Harlan Carpenter

This would also eliminate confusion about chord nomenclature. For example, music students often get confused about why the F note of G7 chord is called a minor seventh. Their first introduction to the chord is its diatonic function as the V7 of the key of C major. They often count upward (in C major scale) from G to F, and discover that there are seven intervals, and the F is natural, not flat–relative to C major.

The confusion results from the fact that G7 is actually based on its relationship to the G major scale, not C major. So F note IS actually a minor form of F#–from the G7 chord’s real place of origin–the G major scale.

It is a natural tendency for a new student to count intervals upward from G to F in C major scale–which is actually the myxolydian mode of C major scale.

I happen to have been one of those students who was confused that way at one point…

So I have developed a method of teaching modes which identifies each as a component of the scale in which it is being played. It’s all right to know the names of modes, but to have to identify each as A aeolian, or B locrian, etc., is ridiculous and time wasting…!

This also might help dispel the myth that “locrian mode is imaginary”…

Harlan Carpenter

Move the same fingering up two frets and repeat the process, again leaving 1st, 2nd and 6th strings open… Oops…what’s that…? E, E(octave), Bb(b5), C#(6th–or if you prefer 13th), B, and E. Wow…!

Do the same thing one fret higher… Uh-oh…! I think we just discovered something…! E, F (b9), B, D, B (doubled again), and E.

Now back down a fret, then two frets; then repeat the process; up and back…up and back… Listen carefully as you strum each chord–all six strings…

Guitar magic…!

Harlan Carpenter

Of course then, you can kick into the long E7,A7,D7,G7 boogie, which everyone is smart enough to pick up on.

I developed this version some time ago, and it is pretty explosive. I have left several wise-ass experts scratching their heads, and wondering not only how I play it–but also how the hell I figured out how to do it in the first place… I also put it on a 68 minute CD which I developed, arranged and recorded, just to tweak a few noses…!

Harlan Carpenter

The classification of Locrian came much later – interestingly when the dominant 7 chord became more acceptable in Western music (in Rennaissance music you rarely find dominant 7the as the dissonance of the tritone and 7th was very jarring to Medieval and early Renaissance ears, usually diminished chords were more allowable)

Note in relation BarNavi’s response, using the third degree of the scale as a dominant for some modes was common to avoid either the tritone or avoid B as a dominant area.

Finally, when I wrote my own short choral piece in Locrian I realize months afterwards I gravitated to the 4th and 7th degrees of the Locrian scale I used – thereby unconsciously writing at times in Hypophyrgian.

Great comments. It should be noted that this blog is primarily concerned with the western pop idiom which in itself is not necessarily a wholly classical interpretation of harmony but is decidedly not Eastern or ethnic.

Perhaps the title is misleading or sensationalizing in that it suggests (in quotes) that locrian doesn’t exist when clearly it does from an academic perspective and to non-Western classically-rooted ears.

However, it’d be a bit like correcting a pop producer for saying a singer is flat by saying “Well, in India they have microtonality, so technically he’s not flat, he’s just singing a non-Western note.”

Another comment I wanted to make about this post is that since it only takes two notes to establish a chord (the first and third) locrian mode could exist with just a minor chord on the root, omitting the fifth.

You could argue that it doesn’t exist because when you go to the V there is no tendency tone to lead you back to i, but then that is also the case in a true aeolian mode as well, which I think we all agree exists in all idioms.

Excellent response. I agree that Locrian mode exists, although I’m not hearing it i your example. Maybe I’m missing the semitone shift you’re talking about, but I just hear Ionian with te (b7) added near the very end (parallel Mixo). It also makes sense that non-Westerners might be more able to hear something as Locrian. I read somewhere that some Eastern cultures reported hearing minor scales as happy and major scales as sad, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

http://www.tht.co.il/voice10.asp

In the second clip from the bottom (http://yeshiva.kivun.org.il/voice/j-005.mp3), the cantor begins in major (Ionian), before shifting the tonic down exactly one semitone in order to enter Locrian mode. Far from being riff-like, this mode has a dominant (on the third). This is the primary mode of prayer for Moroccan Jews, as has been attested by A.Z. Idelsohn, and other communities use it as well.
One could also analyze it as Mixolydian ending on the major third. For some ears, it is certainly that way. After all, the dominant third of this particular Locrian mode is also the dominant fifth on Mixolydian. Even so, the prayer is firmly locked on Locrian as the tonic.