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Hi,
I am trying to get a handle on the diminished scale vs. symmetrical scale.
Any tips or recommendations on how to grind these into my soul would be helpful. This was covered in my most recent lesson and has been giving me some headaches.
Thanks in advance!
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11-12-2010 02:46 PM
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I thought the diminished scale was symmetrical. For example:
C dim scale: C D Eb F Gb Ab Bbb Bnat C (whole half whole half whole halt whole half)
And what do you mean by "soul grind"?
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Symmetric scales are those which divide the octave (12 semitones) up into equal parts. Many of them are artificial, invented scales, i.e., they don't exist in the 'natural' musical world (they are not found in any kind of folk music or other, spontaneously produced music). There are a number of symmetric scales, including the whole tone scale (2-semitone intervals, which divide the octave into six) and the two diminished scales (which divide it into four, because diminished scales are those in which tone and semitone intervals are alternated, 2+1 or 1+2). See Symmetric scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Last edited by JohnRoss; 11-12-2010 at 03:12 PM.
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They are both symmetrical. One is WHWHWHWH and other is the opposite HWHWHWHW
You could say that one is the mode for the other. Formula wise you could base one of off the diminished arppeggio with a natural 9,11,b13 maj7
1 2 b3 4 b5 b6 6 7
The other could be thought of as the Lydian dominant mode with alternating 9ths (2nds)
I only ever spent time with the HW version since I usually convert the dim7 chord to a 7b9 in order to avoid diminished cliches. By spent time I mean find all the intervals, triads, arpeggios etc. Once you find what they are for one you then have them for the other.
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How did your instructor present them? And, what did s/he advise that you practice, with respect to same? Maybe we can supplement what you've received so far, rather than striking out blindly ...
Originally Posted by Bflat
And, yes, the diminished scale is symmetrical.
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I just was confused me is that "symmetrical" is a property of a scale, not the name of one scale. But then in classical music they also call the diminished scale the "octonic" scale, and I'm sure with enough paper, pencils and glue I can come up with other 8 note scales
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Yep , like take any 7 note scale and add a chromatic passing tone between a whole step and there you have it. Just like the alleged 'be-bop' scales. Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
I just was confused me is that "symmetrical" is a property of a scale, not the name of one scale. But then in classical music they also call the diminished scale the "octonic" scale, and I'm sure with enough paper, pencils and glue I can come up with other 8 note scales
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Well John, we meet again. Originally Posted by JohnRoss
While I agree with the bulk of your post, I was taken a little aback by your distinction about "natural" scales. IMHO, all scales are man-made and culture based - they are not an outcropping of some physical phenomenon. True, Pythagorus, Boethius, Newton, Rameau, et al. have all tried to make pseudo-scientific explanations of why the Western seven note scale (and its modes) are the correct and divinely inspired scale (and therefore all those crazy heathen scales are wrong) but that (IMHO) is based on an outmoded way of thinking. The plethora of scales used throughout the world speaks to that. There are peoples in the world to whom a major scale sounds strange and artificial. There are no scales that are "natural" in the sense that they come from nature. (I suppose that you could make an argument for the overtone scale, lydian dominant, but even that requires some fudging in the intonation and is based on the a priori assumption that our scales must be derived out of the overtone series.)
Anyway, why would a scale somehow be more natural because it is invented by some stone age tribesman as opposed to a 19th century composer sitting in a Parisian Cafe? They are both selecting a note set based on what they are hearing and in either case, the scale is man made. The only why I could imagine it as being "artificial" is if the note set were selected by chance or computer (which some 20th cent. composers did.)
I realize that you may have been just giving an offhanded remark and it may be based on something you were taught. But I consider the battle against Western chauvinism to be personal fight. You may not have meant much by the words you chose but I thought that it was an important thing to note - words affect how people think. All scales are artificial and are only "good" to the cultures and times that use them.
