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At long last, the seventh and final (?) episode of Riffing With Modes. I did not anticipate this series to take so long, as I expected to make most of the videos short little efficient lessons with quicktips on riff writing. Instead I took this series as a personal excuse to write music to my heart’s content starting from Rush style rock riffs in Major, to Dad Rock Dorian. Then crushing Phrygian morse code metal, followed by progressive Lydian vibes. An entire 80s rock single and music video for Mixolydian, and 3 different minisongs for Minor.
And now, Locrian. I won’t lie the mode hath bested me. I began writing this song in SEPTEMBER 2020 and it’s now January 2021. The music was done surprisingly early, but the video had many hurdles to overcome and technical screwups that I had to pay the temporal price for. But the battle is over, the dragon is slain, and here lies Locrian madness in all of its glory.
Hopefully by watching this video, you’ll see that you can make interesting and moving music even without the harmonic tools like “good notes” and “good chords” and “good melodies”. This entire piece is influenced from random algorithmically generated sequences, and still maintains a sense of groove at times, only to be fractured at others. I hope you find the piece interesting even if it isn’t your cup of tea, and more importantly, I hope you discover some useful songwriting, production, or arrangement techniques that can help you in your music making.
IMPORTANT LINKS BELOW!
Byzantine Pi Math Metal • Random Math Metal Riff Generation usi...
“Adore”Faustas Udrenas (Produced by me!) • adore // faustas udrenas
Numberphile – Pascal’s Triangle • Pascal's Triangle Numberphile
David Bennet Piano A Song In Locrian • A Song That Actually Uses Locrian
Adam Neely (and friends) – Making Locrian Sound Good • Making the LOCRIAN scale sound GOOD? ...
Pascal's Triangle Code : https://pastebin.com/w71ZePzU Note that neither me nor Faustas are actual software engineers, so there is a LOT of room for improvement on this simple + quickly written program. I'd welcome someone to modify the code to allow for bigger triangles (currently an integer overflow error prevents inputs over 34) and also size/space the triangle better, or even enable midioutput/ sound! If you decide to improve on this let me know so I can repost the link here and share it with everyone else.
ADDITIONAL Pascal's Triangle code from a friend! https://pastebin.com/v39uhxpG
An outrageous amount of gratitude is owed to my Patreon supporters who have decided to fund my free lessons and videos. They’re the greatest folks on the planet, if you want to join them you can for live Q+A’s, special videos, and more. / signalsmusicstudio
TABLE OF CONTENTS
00:00 Why Locrian is Clumsy
02:07 Locrian Inspiration + Pascal's Triangle
05:07 Turning Chaos Into Groove
06:55 Arranging a random motif
09:11 Writing a Locrian Melody
12:38 MUSIC VIDEO: "Pascal's Prison"
15:50 Closing Thoughts