Starting from the End
After many sessions of practice and exploration, attempting to capture a useful lesson means taking the last iteration, to speak for the whole process. The exercise as a whole follows the same alternating beats, between left brain and right brain, trying and not trying, understanding and letting go. Not necessarily in that order.
And if the latest lesson doesn’t speak to the body of experience that came before, where does it come from, and what nuance does that add to the whole? Either way, I come round and round again to the same territory, the same toggling between natural and sharp, straight scale and variation, trial of moods and modes.
Today’s focus begins where it ended in my session with the flute. Having run the gamut of changes from Bb to F to C to G (mostly the D-rooted modes of those major keys linked on the circle of fifths), with the introduction of the F# in mode 7 of G, I brought in next the C# of D Major, which led me to relish the resonance between the C# at mode 7, with the F# at mode 3. Naturally enough, the C# is a fifth above F#. In pentatonics the F# anchors the In Sen scale where C# resolves as Raga Jayakauns.
Moving backwards to the natural C which likes to persist as a solid complement to the dominant (literally) D, in G major, the D in turn pulls the F# back to F, as a minor third. Sitting on the natural C but then toggling between the F (of D Dorian) and F# (of D dominant, the F# anchors a hybrid 8-note scale, Prokofiev.
The Prokofiev features several other notable mode centers, namely:
C1 Ichikotsucho
D2 Bebop Dorian
G5 Bebop Dominant
A6 Gregorian
The Prokofiev scale thus represents the hinge to swing back and forth between any two adjoining keys, using both of the “toggle” keys (F# and F in this case) that differentiate the two different scales. The simple way to remember it is to simply add an augmented fourth (or flatted fifth) between the normal notes 4 and 5.
Similarly, adding an eighth note between the 5 and 6 yields the Spanish Phrygian scale, based on the fifth mode of the harmonic minor, which also features Bebob Major at mode 3. Here the toggle at C#/C represents the hinge between D Minor and D Harmonic Minor.
Other modes of this hybrid 8-note scale include:
D6 Farahfaza
F1 Bebop Major
G Blues II
For an audiovisual glimpse into today’s practice—mucking around, so to speak, between the adjacent keys of Bb-F-C-G,
with emphasis on the D – A axis…
… see the following video clip (4:28).