This video is sponsored by Cheddar.
hey, welcome to 12tone! today I'm facing one of my greatest fears: what happens when I
run out of scales to talk about?
I mean, there's only so many ways to arrange 12 notes, and only a fraction of them have
ever been used for anything particularly noteworthy, so eventually that well's gonna run dry.
what do I do then?
I mean, I could just stop talking about scales, but that's no fun so instead I'm embracing
one of YouTube's oldest formats: the challenge video.
I'm daring myself to analyze a completely random scale, just to see if I can do it.
let's go!
ok so first things first, we need a scale, and for this I'm turning to one of my favorite
websites, A Study Of Scales, maintained by composer and theorist Ian Ring. it's a sorted
list of every possible combination of the 12 standard notes of a piano, and each one
has its own page with lots of great information about the properties of that scale.
I use it all the time for all sorts of reasons, but right now the most important thing is
that it's fairly meticulous about including names for the scales that have them, which
means it's a good way to check for ones that don't.
so what I'm gonna do is generate random 7-note scales until I find one without a name and…
(bang) yikes.
ok, let's do this.
the first thing that catches my eye here is that the notes are really clustered towards
the bottom.
like, if we go from the root to the 5th note, that interval is actually a perfect 4th. we've
got 5 notes crammed into to bottom half of the scale, leaving just two for the top.
it's like the scale starts out slowly, moving mostly by half-steps, then suddenly realizes
it's running out of notes and just sprints the rest of the way up.
but that's just the general shape: the next thing I want to look at are the melodic features.
that is, when we're writing melodies in this scale, which parts are going to demand the
most attention? and the first thing that stands out to me is this leap from the 5th note to
the 6th. the two are right next to each other in the scale, but they're also a minor third
apart.
it's a built-in jump that any melodies you write will have to contend with. of course,
it's not the only scale that does this: probably the most well-known example is harmonic minor
(bang) which has a similar leap between its 6th and 7th notes.
this jump makes the scale a bit harder to work with, but it also adds some extra character
and a more unique sound.
the other important feature, I think, is at the beginning of the scale, where we start
off with two consecutive half-steps.
(bang) this is pretty rare: the best example I can think of is the Blues Scale (bang) where
there's an extra passing note inserted in between the 4th and 5th. these sorts of consecutive
half-steps kinda break a lot of our models for how scales work, and this one's no exception:
it almost feels like our scale has two different 2nds, a flat one and a natural one.
moving up and down through that section feels very restrained, which creates a great contrast
with that forced leap higher up in the scale.
but enough about melodies, let's move on to my one true love: chords.
now, the normal way to harmonize a scale is to stack alternating sets of notes, like the
root, 3rd, and 5th, or 2nd, 4th, and 6th, and if we do that here: (bang) it's a mess.
it's a complete, utter mess.
we've got a bII minor here, which is nice, and if we look closely we can pick out a III
augmented and a bVII diminished for whatever that's worth, but most of these aren't really
chords at all.
I mean, technically they are, but they have no recognizable quality.
and that's fine: walking up and down the scale like this creates an interesting dream-like
effect as the various dissonant note bundles slide into each other without any real resolution,
but it'd be hard to create a strong, coherent progression out of it.
as we mentioned earlier, though, this scale doesn't really work like a normal scale, because
it has both a flat 2nd and a natural one.
if we adjust our chords to compensate for that we get this (bang) which…
honestly I think sounds worse as a walk-up, but it gives us some real chord qualities
to work with if we want to create a sense of harmonic motion.
we can also see some flexibility: the bVII chord, for instance, can be major or minor,
depending on which of the 2nds we decide to use with it, and our bII chord, which was
minor in the last version, has become major.
there's some interesting options developing here.
it's still not great, though, because this scale has another issue: it's only got 3 perfect
5ths: this one, this one, and this one.
most of our more stable chord qualities need that perfect 5th to hold them together, which
is why the major scale has a whopping 6 of them, but here we've got just half that, which
means we can't build stable triads from most of the notes in the scale, including the root.
this seems like a big problem, and it is, but we can solve it with some help from one
of chord theory's most overlooked tools: the dyad. this is like a triad, except instead
of using three notes we only use two, so we can create harmony without needing a 5th at
all. for instance, if I play C# and F together (bang) you get the feeling of a major chord,
even though the scale has no G# to complete it.
and while stable triads are hard to find, stable dyads are pretty simple: we just need
to grab any two notes that are some kind of third apart and let the listener's ear fill
in the perfect 5th that we don't actually have access to.
this is especially useful in creating a sense of resolution on the I chord: normally the
best we could make is I augmented, but a I major dyad feels much more restful.
still, it's probably best used for more impressionistic, non-directional stuff.
there's one other potential use for the scale, though, because it has two very important
notes: a major 3rd and a minor 7th. these, along with the root, form the shell of a dominant
7th chord, which means this can be used as what's called a dominant scale.
this is a kind of chord scale, which is a scale that you play over a specific chord
in a progression, and since dominant 7ths are the primary drivers of tension in traditional
Western music, the scales we use over them are often the most interesting.
in fact, this scale resembles a common dominant scale called altered (bang) but with a couple
notes lowered even further.
honestly, this is probably the best use for this scale: next time you're soloing and the
band hits a dominant 7th, maybe try playing this for a bit and see what happens.
anyway, that's my observations on this random, nameless scale, but at this point I feel like
it'd be weird for it to remain nameless.
after all, we name scales once someone does something with them, and I think this video
counts as something, so I feel like I should give this thing a proper name.
I could name it after myself, but I think calling it the 12tone Scale is probably more
confusing than it's worth, so instead I'll call it the Elephant Scale, after my favorite
cartoon animals.
before we finish, though, I'm sure some of you are wondering what it actually sounds
like in a piece of music.
normally I don't bother including compositions because you can just look up what other artists
have done with it, but since as far as I know no one has ever written anything with this
scale before, here's a short four-bar piece I wrote to test out what it could do: (bang)
a lot of the harmony is those dyads I was talking about, and I made sure to include
the important melodic features I mentioned so you could hear them in action.
I think at this point in the challenge video format, I'm supposed to tag other people to
try it too, but instead of that, I'll turn it over to y'all: write some music with the
Elephant Scale, and if you come up with something you like, post it in the comments or send
it to me through email or twitter.
I can't wait to see what you come up with.
but you know who I am gonna tag? this video's sponsor, Cheddar.
Cheddar is a new YouTube channel about technology, media, and news without all the boring bits.
they recently made an awesome video about the race to Mars that I'd really recommend:
there's a link in the description.
they've got lots of other great videos, too, covering topics like WrestleMania, the Bermuda
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plus, as a bonus, they've been sponsoring lots of other great educators too, which really
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so thanks, Cheddar!
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