About new scales.

[Fer Carranza]

Hi: I want to share with you some of my prior attempts to achieve an original material to use for make music. Twenty five years ago, I was write a try to understand music based in my feelings, and I create scales derived from that, based in two principles: 1) Every scales may contain seven notes and 2) the more long distance between two tones of each one may be 2 1/2 tones. So, I derived from that a great amount of scales, and then I related with chords in the traditional way. And five years later, I discover LCCOTO. Boom!!! It was so innovative for me, so fresh, and so enlightening for me that I drop out my material. Since 2010 to now I returned to my original idea and try to engage it with LCC. And there are some questions that I make to share to clarify my vision. I have a collection of tones like this: C-Db-D#-E-G#-A#-B, without 4th., so, based in the graphic of page 14 this collection of tones lies on the 12 tone order, because the existence of Db. Is that correct?

[matoi]

Hi Fer!

Perhpas your note collection is most at home on +V degree - requiring just the 8th tonal level.
For ease let's treanspose it by half-step up:
C#, D, E, F, A, B, C
It does look like F Lyd Augmented with both V and +V included.

So, your original group (starting on C = B# in equal temperament, and Db = C#)
might be taken as 8th tonal level subset from E Lydian Chromatic scale...

I was for some time doing similar experiments to yours, but the set of rules I chose was:
- only and exactly seven notes in group
- but dropping groups with two or more half-steps in sequence because that is kind of a 'passing note' feature
It was interesting.

All the best.
m

[Fer Carranza]

Thanks Matoi!!! I don´t tell in the post but before I create this scales, I roted it, and I found that when it beguins in E, it became the most inside in the list of tonal orders.
Let´s see: E-G#-A#-B-C-C#-D#, locating this scales in the 8th. tonal order.......

[Fer Carranza]

2015 update: I´m now in the process of choossing scales to improvise with my new material and I try to use my scales, crossed with LCC rules. And I found that there is something that I want to share: In some place of this forum someone says that one scales can be viewed like another one with one or two passing tones, because chromatism, but I feel/think that to quit one tone and to add another one, althought it can be found like a passing tone is to omit one colour in a palette and add another colour and it´s sounds clearly different. Please, if you do the proof you can give credit to this. The tone omitted is not implied on the scale, simply is not take in account for the composer and this situation creates a new relationships that derives in new passages and skips very interestings. Thanks.

[matoi]

Hi Fer!
The more I look into tonal gravity / lcc, the more I feel and beleive that scales are not important at all. You choose whatever set of tones you want, and tonal gravity tells you how far from any chosen tonal center that set is...

[guitarjazz]

[quote="matoi"]Hi Fer!
The more I look into tonal gravity / lcc, the more I feel and beleive that scales are not important at all. You choose whatever set of tones you want, and tonal gravity tells you how far from any chosen tonal center that set is...[/quote]
The scales are important in that GR was looking at specific vertical unity in VTG. Ultimately you are right in the sense that, as explained in the book, you can create your own 'official' scales, as long as you are aware of the tonal order.

[Fer Carranza]

This thread dwells more with philosophy of music, or personal postures in relationship with music. I always believe that to consider a tone like a "passing tone" is a some kind of reductionism, I think that every tone of a scale says something, in other terms, contains an emotional charge, that must be considered. So, I like to think and to play all the tones into the same category, not seing one of them like passing note or chromatiscm. If I add some tone, then this says than I want to say something, and if I quit this tone (or i I omitted another one) too. I consider the tones like colours in a painter palette.

[strachs]

Very interesting notion (that you'd like to recognize the individual color contribution of notes that others negate by considering them "passing"/"chromatic" notes)! Calling one note a "Scale note" and it's neighbour a mere "passing note" implies that we consider the scale note (more consonant one generally) to have more legitimacy than the passing note. One seems to "deserve" a name and place within the scale, while the other is the "avoid note". So why didn't the composer simply "avoid" using the note? Usually, a passing note is used as a kind of rythmic placeholder in a statement of motion that ultimately leads to, and draws attention to, a note that is more consonant, is part of the "scale". So, sometimes a note is being used for something other than it's color/personality, so it's name is not so important either. Doesn't mean that note doesn't HAVE a color, it's just not being exploited at all.

Also very interesting viewpoint from matoi - that scales are not that important. Ultimately, it is SOUNDS that we're after. We use names for things like CHORDS and SCALES (or as GR calls them "chordmodes"), but these are just a way to make a SOUND we want into a "thing" that we can name and recall, and maybe instruct our band to kick out for us. I see great value in developing a relationship with INDIVIDUAL INTERVALS, and not get too too hung up on scales and chords, but just recognize them as convenient ways to say in a few syllables something that will communicate a group of intervals that we're thinking about. But they're just names. The real stuff is the sounds. And the sounds are.... intervals.