Perhaps symmetrical scales are less common in "folk" musics because they give less of a sense of tonality - their symmetry allows the ear to hear more than one note as the tonic. (But the synthetic scale, for example may date back over a thousand years.) Since most folk musics have little to no harmony (until their exposure to Western music - harmony is one of the places where Western music has clearly gone beyond most other musics) they depend on the gravity of the scale to bring the melody "home."
And I agree with John and Daddy, "octatonic" is an inappropriate name for the scale. Classical musicians like to call it "the octatonic scale," even though there are many 8-note scales. But I guess it's no worse than when we talk about "the pentatonic scale."
Peace,
KevinLast edited by ksjazzguitar; 11-12-2010 at 07:41 PM. Reason: typo and slight elaboration
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Thanks for the info, folks. John W, that is how it was explained by my teacher. They both contain the same notes but start at a different point like the modes. I was supposed to start with an Dominant 7th arpeggio and (starting on the flat 9) go up and then descend the symmetrical dim scale. I am wrestling with learning "fingerings" and "string sets" Vs. b9, 3, 5, b7 etc...
I was told that a diminished scale is used along with the diminished chord but the symmetrical diminished is used along with dom 7b9 chord. I have been using the "inside" notes for so long I keep hearing these new sets of sounds "clashing" with the chords. It sounds so good when my teacher plays them though!
Sorry if I don't have a good handle of the terminology.
PS: Soul Grind!! I am trying to bury these sounds and shapes into my existence so they will flow out of my instrument at will.
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Yeah, the terminology is a little off. They are both diminished scales because they harmonize to a tonic diminished chord. (Technically the locrian mode does too, and I have heard that refered to as the "half-diminished scale.") And they are both symmetrical scales because (as was pointed out) they repeat within the octave. In this scale (W-H-W-H-W-H-W-H) the first half of the scale (W-H-W-H) is repeated exactly in the second half (W-H-W-H). You could even point out that it divides evenly into 4 pieces (W-H). Of course, it doesn't matter if you start with the whole step of the half step. Other common symmetrical scales are the whole tone (W-W-W-W-W-W) and the augmented scale (A2-H-A2-H-A2-H). You could argue that a diminished arpeggio (m3-m3-m3-m3) is a symmetrical scale (the decision to call it an arpeggio instead of a tetratonic scale is arbitrary.) The same could be said of an augmented arpeggio (M3-M3-M3). You could even call the chromatic scale a symmetrical scale (HHHHHHHHHHHH). Originally Posted by Bflat
As to the diminished scales, the ones used in jazz are often called the "whole-half diminished scale" and the "half-whole diminished scale" depending on what the starting intervals are. You are right that the first one is typically used for diminished chords while the second is often used as a cool sub for dominant chords, to get a cool 13b9 sound. This tends to sound best (IMHO) on dominant chords resolving down a fifth to a major chord.
Peace,
KevinLast edited by ksjazzguitar; 11-12-2010 at 09:52 PM. Reason: typo
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[quote=ksjazzguitar;105775] (I suppose that you could make an argument for the overtone scale, lydian dominant, but even that requires some fudging in the intonation and is based on the a priori assumption that our scales must be derived out of the overtone series.)
Would you please elaborate on this a bit? Overtone scale definition? Intonation fudging? Appreciated.
Regardless, where would guitarists be without those heathen scales anyway?Last edited by fumblefingers; 11-12-2010 at 10:07 PM.
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The good ol' demented scale. Originally Posted by fumblefingers
I use it all the time.
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I have nothing against "heathen" scales. I just don't like when it is used pejoratively - it should be the highest compliment! Originally Posted by fumblefingers
As to the overtone (or acoustic) scale, it is another name for the lydian-dominant scale. As you go up in the overtone series you encounter different notes that can be applied to a scale. If we start as a C as our fundamental, the potential scale tones we encounter (ignoring repeats) are C (harmonic 1), G (3), E (5), Bb (7), D (9), F# (11), A (13). This is a C lydian-dominant scale.
