Thursday, May 30, 2013

The Modal Order of Descending Brightness - A Musical Work Diagram.

Neither the future nor the past is totally determined. The past is not set in stone but is malleable by working in the Now. I think of the past as something like clay or mud, but if I don't change now, it will be fired in the kiln, but if I have a moment of real consciousness, the light and heat of it travel both backward and forward and sideways, heating up the adjacent wire, because I view recurrence as looking like a slinky, the toy, vertically placed, and we either work our way up or Great Nature causes descent through the same laws that govern the Modes of the Major Scale as viewed in consecutive Fifths.

There, we begin with Ionic - no sharps or flats, (now this is different from ''key signature'- we are dealing with numbers only). In the Cycle of Fifths we begin what is called "The Modes in Descending Order of Brightness":

I: Ionic-no sharps or flats
V: Mixolydian, b7
ii: Dorian. b3, b7
vi: Aeolian, b6, b3, b7
iii: Phrygian, b2, b6, b3, b7
vii: Locrian, b5, b2, b6, b3, b7
IV: Lydian, b1 yields a lower tonic, but removes all flats and introduces a raised #4
I: the #4 flats to it's normal place and we have come back to Ionian, but one step lower in key.
V: b7
ii: b3, b7
vi: b6, b3, b7
iii: b2, b6, b3, b7
vii: b5, b2, b6, b3, b7
IV: #4
I: Ionic with tonic lowered one half step.
V: b7
ii: b3, b7
vi: b6, b3, b7
iii: b2, b6, b3, b7
vii: b5, b2, b6, b3, b7
And continuing downward spiral forever.

This arrangements of the modes of the Major Scale shows how a "man" descends and the more flats, the sadder is the mode, till it bottoms out at Lydian #4 by reason of flatting the 1 (Tonic).

Mankind is the only creature on Earth that can play in the other direction of the Cycle of Fourths, which is against Great Nature and against "God". That is a "Musical Work Diagram".

3 comments:

caligula! said...

i always look forward to and enjoy your musings. would love to see an entire series on chord theory.

rlnyc said...

I'm supposed to begin exactly that sometime in 2014 for Guitar World Magazine. I did two years of monthly columns mostly about scales... there are DVDs of both years for purchase at their website. Thanks for your comment. -RL

caligula! said...

I have devoured both of your dvds, GW columns and all of the lessons on your old website; sincerely looking forward to these new lessons! Looks like I need to get another subscription to GW. Thank you for passing on all of your knowledge.