Lesson 9: Every Stranger Belongs

Every Stranger Belongs

0:00:12 Hey, this is joEy from Eternal Crane. Welcome back to 13 weeks of music and spirit. I chose 13 because it's my lucky number. This goes all the way until the end of the year. It's lesson 9, Every Stranger Belongs. And this is an awesome teaching for me this morning. I'm going to become a new stranger at a church myself. And what divine providence that my own lessons are actually teaching me, the teacher. The teacher is becoming the student. And I hope that it's helpful for you too.

0:01:01 This is the fifth week. So we're in the second month of this. So thanks for being with us here. Take a moment just to check in. I'm doing this twice because the first time I wasn't present. I hear the fridge water machine going. That's lovely. So take a moment to check in.

Seven Musical Colors

0:01:33 The music lesson today is seven different colors. We will improvise over seven scale modes. I consider a scale and a mode to be the same thing. There's a lot that could be said about that, but we'll keep it simple. It's a scale mode. That's a set of pitches. A set of pitches that we play. We play as a group. So we're going to go through seven of them. And each one has a different musical color. And I picked what I think is the most important musical colors or the primary musical colors.

The Guest House

0:02:20 Looks like we're being visited by Rumi, the Muslim poet. This body, O youth, is a guest house. Every morning a new guest comes running into it. Whatsoever comes into thy heart from the invisible world is thy guest. Entertain it well. How interesting is it to consider ourselves a guest in other people's churches and businesses. We may be a guest in somebody's family. We may have new opportunities where we're showing up for the first time.

0:03:04 How interesting to think ourselves are a guest house and we receive the invisible, which is everything. Everything originates from that invisible source, including that musical divine signal. How interesting that we can be a good guest to ourselves and the life that we receive, just like we are a guest in everybody else's place.

The Major Color

0:03:36 So the first color I want to share is major. This is in the key of C. It has a major third, a major seven, and that gives it a warm sound, a brighter sound. We often analyze scales and we look at 3rd and the 7th to get a quality of what type of musical color. So let's do an improvisation.

0:04:26 1, 3, 4, 1, 4, 3, 1. So I'm just going down the scale. You can hear that major seven. On the right hand, I'm doing my inversions. If you do inversions in the right hand, do them in the left hand. If you see some happy appearances, just let them happen. And then build little structures.

0:05:13 So I'm going to go back. I played a flat seven. That's actually not in the scale. There's that major seven. That's just a little motif. I'm just speaking in sentences. Remember, go back down your inversions. Do one more improvisation. Listen to that color. Pretty familiar.

The Dominant Color

0:06:31 And now we're going to drop the major seven a half step and we'll play dominant. This is where I hang out because you get a very melodic flat seven with a very beautiful major third. So it's helpful to end your phrases on the fifth. Like that. Or on the third. Going down the scale. Left hand.

0:07:21 Ending on the fifth on the right hand. This is the major seven in the right hand. An inversion. I'm just going all the way up. Do it in both hands. See how I ended on the fifth? And I just played over this third inversion. Beautiful sound.

0:08:02 The major seven is very melodic. I'm sorry, the flat seven is very melodic. And the major third is bright. And I'm just mixing up the hands. That's the dominant sound. Technically, that comes from Mixolydian, which I'll talk about. I'll talk about later.

The Minor Color

0:08:36 The minor sound. Now we're going to drop the major third down a half step. The third really changes the quality. Hear that? I'm playing inversions in the right hand. Just going up and down. Do them in both hands. Little call and response. So the left hand will call. The right hand will answer. The right hand is ending on the one. The left hand is going to start walking up. Just going through the scale. Answer in the left hand. You can see I'm using language. I'm communicating. A little structure.

0:09:48 Now when we play minor, I technically play Dorian, which has a regular six. Dorian is very useful. You can play a Dorian over pretty much any minor. I'm a jazz background player. So when I think of minor, I just think of Dorian. If you're classically trained, you may think of the three minor scales. Natural minor, melodic minor, and harmonic minor. And that's quite useful. And you're welcome to think like that. But you're also welcome just to play a natural six.

0:10:45 And the minor is so versatile that you're welcome to play some of these melodic minor flat sixes. You can also play harmonic minor, which you'll notice comes from the augmented scale. Listen to that minor sound. Very beautiful.

The Half Diminished Color

0:11:23 Let's move on. Half diminished. So you can see that we started with the major. We dropped a half step to go dominant. We dropped another half step to go minor. And now we're going to drop a half step again. And this time on the fifth, you get a very, very lovely dark chord.

0:11:49 Practice allowing these darker sounds. And you can play just the diminished scale over the half diminished chord. Play them in both hands. I ended on the root. Let's try. This is a new sound. It's a new sound for me waking up this morning.