But of course, the harmonic series is very out of tune with our modern equal temperament system - hence the "intonation fudging" since all of those notes (except for the roots) are not really our notes and some are wildly out of tune. For example, that A is actually an Ab that is 41 cents sharp - I guess the didn't want two adjacent half steps in the scale so the fudged it 10 cents sharp to call it an A. You don't encounter a true A until the 27th harmonic - that one's only off by 6 cents. Even that F# is 49 cents flat, making it only 2 cents from being called an F. So really, if we change the A back to Ab and the F# back to F, then we get the 5th mode of melodic minor, sometimes called the "Hindu Scale." Whatever. It's sounding more and more like the DaVinci Code.
Of course I think that is a all moot point since it is all based on the a priori assumption that the fact that notes come out of the overtone series that they somehow make a "correct" scale. Why must we assume that? When I hear this scale it does not ring some bell in my brain that says "This is it! The 'mother of all scales!'". That is because the "correctness" of scales has as much to do with cultural conditioning as anything else. There are many musics around the world that play musics that have absolutely nothing to do with this "acoustic scale" and it was unused even in the west until the 19th century.
The attempt to tie scales to overtones goes back a long way. Pythagoras tried to do it. Rameau tried to use the overtone series to explain the chords by connecting his corps sonore and basse fondamentale. But if the overtone series were the generator of scales, why did it take over 2 thousand years to discover this mythical scale? Because there is nothing magical about it - they are trying to superimpose one pattern on another and trying to assign meaning to it on the assumption that they must be connected.
Newton made the same mistake when he tried to connect optics and acoustics by noting that there were 7 notes in the scale and seven colors in the prism. Of course, the decision to divide the rainbow into seven colors is culturally based. And our seven note scale is really an asymmetrically spaced subset of a larger twelve note scale - both of which are entirely arbitrary and culturally based. Fortunately, Newton didn't waste much time on this, but it does show the dangers of rationalism without empiricism to challenge the a priori assumptions.
Peace,
KevinLast edited by ksjazzguitar; 11-13-2010 at 02:16 AM. Reason: slight elaboration
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ksjazzguitar: a very minor nitpick, but Newton did not desire to divide the colours of the prism into 7 colours due to the fact that the scale had 7 notes. Rather, it was because of his religious leanings and the fact that 7 is considered the number of God.
The rest of your post is utterly brilliant. Just had to nitpick. Sorry.
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As you evidently come round to see, I was not using 'natural' as 'coming from nature,' but as the opposite of 'artificial,' which isn't the same as 'man-made,' either. Perhaps you're right, all scales are invented, dunno, but I am sure that musically unsophisticated people in lots of different cultures can spontaneously hum, whistle or sing something like a pentatonic scale, major or minor, without having to think very hard about it. Music is not necessarily a cerebral affair. The two-semitone tritone scale, on the other hand, was very definitely the result of a cerebral, philosophical process much more than a musical one, so I consider it artificial. This has nothing at all to do with Western chauvinism. Originally Posted by ksjazzguitar
Dubious. Many if not most folk musics can be considered snapshots in time of the art music of an earlier age.Since most folk musics have little to no harmony...
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Ah, a terminology confusion. You have been taught to use the word symmetric (I think that's the right word, not symmetrical, not that it matters a damn) just for the 1 semitone-2 semitones scale, fair enough. But then to be consistent shouldn't you really call the 2 semitone-1 semitone version an inverse symmetric diminished scale? I'm not sure if that's exactly right, but they are, in any case, both symmetric. Normal jazz terminology is simpler and less ambiguous - you have the whole-half diminished (for the diminished chords) and the half-whole diminished for your 7b9. Originally Posted by Bflat
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Don't worry about terminology , worry about learning the sounds Originally Posted by Bflat
There is plenty in this scale to learn. I'll use the H-W version since that is where I spent my time.
Intervals:
Minor 3rds. You can play this scale in all minor thirds. (C-Eb, C#-E, Eb-Gb.) Likwise this also happens with #4, 6th and of course the octave
The rest go like this:
Ma3-P4 (C-E, Db-Gb, Eb-G, E-A etc)
P5-b6 (C-G, Db-A, Eb-Bb etc)
mi7-MA7 (C-Bb, Db-C, Eb-Db, E-D#)
Finding and playing the intervals will go a long way in helping to get this scale under your fingers. Of course doing scale excercises like up 3 back 1 (C Db Eb, Db Eb E, Eb E F#, etc) or up 4 back 2 will help as well
Next you should work on the triads and seventh chords in the scale. You have the diminished triad, minor and major triads and b5 triad (C E Gb) (I'll leave the 7ths for you to figure out.)
