Rare Musical Scales

[herodotus]

More often then not as you go down that route of irregular intervals it serves not to inspire but to alienate.

Out of curiosity, which irregular intervals?

And who is alienated?

[vurt]

my scales are so rare, the wwf do regular collections on their behalf!

[Musicologo]

For a long time I've been using "synthetic" or non-diatonic scales in commercial music. I think it's possible if you know how to frame it and build a coherent sound and product around it. Just take a listen and judge by yourself.

https://youtu.be/fArhmmK81rA

Probably not as catchy as your regular pop tune, but I think it works and I like it. I don't know if the average joe is able to follow the melody and chords being played and play along... Probably not that easy, but I wanted to try...

[herodotus]

my scales are so rare, the wwf do regular collections on their behalf!

The world wrestling federation?

Weird.

[vurt]

who is gonna ignore the undertaker when he shakes his tin?

[Gamma-UT]

who is gonna ignore the undertaker when he shakes his tin?

Don’t let this man distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.

[funky lime]

If you want some weird musical scales, look into microtonal music.

[swagfather69]

I'm actually doing a series of videos on weirds scales. After the 28 modes of major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, and harmonic major. There are 45 pentatonic and the most recent which is on the 54 remaining melakarta scales. Here's that last part on melakarta below. Other than the 5 symmetric scales and supertonic scales I don't know of any other scales in the twelve tone system, is there anything else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE--RxlCDzk

[Rameses]

This is very cool.

[ChamMusic]

"Messiaen listed numerous other such modes, but I have never been able to remember them, because they didn't sound right to me."

Messiaen created 7 Modes of Limited Transposition (I studied them and had to compose in a couple of them at University in the distant, dark 1980s)! :0)

He actually called them his: MODES OF LIMITED TRANSPOSITION AND SPECIAL CHORDS...

This is an important point because he never really thought of them as scalic / melodic modes (although he did use them in this way occasionally in very early works). He looked upon them as a harmonic resource:

Messiaen: “People have often referred to my modes of limited transposition as scales.They are not scales, but harmonic colors".

He usually presented his modes chordally, to take advantage of their particular colorations; only by presenting notes of a mode simultaneously could a coloration emerge!

M: “Their function is coloristic. They are not harmonies in the classical sense of the term; they are obviously not tonal harmonies.They are not even classified chords.”

He further described the modes as “colored locations, small colored regions, where the general color remains the same, as long as neither mode nor transposition changes.”

In his writings, descriptions of modal coloration always refer to one or more chords, never to melodies/ scales.

NOTE: 7 such modes created by M, but he only ever used 4 of them - modes 2, 3, 4, and 6.
the truth is that he probably realized that the other modes were sort of subsets / super sets of these ones and compositionally pointless! :0)

[herodotus]

"Messiaen listed numerous other such modes, but I have never been able to remember them, because they didn't sound right to me."

Messiaen created 7 Modes of Limited Transposition (I studied them and had to compose in a couple of them at University in the distant, dark 1980s)! :0)

He actually called them his: MODES OF LIMITED TRANSPOSITION AND SPECIAL CHORDS...

This is an important point because he never really thought of them as scalic / melodic modes (although he did use them in this way occasionally in very early works). He looked upon them as a harmonic resource:

Messiaen: “People have often referred to my modes of limited transposition as scales.They are not scales, but harmonic colors".

He usually presented his modes chordally, to take advantage of their particular colorations; only by presenting notes of a mode simultaneously could a coloration emerge!

M: “Their function is coloristic. They are not harmonies in the classical sense of the term; they are obviously not tonal harmonies.They are not even classified chords.”

He further described the modes as “colored locations, small colored regions, where the general color remains the same, as long as neither mode nor transposition changes.”

In his writings, descriptions of modal coloration always refer to one or more chords, never to melodies/ scales.

NOTE: 7 such modes created by M, but he only ever used 4 of them - modes 2, 3, 4, and 6.
the truth is that he probably realized that the other modes were sort of subsets / super sets of these ones and compositionally pointless! :0)

Yes, Messiaen was very much a maverick.

It is interesting to note that John Rahn, Elliott Antokoletz, and George Perle all discussed the same phenomena from slightly different angles.

I don't think that a consensus has ever been achieved regarding the best method for classifying these methods of tonal organization. Personally, I found Rahn's exposition to be the most intuitive, but that doesn't really mean much.

[jancivil]

More often then not as you go down that route of irregular intervals it serves not to inspire but to alienate.

Out of curiosity, which irregular intervals?

And who is alienated?

What a not-even-half-baked appeal to conformity. What does "irregular intervals" even MEAN.
I was exploring synthetic scales as a teen. I was also very interested in ICM starting around 15.


_____________________

The Hindustani organization of scalar materials ('thaat' which is a scale and also a parent to ragas) assigns 7 syllables to a 7-note basis. The 6 and 5-note scalar objects subtract 1 or 2 of the 7.
So, it's Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni (one syllable abbreviations of Sanskrit words, eg, Rishaba).
Let's say Sa is (a typical) D; the sharpest Ri, E#, is basically same as the second flattest Ga, F there. However the intonation may not be the same. At a certain point fairly recently, 19th c iirc, a basic 10 thaat system became the basis. This is cultural.

The carnatic system is 72 melakartas and there is a method.
All of the melakartas are 7 note scales.
Same syllables basically as Hindustani. Ri, Ga, Dha, and Ni (2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th) have 3 versions. Sa, 1, and Pa, 5, have only 1, inviolate. Ma has 2, natural and sharp (P4 and Aug4).

(all of the 1st Chakra uses very flattest variants of the first 2 of those 4.
#1 does: D Eb Fb G A Bb Cb. #2 has 'Ni 2', here C natural; #3 has Ni 3, C#.
#4 raises Dha and does Dha 2 and Ni 2, here B and C; #5 does Dha 2 and Ni 3, ie., B and C#; #6 does Dha 3 Ni 3, B# and C#. So it's systematic like this.)

That's a pretty good basis and food for thought in my estimation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta ... arta_ragas

[jancivil]

Here's some inspiration and/or alienation by a scale which ain't the usual western. Or the usual country. I'm alienating both kinds of music here.

First one in this (all are hexatonic) is 1 #2 3 #4 5 b7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETsth0s-ZOk

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

...

[Russell Grand]

who is gonna ignore the undertaker when he shakes his tin?

Don’t let this man distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.