4 ms·

the locrian mode is a bit haunting. these are exactly the textures one might here in a Chopin or Schumann or beyond.

acjohnson55 10y ago
Locrian is super rare, because the tonic itself is unstable. But an arpeggiator like this actually does a decent job of making it sound ok!
- kaoD 10y ago
  I can't help but hear the iii as i, making the progression seem more like "viº || i v ii III | i IV VII" to my ears, i.e. Dorian. Which is a very nice progression by the way :) EDIT: Now that I think of it, it might actually be "ivº || vi iii vii I | vi II V" Lydian, which sounds very natural due to "vi-iii-vii-I" being essentially "I-I-vii-I" (vi and iii can be heard as inversions of I) and "vi-II-V-ivº" being actually "I-II-V" (classic jazz progression, II being the V of V) which then goes back to vi (i.e. to I) via "V-ivº || vi(I)" (5-4-1 being the classic blues progression). This movement by V is a much more common way of progressing through a song. I played it in my guitar extending to diatonic 7th chords and it sounds much better than the Dorian interpretation where the ii-III movement sounds awful for some reason. This ivº-I movement sounds a bit like a plagal cadence[0] which keeps the movement going, which I think works very well with Lydian's uplifting sound to give that never-ending tension-building feel. Resolving to vi instead of I is similar to how a deceptive cadence[1] works which adds to the "suspended" feel. Somehow my ears still latch onto Locrian's iii as the tonic (i.e. Dorian's i). "viº || i v ii III | i IV VII" could be seen as "viº || i v IV i | i IV VII". "i v IV i" makes a lot of sense (again, blues), but I can't quite understand "i IV VII viº". Maybe I'm right in both cases and the first bar is Dorian and the second modulates to the relative Lydian? Or viceversa? It's very ambiguous. Modes are kind of confusing (at least for me) but their ambiguity is part of what makes them awesome. One of my teachers insisted there's no canonical way of analyzing sufficiently-complex progressions. In any case I am unable to hear it as Locrian. (Sorry if I said something stupid. I've never been formally trained in music theory. Can an actual musician step in? :P The more music theory I learn, the more ambiguities I see in music analysis...) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Plagal_cadence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Plagal_cadence [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Interrupted_.28deceptive.29_cadence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Interrupted_.2...
  - kaoD 10y ago
    Too late to edit but, further down the rabbit hole: improvising over my Lydian recording with Lydian melody didn't work at all. My ear wanted to hear the mode a major 3rd up (Aeolian) or a minor 3rd down which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Dorian. Damn you, music!
  - kaoD 10y ago
    For anyone interested, I asked what's going on in Reddit's /r/MusicTheory. https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5kwdbq/analyzing_this_progression_which_mode_is_it_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5kwdbq/analyzi...
  - acjohnson55 10y ago
    You really went to town on that! After studying a basic amount of music theory, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as canonical analysis. Analysis, in most theories, is a way of rationalizing what's become common practice in a given style. One thing I learned when trying to research the origins of our music system is that our chord progressions appear to be underpinned by rules for multi-voice counterpoint. But in pop music, voicing isn't particularly important, it's just background for the bass and melody lines. So pure chord progressions tend to harken back to harmonic motion that's familiar from the more formal genres. A book I often recommend called A Geometry of Music [1] goes way down the rabbit hole, if you want to obsess over this to the extent that I did. So, modal chord progressions (especially Locrian) really only tend make sense to the extent that they analogize major and minor chord progressions, from a functional tonality perspective. I don't think this is precise, but the way I think of it is that you sell the listener on alterations of major or minor scales, and they buy it after a few repetitions, and other signals of what the cadences are :) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-Practice/dp/0195336674 https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-...

Locrian is super rare, because the tonic itself is unstable. But an arpeggiator like this actually does a decent job of making it sound ok!

kaoD 10y ago
I can't help but hear the iii as i, making the progression seem more like "viº || i v ii III | i IV VII" to my ears, i.e. Dorian. Which is a very nice progression by the way :) EDIT: Now that I think of it, it might actually be "ivº || vi iii vii I | vi II V" Lydian, which sounds very natural due to "vi-iii-vii-I" being essentially "I-I-vii-I" (vi and iii can be heard as inversions of I) and "vi-II-V-ivº" being actually "I-II-V" (classic jazz progression, II being the V of V) which then goes back to vi (i.e. to I) via "V-ivº || vi(I)" (5-4-1 being the classic blues progression). This movement by V is a much more common way of progressing through a song. I played it in my guitar extending to diatonic 7th chords and it sounds much better than the Dorian interpretation where the ii-III movement sounds awful for some reason. This ivº-I movement sounds a bit like a plagal cadence[0] which keeps the movement going, which I think works very well with Lydian's uplifting sound to give that never-ending tension-building feel. Resolving to vi instead of I is similar to how a deceptive cadence[1] works which adds to the "suspended" feel. Somehow my ears still latch onto Locrian's iii as the tonic (i.e. Dorian's i). "viº || i v ii III | i IV VII" could be seen as "viº || i v IV i | i IV VII". "i v IV i" makes a lot of sense (again, blues), but I can't quite understand "i IV VII viº". Maybe I'm right in both cases and the first bar is Dorian and the second modulates to the relative Lydian? Or viceversa? It's very ambiguous. Modes are kind of confusing (at least for me) but their ambiguity is part of what makes them awesome. One of my teachers insisted there's no canonical way of analyzing sufficiently-complex progressions. In any case I am unable to hear it as Locrian. (Sorry if I said something stupid. I've never been formally trained in music theory. Can an actual musician step in? :P The more music theory I learn, the more ambiguities I see in music analysis...) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Plagal_cadence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Plagal_cadence [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Interrupted_.28deceptive.29_cadence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)#Interrupted_.2...
- kaoD 10y ago
  Too late to edit but, further down the rabbit hole: improvising over my Lydian recording with Lydian melody didn't work at all. My ear wanted to hear the mode a major 3rd up (Aeolian) or a minor 3rd down which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Dorian. Damn you, music!
- kaoD 10y ago
  For anyone interested, I asked what's going on in Reddit's /r/MusicTheory. https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5kwdbq/analyzing_this_progression_which_mode_is_it_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5kwdbq/analyzi...
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  You really went to town on that! After studying a basic amount of music theory, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as canonical analysis. Analysis, in most theories, is a way of rationalizing what's become common practice in a given style. One thing I learned when trying to research the origins of our music system is that our chord progressions appear to be underpinned by rules for multi-voice counterpoint. But in pop music, voicing isn't particularly important, it's just background for the bass and melody lines. So pure chord progressions tend to harken back to harmonic motion that's familiar from the more formal genres. A book I often recommend called A Geometry of Music [1] goes way down the rabbit hole, if you want to obsess over this to the extent that I did. So, modal chord progressions (especially Locrian) really only tend make sense to the extent that they analogize major and minor chord progressions, from a functional tonality perspective. I don't think this is precise, but the way I think of it is that you sell the listener on alterations of major or minor scales, and they buy it after a few repetitions, and other signals of what the cadences are :) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-Practice/dp/0195336674 https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-...