 context usually sounds more intended with playing the TT (Tritone) before it. Not only does the key benefit from a 1/2 step out of a symmetric but it takes out the competition of the 4, which is really needed on dom7. Well doing a 1/4 step above the tritone and then going to the 4 is still accomplishing this same objective, but the sound of the 4 is smoother and more reinforcing somehow. Usually after TT-4 I'd feel a stronger need to continue on to b3 for example. But with TT' to 4 there's not as much of a need.

Over a minor context 3' b3 1 works great to me. If it had been 4 b3 1 then I'd have to use other tendencies a little to get an obvious 1. And if it was 3 b3 1 then I have a very negative phrase to my key, but in this case it's different. The 1/4 step above 3 to then a b3 and then to 1 points directly to the key as far as what I'm hearing. There are stronger lines but this one definitely has a unique mood, like many double negatives. The ratios I think I'm hearing are 12:11 to 6:5.

[dogbite]

thanks ken,

i ramble:

it is difficult, in my opinion, to say that microtonal playing in the form of slight bends is ultimately indicative of higher harmonic ratios such as 12:11; rather, they may be perceived as something much simpler, such as inflections of more familiar, more basic intervals such as the whole step and minor third. jazz oud spoke of many types of whole steps which he was able to perceive in music with a multi-cultural bent (hehe) but i still am working with just how i may ever be able to apply this in my own playing.

could it be that 12TET usage is more related to mass production of equal tempered instruments than any innate or fundamental acoustic principles of human aural perception? perhaps but, again in my opinion, the dialog needs to continue for at least the reason jazz oud has provided, so that guitarists and pianists in particular may use this understanding to voice harmonies in such a way as to minimize potential clashes with other players and/or singers.

the most fascinating interval to me in this regard is the various manifestations of the perfect and augmented versions of the 4th and/or 11th. 4:3 is the first evidence in the overtone series of the existence of this interval, but the 11:8 (half-sharped fourth) interval is cited by some authors to justify the augmented eleventh (11:4 really) commonly found in jazz harmony. stacked fifths provide yet a different ratio to produce the augmented fourth/eleventh in the form of 729:512 (pythagorean) ratio...

and it should be mentioned that hindemith wrote a fair amount about his inability to justify the existence of the minor triad (see "the craft of musical composition" books 1 & 2 as well as "elementary training for musicians" - schott publications), one of the most familiar and recognizable phenomena to modern musicians...

but wait a minute, aren't all these numbers just going to come across to most players (and many theorists i suspect) as evidence that we should be locked up until we come out ready to simply play some nice music? i love the dialog for what it is, but the sheer simplicity of 12TET and it's mere twelve intervals is (most definitely in my opinion) all one needs to play most music:

P1, P8, unisons and octaves
m2, minor seconds
M2, major seconds
m3, minor thirds and their enharmonic counterparts, augmented seconds
M3, major thirds (and diminished fourths)
P4, perfect fourths, whether you believe them to be consonant or dissonant
A4/d5, the tritones, augmented fourths (and elevenths) and diminished fifths
m6, minor sixths and augmented fifths
M6, major sixths and diminished sevenths
m7, minor sevenths
M7, major sevenths

in modalogy, a pythagorean approach (pure 3:2 fifths) is emphasized as an "explanation" of scales; however, JI thirds (5:4 and 6:5) are defined in one of the sections on chords and harmony. more of my two cents, really (1.955 actually as mentioned in a previous post) but any explanation in the form of pure mathematics is simply not going to prove convincing to some, but necessary to others...

anyhoo, i enjoy the dialog still and look forward to others.

chord for the day:

E
Bb
F
>>>m9 interval
E

as an altered quartal to resolve to Am7/9/11

play well

[Ken Valentino]

Yes I want to be sure that something is really different than what I can get with 12 TET. Like I said earlier I believe the ear rounds off all the time. I had to prove to myself that I was really getting a result that was not found in 12 TET. And that happened for in the examples I gave.

You brought up 11:8 which is simpler, but one of the reasons it's harder to connect than 11:12 is that it's not a close move. A good comparison would be 15:8 which in melodies is much harder to hear than 15:16.

We could say that in these examples the notes being close together is the only reason that they connect. That would mean though that there would be no complex to simple tendency to create dark and bright and I hear a definite difference. The ear doesn't have to choose only one type of connection, its usually the opposite, the more types the better. So 15:16 connects more with close but gains its color from complex to simple. Looking only for simple numbers in a ratio assumes that other tendencies/connections like Close and Repetition are not being perceived.

15 is more divisible than 17 which to me means it's simpler. So 15:16 overall is simpler than 16:17. Both are close. 8 is a simpler number than 12 so 11:8 is simpler than 11:12, but 11:12 is closer. How this applies is if played simultaneously 11:8 would be easier to perceive than 11:12. In fact with 11:4, 11:2, 11:1 they would all keep getting simpler and therefore would work easier in a chord. But in a melody 11:12 would sound more connected from being close.

We could say that any number gets less tense if given an open voicing. This though can be disproved with 2 vs b3. The b3 which is most likely heard as 5:6 will turn into 5:12 and then 5:24 if voiced more open. Nothing really improves from moving the b3 to higher octaves, if anything it's more tense. The 2 however, being most likely perceived as 8:9, gets simpler from being open. 4:9, 2:9 all the way to 1:9. So not all numbers benefit from being voiced open.

So the ratios actually show two different tendencies Complex to Simple and Far to Close. Both these need to be considered when evaluating what the ear may be perceiving.

[Ken Valentino]

One other loose end to tie up with 11:12. We could think that as long as we're close we'd just always rather go higher and the ratio is not really being perceived. This can be disproved by comparing a close 7 to 1 to a close b7'(1/4 step high) to 1. The b7' to 1 can be a resolution, but compared to 7-1 it's no contest. And this makes sense, 11:12 is faced the positive way but 12 is not as simple as the 16 in 15:16.

[dogbite]

excellent. i am most pleased that there are others who have been exploring the microtonal realm. you have given me (and us, collectively, i also hope) much to think about. thanks also for verifying the notation of

'

as a quarter (or at least slightly higher) step.

so i take it that the 24-step quarter tone scale might be notated as:

1 1' b2 b2' 2 2' b3 b3' 3 3' 4 4' b5 b5' 5 5' b6 b6' 6 6' b7 b7' 7 7'

and that

'

may not specifically mean a quarter tone as much as any number of intermediary tones. just checking

y'all have a great day!!!

[Ken Valentino]

Yes that notation has been working pretty well. ' for a 1/4 step or less and " for more than a 1/4 step sharp. So b2'-1 would be 12:11, 2'-1 would be 8:7 and 2"-1 would be 7:6.

Then we could say b2'-1 can resolve to 2'-1 from being simpler, and then 2'-1 can resolve to 2"-1 from now being positive.