Last week I’ve shared a non-boring scale hack that is supposed to turn the scale studies that are often viewed as boring and mechanical into an — quoting Dan Haerle — extremely entertaining pastime. I am using it all the time, and just recently I’ve come up with a new workout that could be viewed as a sequel to the original one. Word of warning: its efficiency in terms of fucking up your brain and your finger muscles has improved exponentially. This is why I called it The Scale Monster.
At some point in my bass training I have been introduced to the concept of chord permutations. Basically, it’s just pure math: you have a 7th chord arpeggio, and there are 24 ways to play these notes in a sequence. Not a big deal, right? Later, you realise that you can then take all inversions of this chord and permutate them. Which will give you 96 sequences. Which you will then transpose to all keys and circle around all the modes and create all the Western music.
Of course, it would be crazy for a human to just mechanically practice this hell (although it does improve your fluency tremendously). Instead, you can just use it as a pool of pre-generated patterns to sex up your routine!
Check it out — this is just a regular F#m7 chord played consequently in all inversions:
Easy, right?
Going on — F#m7 in all permutations starting on 1:
Personally, I just like how it sounds. There is no trace of that worn-out minor arpeggio sound that so many other people are practicing at this very moment all around the world. Yes, it’s a bit robotic — but — we’ll fix that in a sec.
Next — my “aha!” moment: 1st inversion in different permutations:
Note that permutating the inversion does not give you the same results as permutating the original chord, as the root (aka 1) is transposed one octave above. So it’s a completely different set of combinations.
As a next step, I’m going to take one permutation of choice (1-3-5-7 in this case) and play all inversions of my F#m7 using it — ascending, then descending:
And finally, add the right hand that is going to play the F# Dorian scale dissected into groups of 2 notes:
If up until this point you were only mildly challenging the part of your brain responsible for scale fluency, now’s the moment when you finger independence gets fucked up big time! 🤓
Not all of it might sound great — as particular permutations might create dissonant intervals with scale degrees, but that only means that you can spend another two hours trying out other ones figuring out the best combination. And — remember — it was only F# Dorian over F#m7. Sooo… You get the idea 🤙🏻 Harmonise ’till it hurts! Till next time—
Black Hole Piano 