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hey, welcome to 12tone! as a music theorist, one of my favorite theory games is a thing
I like to call the Random Scale Challenge, where I take a completely random scale that,
as far as I know, no one's ever actually used, and see what sorts of music you could make
with it if you did.
I've done it a couple times already on the channel, link to that playlist in the description,
and today I thought it'd be fun to revisit with a brand new scale.
so which one are we looking at today?
(bang) sweet.
let's go.
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock)
before we get started, a brief note on the rules.
in the past, what I've done is generate a random set of 5 to 9 notes and then check
it on one of my favorite websites, Ian Ring's A Study Of Scales, to see if it has a name
there.
Ring's list is pretty thorough, so if he hasn't named it then I'll assume it's not in use.
I'm still basically doing that, but there's a slight problem: since the last time I made
one of these videos, Ring updated his website.
It's a gorgeous rework, with a whole bunch of new information and some awesome graphics:
if you like scale theory I can't recommend it enough.
he even included the names I made up for the previous scales in this series! but it does
complicate our mission because one of the things he added was the Zeitler names.
ok, quick bonus lesson: in 2005, a theorist named William Zeitler decided he was gonna
name all the scales.
like, all of them.
he just published a list with a unique name for every possible scale in standard Western
tuning.
why?
well, the way he explains it, he felt like we weren't being adventurous enough in our
musical choices, and since humans have a tendency to view things as more "real" if we can call
them something, Zeitler felt that naming all the scales would encourage people to write
with more of them.
and I can respect that: it's a pretty similar goal to the one I have with this series.
still, this means that most collections of notes, or at least most of the ones in standard
Western tuning, already have Zeitler names, but those names don't really indicate any
actual use, so while I support what Zeitler was trying to do, for the purposes of this
project, I'm gonna be ignoring his names.
or at least I'm not gonna let them stop me, but honestly, they could be helpful.
like, let's take a look at our scale: (bang) Zeitler calls this Phragian, which sounds
a lot like the name of a fairly well-known scale called Phrygian.
(bang) so is there a connection or is this just a weird phonetic coincidence?
well, no, there's definitely something going on here, and to see what we have to talk about
tetrachords.
tetrachord analysis is basically just the process of splitting the scale in two, treating
the top half and the bottom half as, like, two mini-scales that combine to form the whole
thing.
if we apply this to our new scale, we see the top half is 5, b6, b7, and the octave,
which is the same as the top half of Phrygian. in fact, this shape is called the phrygian
tetrachord, because both the upper and lower tetrachords of phrygian follow this pattern.
now, I have no idea how Zeitler went about naming his scales so I don't know if he noticed
this tetrachord or if he just got lucky, but either way, it's interesting to see.
the lower tetrachord, though, is a bit more complicated.
once again, we've got both a minor second and a major second.
I swear, this happens every time I do one of these videos.
I don't know why.
anyway, opening the scale with two consecutive half-steps creates a sort of artificially
slow start if your melody walks through both of them, and you can also just play one or
the other depending on the mood you want to create at the moment.
you can even switch back and forth between them (bang) letting you change the emotional
color mid-phrase.
this tight grouping is balanced out further up by the lack of 4th: we go straight from
the major 3rd up to the perfect 5th. the perfect 4th is an important driver of tension in traditional
harmony, so missing it means we're gonna have to find our instability elsewhere.
which brings me to the harmony.
the first thing I notice here is that we've got a major I chord and a minor V chord, which
is always a pretty fun vamp. the major I brings a sense of brightness and calm, and the minor
V lacks the directionality of its major cousin, so you get this kinda cheery, kinda melancholy
pad that doesn't feel like it needs to go much of anywhere but still seems like it's
moving.
beyond those, though, chords get pretty hard to find.
the only other consonant triad is the bII minor, which gives us access to a technique
called a slide, where you go back and forth between a major triad and a minor triad that
share the same 3rd. it's a pretty jarring sound, because we're not really used to different
chords in the same scale sharing a degree like that, but if you're looking to grab your
listener's attention the slide is a pretty good way to do it.
from there, we have to expand our search to more exotic chords, and this scale has two
of my favorites: there's an augmented triad built on the root, and a diminished 7th built
on the 5th. or, I say they're built on those notes, but really, both of these chords are
fully symmetrical, which means they're the same interval from bottom to top, so really
any of their notes could just as easily be the root. if the scale has E augmented, it
also has G# augmented and C augmented, because all three of those are built the exact same
way, and in a similar fashion the scale actually has four different diminished 7ths, it's just
they all use the same notes too.
interestingly, these two symmetrical chords intersect: both of them contain the major
3rd, so we can build either one off that note, and we can even switch back and forth between
them there if we want to.
