Modal Mastery and Sound Creation

Firstly I wish all of us to find our own potential. For this potential sometimes tools can help. The ideas one wishes to realize can be helped by knowing how to fulfill these very wishes. In searching for the lost chord I discovered an instrument which regulates the builiding of modalities. With a logical progression of modes one can create marvelous harmonies that have yet to be found in the musical literature. Here is a small text to capture what I mean.

THE PATTERNING OF MUSICAL SYMMETRIES
Through my explorations into the harmony at the beginning of the 20th Century and my passion for the hard-bop modern jazz from 1955 to the present, I have formulated a new concept as an alternative to the “equal importance” of notes, as found in dodecaphony.
Through the observance of musical symmetries I began to pattern tritones following typical serial methods. For Example C-F#, E-A#, Eb-A, Bb-E, Ab-D A-D#. This I will utilize for the building of the first row. Then one can, like a twelve-tone row, invert the row. This results in seven new tritones which are structurally related. *C-F#, Ab-D, A-D#, D-G#, E-A#, Eb-A. At this point I distribute pitches around the tritones and develop modes for a melodical and harmonical resource. In other words each modal resource will be built with the tritone as a nucleus. One can think of it like a solar system where the tritone is the sun and the other chosen notes are planets.
I will now give a written example of some modal structures which are held together by their relationships through the tritone. One also needn’t be irritated if more than one tritone appears in a scale. Only the ordered tritones build this structuring.
• C-Db-E-F#-G-Ab-Bb This mode belongs to tritone C-F#.
• E-F#-G-A#-B-D-D# This mode belongs to tritone E-A#.
• Eb-F#-G-A-Bb-C-Db This mode belongs to tritone Eb-A.
• Bb-Cb-D-E-F-Gb-Ab This mode belongs to tritone Bb-E.
• Ab-B-C-D-Eb-F-Gb This mode belongs to tritone Ab-D.
• A-B-C-D#-E-G-G# This mode belongs to tritone A-D#.
• The Scheme in Inversion
• C-Db-E-F#-G-Ab-Bb This mode belongs to tritone C-F#.
• Ab-Bb-Cb-D-Eb-F#-G This mode belongs to tritone Ab-D.
• A-B#-C#-D#-E-F#-G This mode belongs to tritone A-D#.
• D-Eb-F#-G#-A-Bb-C This mode belongs to tritone D-G#.
• E-G-G#-A#-B-C#-D This mode belongs to tritone E-A#.
• Eb-F-Gb-A-Bb-C#-D This mode belongs to tritone Eb-A.
I personally stay with three various modes and their transpositions per piece or movement. This is highly helpful for melodic and harmonic homogeny. For my scheme above I have twelve modes which are all related to each other through the patterning of the tritone. The choice of notes around a given symmetry is personal. If you wish to write mostly darker intervals, fine. If you wish to be diatonic, fine.
The point of the concept is to move modes with structured symmetries instead of the equality of pitches utilized in dodecaphony. One can freely choose his harmonic palette by arranging the wished pitches around a given symmetry. When utilizing this method one will hear, as each chosen symmetry moves one to another, a clear and logical harmonic movement.

In general, as well, I personally utilize a matrix for my transpositional schematics. This matrix is in itself symmetrical. It looks as such: I-II-#II-III-#IV-#V-VI-bVII. This is also not the only possibility for logical transpositions. We can as well develop inverted forms or otherwise related schemes. An example could be I-bII-III-#II-bVI-V.
The tritone is not the only symmetry in a twelve-note well-tempered environment. We have as well the augmented triad (C-E-G#). This triad can be used to control chromatics exactly in the same manner as I have already shown with the tritone.
If one wishes to move from a mode with the tritone as the existing center, an augmented fourth or a major third or augmented fifth with the augmented triad as the central symmetry, then one must consider the distribution of notes around the given central symmetry. This is in a diatonic example completely clear.
From C Lydian to F# Lydian we see that each structure has seven notes. In C we have D and E above C and G, A and B over F#. If we reverse the distribution over C and F# we will hear the harmonic movement of an augmented fourth. In other words then three notes over C and two over F#.