Saturday, March 6th

I wanna share a pretty awesome doom metal album I found. Here it is - I even bought it.

06.03.2021

Ah, so much to write, so late at night. Actually interesting things - such as my discovery of the Super Locrian Scale, and me playing with different modes of the harmonic minor scale - which I confused for the melodic minor.

The day started out quite normally - I'm still riding out my "even energy" normal sleep schedule.

Did some things, done some stuff, rice for breakfast, some tea. Had some stuff canceled, so I was happy about it.

As I mentioned before, I ran out of normal coffee, so I drank 3 cups - 6 teaspoons - of instant coffee. Over a cuple hours, or something like that. That's when I was scouring the internet for information about aforementioned scales. And I asked a question about it on Quora - propbably quite a silly one -

https://qr.ae/pNdLNt

Is Super Locrian scale basically "mixolydian harmonic"?

So far, I got two incredibly informative answers!

Phil Cobb

Answered 9h ago

It is not.

The super locrian, or altered dominant, or altered scale is the seventh mode of the melodic minor scale. It’s also been called the diminished whole tone scale, and to some try-hards, the ionian #1 scale. But trust me, you don’t want anyone hearing “ionian #1 scale” come out your mouth.

The notes of the super locrian scale are the root, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, and b7. Its solfège is Do, Ra, Ma, Fe, Se, Le, and Te. The C altered dominant scale is C, Db, Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, and Bb. The Ab altered dominant scale is Ab, Bbb, Cb, Dbb, Ebb, Fb, and Gb.

You were close by denoting the scale mixolydian because of the b7, but it has no major 3rd. The word “dominant” is commonly used for a scale with a b7.

You were also close to denote it harmonic because of the b6, but there’s no major 7th. The harmonic connotation needs an interval of three semitones between those two notes of the scale. The double harmonic major scale, or byzantine scale, has a b2 and a b6, with three semitone intervals between both the 2nd and 3rd, and the 6th and 7th scale degrees.

The name of a scale gives a hint to its sonic impression. But it fails to reveal its intervallic nature.

Happy practice!

Christopher Smith

, musician and teacher of music

Answered 8h ago

No.

That scale you are trying to describe actually exists, called the 5th mode of harmonic minor, or Phrygian dominant. But its notes are different from the Superlocrian (also called the altered scale, the diminished/whole-tone scale, and a few other names).

If you took a Phrygian dominant scale and flattened the 3rd, 4th, and 5th notes, you would have the Superlocrian scale. This comparison is only valid on an instrument using equal temperament, like a piano or guitar, as the “flattened 4th” is really the 3rd, and in the Superlocrian scale should be spelled that way.

Here are the two scales spelled on a G7 for comparison.

Phrygian dominant:
G Ab B C D Eb F G

Superlocrian
G Ab Bb B Db Eb F G

Notice that even though the Superlocrian may use all the same pitches as Ab melodic minor, you absolutely should NOT spell the B as a Cb, because it is acting as the 3rd of G7. This means you get TWO notes using B, and none using C, so it acts like a synthetic scale. (Non-synthetic scales use one of each note name).

Joel Rivard

, Guitar Player

Answered Mon

Super Locrian is not Alt Dom. It’s Locrian natural 2. 6th mode of Melodic Minor.

So the 6 chord in G MM is an Emin7b5. So here if you play the parent scale Gmm over the Emin7b5 you get super locrian.

It’s common to think of a minor chord 3 frets up when playing a min7b5.

So Emin7b5 - play Gm7. In this case:

Emin7b5 - play Gmelodic minor or Gmin/maj7. It gives you E locrian with a natural 2 - F#.

But you don’t ned to practice locrian and play F# you just play G mm or G min/maj7/9 lines. Focus on the G minor 7 with maj7 added type classical sounding lines and play then over the Emin7b5.

This is how Bill Evans, Keith Jarratt and other use it. So if they come to an Emin7b5 the line they play will look like a Gmin/maj7 line.

It’s a great sound.

The next mode up in MM is alt dom. That is over the F#alt chord. It’s actually a F#min7b5 chord but that’s another story. The 4th structures in MM does give an F#7#9 chord.

----

Now I'm standing here with my guitar, figuring stuff out. But, of course, other intense things happened during the day. Such as my workout -

Deadlift - 80% - 4 of 4 - but I limited myself more.

Warmup

200*1

220*4

222,8*4

225,3*4 - I made a massive mistake. Suddendly, Idecided to change up my exercize on the fly and turn it into "paused" deadlifts - that proved to be a massive mistake, as I tweaked the right side of my lumbar region, just like in the old days, before I started to stand in front of the computer. Oh, silly me! Live and lear, and suffer. Suffer from poor memory and lack of inhibition, ha ha.

Bench

70*15

90*15

110*15

120*14 nice, pretty ugly, lovely pump. I think that's a PR question mark////?? ha ha! 😁

Also I drummed a lot - recorded three more parts for my "greasy_jam". Then I edited them in Cakewalks and had some chicked broth with freshly seared garlic croutons and pieces of old cheese. Then my stomach started hurting intensely, so I went around the house, eating meds, such as activated charcoal and two peptobysmol or something pills. Spent some time on the bed, clutching my stomach in my hands, watching some videos about unique instruments from The Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment. So inspiring. I really want a lute, but they're so overpriced. I could get something like a 4 striong domra, or a bouzouki - that'd be lovely too.

Later, after midnight, I composed a bit more, and recorded bass and guitar parts for one of the parts I recorded today. This is gonna be headbanger song, i hope, so it's lyrical themes should revolve around metal itself. However, it does have a rather grim bluesy sound, because of the tritone sextatonic scale.

I keep talking about it, but I never let you listen to it. Here -

Keep in mind, it's not a song, it's what I'm working on.

Nice pic of a crab's face