(bang) this lets us juxtapose two very different kinds of dissonance: the augmented triad is
more static, while the diminished 7th wants to collapse.
but let's talk functions.
I think the augmented triad is gonna be a pretty good replacement for our missing 4th
degree: the point of the IV chord is to add instability without really pointing anywhere,
which is exactly what augmented triads do.
it also contains the root of the key, which helps contribute to that lack of directionality:
we're already home, we're just not actually stable.
normally, in the IV chord, the 4th degree hangs over the implied 3rd of the key, and
we get a similar effect in our augmented triad with the b6 hanging above the implied 5. it's
obviously not gonna be exactly the same, but if we're trying to create that sort of motion,
I think this is the way to do it.
the diminished 7th, on the other hand, is probably best used for setting up the V chord
through what's called a common tone resolution.
basically, if we build it off the 5th, we get B diminished 7, and we can sort of resolve
that to B minor by keeping the B and D the same and then collapsing the F and G# together
to form an F#. you can also set up the bII chord the same way, and you can even use the
diminished 7th as a way to transfer between your two minor chords: you hit V minor, do
a reverse common-tone resolution into the diminished 7th, then resolve out of it into
bII. this is why I love symmetrical chords: being more than one chord at the same time
opens up lots of really cool transformations.
but ok, I've been putting it off long enough, let's address the elephant in the room: this
scale has a major 3rd and a minor 7th, which makes it what's called a dominant scale.
this just means you can build a dominant 7th chord off the root.
dominant chords tend to be the most dissonant part of a harmony, so when you're soloing,
they're a great place to experiment with clever new ideas, making dominant scales pretty exciting
for improvisers.
that said, I don't want to dwell on this point for too long because, somehow, this is the
3rd time one of these videos has given me a dominant scale.
I don't know how that keeps happening.
only about a quarter of all 7-note scales are dominant, but every 7-note scale I've
found has been.
I don't think it's a flaw in my methodology, especially since I've changed how I generate
the scales a couple times now.
I think I'm just unlucky. or lucky?
I don't know.
anyway, don't get me wrong, dominant scales are great and finding new ones is always fun,
it's just I think I might be cursed.
anyway, that's my observations on the scale, but we've still got a couple steps left.
first off, we've got to name it.
I mean, sure, we could stick with Zeitler's name, but again, that's basically just a random
collection of syllables and it doesn't really indicate the scale's been used, so I think
we can do better.
my current tradition is to name these new scales after my friends, so I'm gonna call
this one the Astrocyte Scale, after Alie Astrocyte from the YouTube channel NeuroTransmissions,
where she talks all about neuroscience and the study of the human brain.
there's a link to her channel in the description, and I can't recommend it enough.
plus she just finished her PhD, so I think she deserves her own scale.
and now that we have a name, all that's left is to write some music with it.
the thing that most inspired me was, ironically, the lack of good harmonic options: we've only
got a few chords and they're kind of awkwardly spaced, so I wanted to use them sparingly
and let the melody tie them together.
I'm always a sucker for trills, so I started working from that, adding in chords where
I could in order to compliment it, and wound up with this: (bang) but as always, this isn't
just about me: you can write music with the Astrocyte Scale too! just like last time,
you can send them to me on twitter @12tonevideos and I'll be keeping a master thread of all
the compositions I get, so even if you don't feel like writing something yourself, you
can still check out what other people have done.
trust me, every time I do this I get some amazing stuff back, and I'm sure this time
will be no different.
but if you want to send me a tweet you'll have to log into twitter first, which means
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