The answer.
2 Likes
At least I got a good laugh out of the replies 
The question was for something I’m developing (M4L) and I wanted an alternative to a chromatic scale for random generation of pitches. I’d tried a few scales/modes to see which universally sounded good but couldn’t make my mind up. I’ll likely add user-selectable scales for an update but for V1.0 it will just have one scale. Maybe it’s best just to stick to chromatic.
I guess that should’ve been the real question rather than my Techno Baiting.
2 Likes
Poor Dorian
8 Likes
That track is incredible!
1 Like
Obligatory video:
10 Likes
Having constantly using minor scales because since I was a youth touching the black keys always felt right this thread is pretty ummm affirming I guess.
Also even now with crazy sequencers and keys with scale locks i always find I love minor scales the most.
Now question for y’all. been thinking lately about my limits within my understanding of theory and what not. Am I missing out on something by keeping my songs in the same scale the whole time?
When I see jazz cats rip a piano it seems like their fingers r dancing so crazy there’s no way they’re playing just one scale.
In jazz or any music you like, besides key changes and substitutions and all that, you can use all the notes in any key. You just have to know what effect each non-scale tone will have and how to resolve it nicely(or not) to a scale tone.
That video has interesting metaphor to help understand how to use chromatic notes in a major scale. For techno I guess you might want to think in relation to the minor scale.
Not sure why but this quote speaks to me
it’s not THAT sad in equally tempered tuning commonly used these days.
what made it really dramatic back in the days was meantone temperament.
Sometimes, sure. Depends of the frequencies present in the kick… I usually add a lot of filtering and distortion, and often D is the sweet spot.
Some less obvious options to experiment:
Whole tone scale
Octatonic (symmetric / whole-half…)
Hungarian minor
Ukrainian Dorian
Insen
Yo
I hear he’s looking as young as ever though
3 Likes
i don’t care, as long as i don’t have to listen to a stupid pentatonic bleep techno track again. Used to like them, but now i just don’t understand how people still feel the need to release uninspired stuff like that.
good album name!
now I’m curious, any examples?
1 Like
Depends what you’re looking for. Techno is by its nature more harmonically static, so fitting in a lot of harmonic information doesn’t seem to work as well.
The jazz cats are seldom using one scale, but play scales that work over the implied harmony. Sometimes they just play what my mom would call nonsense.
Scales are in my mind, a way to categorise, and in turn elicit a mood. And the mood of techno is for me, pretty dark. So the darker scales like minor, Dorian, phrygian and variants of these work best.
This was a whole lot of braindumping, apologies for that. But in short, you might be missing something, but probably not in terms of production of techno music. Also, microtonality is the bees knees
1 Like
2 Likes
Jazz pianists tend to think more in terms of switching from one chord to another than switching from one scale to another.
This looks like a good introduction to music theory: https://youtu.be/QkiJYzDR6ho
I’m lost, is there any one Note Scale?