The Concept
I was reading kuro5hin this evening, and ran across an interesting article entitled “Tonal Gravity“. I’ll summarize here, but you might want to read it and the comments.
It points to a site promoting a book, George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. This is supposedly a “groundbreaking” perspective on “relating chords to scales”. Now, I’m quite interested in such things; if you visited my little Scalculator, you might suppose I know a thing about the mechanics behind chords and scales.
Anyway, I went to the site to check it the book. It turns out the thing runs $125, a little too high for me just to check it out on a whim. So, I read the FAQ, hoping to get an idea of what the “concept” is here:
5. Why is the Lydian Scale of paramount importance in this Concept?
The Lydian Scale was not chosen as the primary scale for this system of music theory because it sounds nice or has some subjective or historical significance. Since the interval of a fifth is the building block of tonal gravity, a seven-tone scale created by successive fifths establishes the most vertically unified harmonic order whereby the gravity falls down each fifth back to the singular Lydian tonic. When seven ascending consecutive fifths (i.e. – C, G, D, A, E, B, F#) are arranged within one single octave, the result is the Lydian Scale.
Here’s the thing, it is true that if you arrange those notes you get a Lydian scale (C Lydian), but since Lydian is a “church mode”, you also get the other modes. That is C Lydian contains the same notes as G Ionian (G Major), A Dorian, B Phrygian, and so on…
So, it’s a bit worrying that the FAQ here seems to make the Lydian out to sound like a special type of scale made up of fifths, when this is the case for all the “church modes”. In fact, the strength of fifths is already a very important concept in standard music theory.
Edited to add:
I’ve been thinking on this point, and think I now understand it. What they are trying to get across is that the Lydian scale meets the “all-fifths” requirement, and has the root note as the tonic. That is, A Dorian has the same notes a C Lydian, but doesn’t apply the same over a C chord, because of the differing tonic. There is some logic to this, that I didn’t pick up on the first reading.
Let’s look at another FAQ:
6. What is the fundamental difference between the Lydian and Major Scale?
As described in the answer to the previous question, the Lydian Scale has one single tonic, otherwise known as the “DO” of the scale. The Major Scale is known as a diatonic (meaning: two tonic) scale. Therefore, the essential difference between these two scales is that the Lydian (a single tonic scale) is in a state of unity with itself, and the Major Scale, with its two tonics, is in a state of resolving.
This is even more troubling because all the church modes, including Lydian, are diatonic. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume they explain in the book some terminology different from standard use (or some strange temperment) or some such.
I know it’s not fair to judge what I’m sure is a serious effort based on two short FAQs, but I will say those two alone stopped me from seriously considering picking up the book. I’ve got to have a better explanation than that to kick out 125 bones.