Slonimsky Curiosities

[Mick-7]

I'm posting this here for the sake of thread continuity - I posted it in another thread.

[Mick-7]

Here are all the worthy pentatonic scales from Slonimsky's book (pages 160-168 in the book). I've omitted scales that are duplicates - modes of the same scale (about half of them are) - and a few ordinary major pentatonic scales. If you think there are any good scales
I missed, let me know and I'll add them.

The only scales that Slonimsky named are the last two, the Javanese and Japanese scales, I've named all the rest. They all have multiple harmonic applications. These scales can be fingered in various ways, I just chose one. I've attached pdf's of the scale images below.

[wolflen]

[QUOTE=Mick-7;1401782]Some diminished patterns... patterns 127-134 on page 22 are all diminished, except for pattern #132 which is whole tone, and just about all the patterns on pages 71 & 72 are diminished (patterns 558-561 below are from page 72)./QUOTE]

Ahhh...nice twisty lines..love em..thanks

[Mick-7]

An interesting scale from the book, Slonimsky attributes it to Verdi.

F enigmatic scale, over F7 it would provide the b5th(#11th), #5th(b13th), b9th, b7th & ^7th, basically diatonic over F#m/B7.

[Mick-7]

A translation of scales to chords..... I've attached a pdf of this (corrected on 4/27/25).

[Bob_Ross]

Slonimsky attributes it to Verdi...F enigmatic scale

Huh... Makes me want to hear the Verdi piece. That "enigmatic" scale's construction looks like someone hastily and by eye tried to cobble together a pitch scheme similar to the one that I slaved meticulously over when composing my graduate thesis at the Conservatory: an ordered collection whose successive intervals move systematically from widely-spaced to narrowly spaced (and vice-versa).

[Mick-7]

Huh... Makes me want to hear the Verdi piece.

Slonimsky didn't name the Verdi piece in which he used the scale.

He usually does name the piece from which he took a pattern, e.g., this one from Ravel on page 73:

[Christian Miller]

It’s this one

The scale is sung by one voice at a time as a cantus firmus and the harmonies in the other voices are not drawn from the scale, but instead use the conventions of late romantic harmonic practice (at least to my ears.)

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[Mick-7]

It’s this one .... The scale is used as a sort of ground bass while the upper voices improvise freely against it

That's lovely.... scala benedictum.

[Christian Miller]

That's lovely.... scala benedictum.

It’s a gorgeous piece isn’t it?

Verdis late music is sophisticated as anything. Falstaff is full of amazing counterpoint.


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[Mick-7]

A question for you music nerds: To make hexatonic (6 note) scales from regular 7 notes scales, would you omit the notes that I have (below), or different notes? If so, why?

I don't think it's kosher to remove the scale root from a scale, e.g., my melodic minor hexatonic scale, some may object to that.

[Mick-7]

What I like about using the two triads below for the melodic minor scale is that it allows you to take advantage of the symmetrical nature of the augmented triad, which repeats every 5 frets, and combine it with an adjacent minor triad to form lines. It's easy to see how they lay out on the fingerboard. That's my goal with all the hexatonic scales.

Melodic Minor hexatonic example:

[wolflen]

What I like about using the two triads below for the melodic minor scale is that it allows you to take advantage of the symmetrical nature of the augmented triad, which repeats every 5 frets, and combine it with an adjacent minor triad to form lines. It's easy to see how they lay out on the fingerboard. That's my goal with all the hexatonic scales.

Good stuff Mick..

In my experiments with symmetric harmony..the chords found in the augmented scales are springboards into altered flavors
of many other chords or partials of a harmonic sequence that they are part of..Gmi/C9..G triad..Bb13 (no root) Eb7#9 B7-no 5th B7/A
G13b5/F..C13/Gb .. and using triad pairs Gtriad Bmi Ebtriad Btriad in some wide voices mix with some aug WT and MM scale frags

Yeah..I know Slonimsky created a monster

[Mick-7]

I don't know if these Indian scales are in Slonimsky's book, don't think so. They are very versatile and you can create some interesting lines with them, e.g., on tunes that vamp on one or two chords. As you can see, they were quite fond of the flat 2nd scale tone. I have noted the potential harmonic applications for them - there are many.

There are other Indian scales besides these that correspond to common western scales, e.g., the phrygian scale (b2nd again!), so I won't illustrate them.

[Mick-7]

I think I may have opened Pandora's music box... or maybe Slonimskys, they look alike.

[Mick-7]

Regarding whole tone patterns or phrases, it occurred to me that twelve tone patterns would be a good source for these, because a twelve tone row is two whole tone scales 1/2 step apart. In Slonimskys book, there's a section on twelve tone patterns starting on page 173, but there are 12-tone patterns throughout the book.

Here are few examples of modified 12 tone rows I dreamed up.




Here is one from Joe Diorio:

[Mick-7]

The attached is from someone's doctoral thesis re: Nicolas Slonimsky's influence on John Coltrane's musical vocabulary.