Lastly harmonize the scale. I posted a pdf on this a while back. Here it is again.
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Nice, that's useful. But... Originally Posted by JohnW400
I totally don't want to be confrontational, here, mainly because I'm probably missing the point as usual, but isn't this kind of thinking just a tad, how can I put it, lazy? I do understand the usefulness of being able to look at any old 7b9 and.using the same diminished scale, but whatever happened to context? In F, an A7b9 leading to Dm, for example in Nuages, doesn't say play a half-whole diminished scale to me, it says do something in Dm. Is this just a matter of getting a more modern sound?
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My (musical) life has been so much easier since I finally came round to thinking this way. Originally Posted by JohnW400
Don't worry about terminology , worry about learning the sounds
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do the notes sound any different whether you think HW or WH? Originally Posted by JohnRoss
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I wasn't trying to say that he chose 7 colors because of the musical scale, but he did try to make a connection between the two, trying to make some theological/teleological connection between between the two having 7 elements (You may be right that some Platonic/numerological bent brought him to the idea that 7 was the target number for the prism.) Newton tried to fudge his numbers a little and even show that the spacing of the colors was analogous to the spacing of the musical notes. Fortunately, Newton abandoned this line of thought (which is why we don't hear about it), but it was picked up by some of his followers. This was something I came across while researching a grad paper on the epistemologies of music theory. For a reference, I recommend Penelope Gouk's article "The Harmonic Roots of Newtonian Science" in John Fauvel's book Let Newton Be!. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
Well, if you've studied ethnomusicology, you know that "unsophisticated people" around the world do not all whistle the same scale. Quite to the contrary. They tend to whistle the scales they grew up with, that they learned from their culture. Scales are entirely culture based. Not all culture sing major scales and major and minor pentatonics. Sometimes when ethnomusicologists play these scales for these people, they recoil in horror. It is a chavinistic idea to assume that our scales are the "universal" ones. There are no universal scales. Originally Posted by JohnRoss
At least we agree that scales don't come from nature, but I still find your distinction of "artificial" to be arbitrary. The assumption that what a tribesman does is somehow "natural" and what you or I do is "artificial" is a hold over from the Rouseauian concept of the "Noble Savage" - a sort of idealized representation of pre-modern man that cropped up in the Enlightenment. But I submit that if anything created by man is "unnatural" then it all is. That is not to say that it is good or bad. These distinctions and terminologies were used by western powers to trivialize other cultures which allowed a mindset that allowed their subjugation and exploitation. Some of these western powers even went so far as to say that these "natural" cultures were part of nature and therefore were not human. I realize that you are not saying that, but words can be dangerous things.
I know that that is not what you are saying, John. I know that you find that kind of logic just as abhorrent as I do. But we as a culture still use language that reflect that way of thinking. I submit that is a completely arbitrary distinction and should be forgotten. Perhaps we'll have to disagree on that last point.