0:12:28 So let's invert it first. If you're not sure what to do, just practice inverting. And if you play a happy appearance, like I played this, A flat, that's okay. Just keep moving. I call them out for you as a teacher. But as you're playing and improvising, you can just let them ride. Just going down. Do them in both hands. Very nice dark sound. Very exciting. There, I just filled in the half diminished scale.

0:13:30 Now, it's nice to end on chord tones. So if you do half diminished, go ahead and end on the tritone. Quite nice. You can go pretty far with this beautiful scale.

0:13:55 Think of it as a mode or a color. Probably my favorite explanation is that it's a musical color. I think of myself as a painter. Another lesson, I'll tell you, I see myself as a ballet dancer. But for this lesson, we're a painter. We're just painting with colors. And this is a different color.

0:14:22 Just going down the scale and the chord tones in the left hand while holding on to the root position. Now, I'm in the second position on the right hand. Excuse me. It's actually the third inversion. It's the second position going down. And I'm playing half diminished in the left hand. That color is very, very beautiful.

0:15:13 Let thy guest be to thee like unto a god. That's quite beautiful.

The Diminished Color

0:15:21 And this is the whole diminished. So we went from major, dropped the seventh down a half step to dominant. We dropped the third down to minor. We dropped the fifth down to half diminished. And then we're going to drop the seventh down twice. And now we're at diminished. You'll notice that the same half diminished scale fits both the fully diminished and the half diminished. And both of them have a diminished triad. So I consider these the same color palette as the half diminished.

0:16:09 This is just harmonizing the diminished in thirds. This is in block form. Practice going up and down, bouncing around. Do it in both hands. Do a little mimicry where the hands chase each other. It always sounds nice and is a lot of fun. Just mimicring yourself.

0:16:49 Played. The fully diminished chord. The fully diminished chord is minor thirds stacked up on top. So it's fully symmetrical. So you can invert it and you have the same symmetrical shape. Just going through the inversions. And there's the half-whole diminished. Roughly in thirds. But I changed it in a few places.

0:17:35 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. For thereby some have entertained angels unawares. And I have to learn more about what that means. I'm learning with you. I go back and I watch these.

The Lydian Dominant Color

0:17:57 Okay, this. Is this the final color? No. This is the sixth color. This is the Lydian dominant color. So it's a major scale with a raised four and a flat seven. So the key point of this is it has a major third, a tritone, and a flat seven. So this is just a gorgeous scale. You can play some of the half-whole diminished scale on it. This is very flexible. I'm going to teach a lot of Lydian dominant, in the future. God willing.

0:18:47 If I'm blessed enough. If it's the right timing, I should say. It's all in God's time. If I could show you more of Lydian dominant, I would absolutely love to. You get to play a beautiful minor seven with a major third. And then you get a tritone. You get a lot of rich shimmer. Beautiful.

0:19:32 If you just play five, four, three, two, one, you get a very nice sound. Very beautiful, bright, but also rich sound. And then you get to add the very melodic flat seven. So I'm just going to walk down the Lydian in my left hand. Get some melodies in the left hand. Don't skip the tritone. The tritone is one of the most beautiful you could play. Just hear the rich beauty of the scale.

0:20:40 The sage is always skillful at saving men. And so he does not cast away any man. We should underline the word any. People love to put a little asterisk. We will help and support and love all people. Any person except. We love to do that. So don't do that. No exceptions.

The Whole Tone Color

0:21:05 And the final one I'd like to show you is the whole tone. Very closely related to the Lydian Dominant. It's all whole steps. There's two of them. Stay in C. So this is a little pattern, right? Five, six, four, five, three, four, two, three, one, two. That pattern. This is a great color because it's so symmetrical. This one is in thirds. One, three.

0:21:59 There's technically six notes in the whole tone. So it's one, three, six, two, five, one, four, six, three, five, two, four. Think of it in thirds. Do them in both hands. And you're welcome to mix it up. Pick different intervals. If you do that, this kind of, kind of sounds like wind blowing.

0:22:44 Very Claude Debussy-like. Very impressionistic. A very versatile scale. I'm just picking random combinations. You're going to get all these beautiful dominant chords. If I play any happy appearances, I just let it ride. You're going to get beautiful flat five chords. So this is a great way to expand. For example, I just found this F sharp dominant seven with the ninth. This is wonderful.

Open Your Heart to Others

0:23:27 So I just wanted to show you those colors. That was helpful. Feel free to write me questions and post your colors and give these colors a try.

0:23:46 And I hope the spiritual talk was useful for you. Make sure to open your heart to others and don't draw any exceptions. And remember that you're a guest house and you're receiving your life too. So I would treat your own life just like you would want a stranger to treat you. And that's it. I'll see you later. Thank you.