Tag: exotic scales

Piano day (2h 45m)

  • Improv / scales study
    • Locrian 2-octave scales in all keys with two hands
    • Improvisation: Locrian scale over m7b5 chords, all keys around the cycle (to the bass line and rhodes)
    • 2-octave Lydian pentatonic in all keys (major shells in LH)
    • 2-octave minor pentatonic in all keys (minor shells in LH)
    • 2-octave “Locrian pentatonic” (1-b2-b3-b5-b6) + m7b5 shells in LH
    • Hirajoshi scale (checked out in C)
  • Left hand
    • Intervallic patterns
      • 1-5-6 in major & minor (cycling)
      • Broken tenths (1-5-10 + 1-5-6 8va) in major & minor (cycling)
      • Broken chords (1-5 + 1-3-5 8va) in major & minor (cycling)
  • Interpreting pop tunes (wow!)
    • Muse — New Born
    • Damon Albarn — Hostiles (looked up chords on UltimateGuitar and adapted to piano using intervallic patterns in LH and shells in RH)

Observations

Moving towards 3-hour sessions on weekend. Taking breaks after each hour is essential! Also, 3 hours really feel awesome in terms of stuff you can cram into this time without rushing and messing up. Musical observations: I finally go to Locrian mode! I have been avoiding it for such a long time. Professors in music school only mentioned it briefly saying it is not that useful, we weren’t asked to compose in it, so I totally ignored it. Until lately. And man it’s beautiful!!! Don’t believe anyone who tells you that Locrian is “ugly” or “scary”. It’s sad, tragic, dramatic, incredibly touching, anything but ugly. Also I discovered a whole family of modal pentatonic scales that can be derived from normal heptatoic modal scales by applying major or minor pentatonic patterns to them. For example, you can take 1-3-4-5-7 and apply it to Lydian mode, which will give you 1-3-#4-5-7, which is BEAUTIFUL! Fun fact: most people on the internets tend to use major pentatonic pattern to derive modal pentatonics (1-2-3-5-6), but it’s definitely worth looking at minor as well.

Another cool practice routine I came up with is adapting pop songs to piano using patterns that I already learn (or am learning). That is, taking chords and breaking them down to shell voicings and intervallic patterns for the left hand. Makes any song sound immediately like a “piano version”.

Piano day (2h)

  • Modal studies
    • Modes of Melodic minor (all modes in C, without click, just getting familiar)
    • Harmonisation
      • Melodic minor (1st mode)
      • Dorian b2 (2nd mode)
    • Mixing / borrowing
      • Mixing Dorian with Dorian b2 (in the parent key of C)
        • i7 — IV7 / i7 — IV7 — bIImaj7+5
  • Imporvisation
    • Minor Bebop scale over Dorian progression with b2 (IVmaj7 — i7)
    • Exotic scale study
      • Lydian pentatonic (in C)
      • Mela Vagadhisvari (Minor Bebop without passing tone, in fact — it’s just the name that makes it sound fancy 😆)

Observations

Next time, I need to equally geek out on bass 🤓

Piano day (2h)

  • Jazz voicings
    • Dominant to major (2 versions)
    • Dominant to minor (2 versions)
    • II — V — I — IV’s in all major and parallel minor keys
  • Comping
    • All By Myself (Irving Berlin)
      • Voice leading / minimum movement
      • Some improv in passing chord scales (when I was able to find it quick enough)
  • Improvisation
    • Cool stuff: nine tone scales in C & F (WOW that was huge)
    • Minor blues scale in C through Ab (comping with minor and dominant shell voicings in LH)
    • Combining nine tone and C + F minor blues over I — IV progression. Crazy

Observations

Synthetic scales are absolutely awesome. They may sound harsh at first (especially if you play them over a wrong chord type, e. g. nine tone over minor, whereas it apparently works better over augmented), but they are such a great material that helps you enrich your vocabulary and break out of the stuff you’ve been using for ages! Just like Todd Johnson says in his masterclasses, scales and patterns are the “templates of digesting the new harmonies”. Exactly that.  The more ways to alter your scales you’re comfortable with, the less time you spend lost in the dark when improvising.