I hate to quibble about definitions, but all music is cerebral - it is understood by the brain. Whether we are a tribesman inventing a melody to woo the chief's daughter or a grad student at Juliard trying to invent a 15 notes scale, it is the brain that is doing the understanding. To define one as "natural" and the other as "artificial" is arbitrary, IMHO. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
I think that you are making some big assumptions about how scales were developed by "folk" cultures. None of them ever decided to combine different intervals? None of them every decided to raise or lower a note to see what would happen? Some of these cultures have hundreds of scales so I think it happened quite a lot. This would seem to fit your definition of "artificial." Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
I'm not sure what you mean here. "Art music" is usually defined as music coming from more advanced and sophisticated systems usually associated with an affluent strata of society. My limited studies in ethnomusicolgy show the opposite - most art musics developed out of or were enriched by earlier folk traditions, but that is just as far back as we can trace back into history. There are large sections of the planet where we have no idea what "art musics" may have existed or not. What was the music of the Incas, the Maya, the Aztec, or the Cahokian peoples (some of the major "sophisticated" cultures of the New World)? If we can't find that how can we say that the folk cultures came from them? Maybe it was the other way around. The folk cultures of Australia and Micronesia had no sophisticated culture from which to draw. The music of sub-Saharan Africa is not based on Egyptian/Greek music. We've just eliminated probably 2/3 of the folk cultures in the historical record from supporting your thesis and a little digging will find others. Yes, I'm sure we can find some examples that support what you are saying, where we know the music of a previous advanced culture and can trace some line through the folk tradition, but synergy is not the same as a "snapshot". These cultures were not taking on the court music of their "betters" but were simply incorporating what they heard into what they were already doing. The tradgedy, is that history typically did not record folk music throughout much of it's history and only occasionally can we even find good evidence of art and court music traditions back more than a few hundred years. It wasn't even until the 19th century that Europe even started examining it's own folk tradition in depth. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
And declaring them "snapshots" from a previous time, you also seem to be claiming that folk cultures don't evolve. Folk cultures do evolve, and borrow, and adapt, and change. They are not "snap shots" stuck in amber. Sorry, but this idea that folk traditions are "stuck in time" is another Eurocentrist/elitist idea. I know you didn't mean it that way, but those words have other meanings.
Peace,
KevinLast edited by ksjazzguitar; 11-13-2010 at 03:41 PM. Reason: typo
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Not so as it matters, to me. I do think it's worth finding a way to distinguish between them, if only in your own head, but I didn't mean to question your approach in that sense, really. What I meant was, I don't get the appropriateness of using a diminished scale over a 7b9 most of the time. I can see how it is right in certain circumstances - Jobim often sticks a #4/b5 in the melody over a 7b9, you haven't got much choice but to use a diminished - but not in all. I'm flicking through a fake book now looking for examples and I'm coming to the conclusion that this might be a bebop thing, something to do with the ubiquitous bebop flat fifth, maybe? but I think it simply doesn't work for swing stuff, and I don't know whether contemporary jazz uses this particular bebop convention (if that's what it is), seems improbable, somehow - haven't things moved on since then? So I don't know how universally it should be used, and being so ignorant, I feel obliged to take the context into consideration. Originally Posted by JohnW400
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Oh, do get yourself a dictionary, Kevin, before you quibble about definitions. 'Cerebral' is a synonym of 'intellectual,' and you can't possibly think that all music is intellectual. If I had wanted to talk about brain activity I would have done. Originally Posted by ksjazzguitar
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To be honest, I don't use it much. Your example of the #4 in the melody makes sense, but of course could also be handled by the altered scale (as long as there is no natural 5th. Originally Posted by JohnRoss
To me the main application of the HW diminished scale is over a 7b9 chord is if there is a 13 in the chord. The other common scales that give you a 7b9 give you a b13 (or #5). The 13b9 is a nice sound and is implied in some songs, specifically when the melody is a 13th but the comper wants to play a b9. This often comes at the ends of songs, like at the end of a song, like in "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." There are two big fat Ds over that F7 at the end (if we are in Bb) and I like to play an F13 for the first and an F13b9 for the second, creating a little motion in the the inner voice. The 2 main ways to get that F13b9 sound is to either use the F HW diminished scale, or superimpose a D major triad over the F7 chord.
Of course, you can use that unique 13b9 sound over any dominant chord, but I find it works best over dominant chords resolving down a 5th to major chord - that 13 is the major third of the resolution chord so it sounds weird (to my ear) to resolve it to a minor chord.
But the only time you even "need" to use it is if you encounter a 13b9 in a song.
Peace,
Kevin
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Ah, now that makes sense to me. Or if the 13 can be added, Below that you have a fifth, flat fifth, the third, then flat nine, tonic. OK, I'm getting it, slowly. Originally Posted by ksjazzguitar
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