[James W]

The attached is from someone's doctoral thesis re: Nicolas Slonimsky's influence on John Coltrane's musical vocabulary.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention... Will read when I have access to my laptop again.

[rpjazzguitar]

A question for you music nerds: To make hexatonic (6 note) scales from regular 7 notes scales, would you omit the notes that I have (below), or different notes? If so, why?

I don't think it's kosher to remove the scale root from a scale, e.g., my melodic minor hexatonic scale, some may object to that.

The way I learned it from Jazz Theory by Mark Levine is that there is no avoid note in melodic minor. I've experimented with that and it works, at least to my ear. So, I don't see an advantage to dropping a note for melodic minor.

With regard to major scale, natural minor and their modes, there's what Levine calls an avoid note. I think it's a reasonable label, others vehemently disagree. I've posted before my thought that it makes more sense to think in hexatonics than 7 note scales where there is a note you want to avoid, or, as Levine also wrote, "handle with care".

So, it makes sense to me to think about, say, for example, C D E G A B. Cmaj69 (you could call it Cmaj13, but that could be considered to include the F). And, instead of G mixo, leave out the C.

Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't use the note. It can sound great. But to my way of thinking it's not quite as consonant as the rest. Play your line, record it and figure out if it's a bug or a feature.

Comping is maybe more interesting. I use stacks of fourths against both tonic and dominant, at times. I think it sounds great and gets you away from the iim V7 Imaj sound we're so accustomed to.

As far as other scales go, I haven't thought about it enough to have an opinion. Generally speaking, if the scale contains a note that makes the sonority (if I'm using that word correctly) ambiguous then it may make sense to omit it from the basic scale and add it back in when you want that coloration.

This is probably too simple to be helpful, but there you have it.

[Cunamara]

A tense note rather than an avoid note, perhaps.

[Mick-7]

The way I learned it from Jazz Theory by Mark Levine is that there is no avoid note in melodic minor. I've experimented with that and it works, at least to my ear. So, I don't see an advantage to dropping a note for melodic minor.

In this case, the purpose of omitting a note is to simplify the chord scale so that it can be played with only two triads, thus making it easier to remember and apply. So my aim is not to omit an avoid note, but rather to omit the note that is extraneous to the application of the scale so that the remaining 6 notes will form two triads.

For example, the most common applications of an F melodic minor scale are over the dominant 7th chords E7 (= Altered scale) and it's b5 substitute Bb7 (= Lydian Dominant scale). I had omitted the root of the scale (F) in my examples, but I just realized it would be better to omit the 7th note (E) of the scale (although that's just an Eb major scale without the root).

The note E is superfluous to the scale's altered function. It is key to its Lydian Dominant function, since it's the #11th of Bb7, however one could use this scale as an inside/outside device over Bb7 (Eb major)/E7 (F melodic minor). The triads Fm & Gm will give you the F melodic minor hexatonic scale minus the leading tone (E).

I don't think that hexatonic scales would be suitable for stacked 4th chords, you'd probably want to combine two 4 note chords to construct those chord scales. I'll have to think about it....

P.S. - With stacked 4ths chords, I find it easiest to think in terms of the related melodic minor dominant chords, as illustrated below:

[Mick-7]

Continuing with the chord scale patterns....

[Mick-7]

An interesting concept: the top two intervals (4ths or 2nds) flip back and forth, from top to bottom, but the melody note ascends (or descends) with each set of chords. For example, the notes C & G are on top in the first chord but on the bottom in the next triad.

[Mick-7]

I've more or less left Slonimsky land now but since I've been posting chord scale ideas here I will continue....

This was inspired by a conversation in this thread re: Dorian minor scale chords: Wes style chord scales lesson

Any two consecutive 3-4 note chords in a scale will include all the notes of that scale. For example, combining the notes of Dm7 & Em chords will give you all the notes of the C major/D Dorian minor scale. In this instance, adding the notes of an F/A/C augmented triad to those of two Dorian minor triads, e.g., Dm & Em, will give you this scale: D-E-F-G-A-B-C-C#, which is the Dorian minor scale with the leading tone C# added.

There are many possible two chord combinations within this scale (or any scale), below are a few I like. The notes of these chord combos can be combined in various ways to create melodic lines. And with only 3 chords, it could make a blues tune (the aug triad can be your V chord).

[rpjazzguitar]

A post on usenet years ago suggested combining every triad with every other triad. So, major, minor, dim, aug and maybe sus. 12 keys.

And, then, combine every triad pair with every possible bass note.

Seems to me this requires that reincarnation is a reality. And, at the end of the nth lifetime, you still wouldn't know any tunes.

For a mind that struggles to incorporate one new sound, thinking triad pairs can be overwhelming.

I came to hexatonics by accepting that there is such a thing as an avoid note, however poorly named. So, I put the 4th in the rocky road category. What's left is hexatonic. But, in reality, I never think that way when I'm playing.