Super Locrian

 

Learning new scales is always part of my daily shedding routines.  This week, one of the things on which I'm working is the super-locrian scale.  While it is sometimes known as the altered scale, I prefer thinking of it as the super locrian, as that seems more precise and descriptive.  Altering even one degree in any scale turns it into a defacto "altered" scale.  The difference between the locrian scale and the super-locrian scale is that the fourth degree is a half-step flatter in the super-locrian.  The locrian scale can be thought of as playing all the white keys from B to B on a piano.  

The super-locrian has, to me, an interesting gravity to it. It seems to define other harmonic environments.  By "other harmonic environments," I mean it almost has a hall of mirrors effect.  Traversing through one octave of the super-locrian scale seems to transport you to a different place.  You seem to end in a different location than you started.  By that, I mean if you play a C major scale, you clearly land on a C one octave higher than where you started, and the journey to that final C seems logical, and when you land on that higher C to conclude the scale, it's obvious that you've concluded the scale and it all sounds very proper and logical.  You end in the same place you began, only one octave higher.  Not so in the world of the super-locrian.  It has an element of the whole-tone scale, and it seems to erase any kind of tonal orientation.  Like falling into harmonic vertigo.  I really like that.

Like so much material, both scalar and compositional, it doesn't fit well on guitar.  Fingerings involve multiple positional shifts; sometimes involving spans of two frets.  Which I also like.  Learning more positional shifts is helpful in other scalar fingerings and materials.  

I suspect that the super locrian scale and its wonderful harmonic environment will find its way into some compositions in the near future.

-kk