A Song That Actually Uses Locrian

so I was asked by Jakob Borg do you know any uses of Locrian mode in popular music and that is a really good question so I decided to make a video dedicated to answering that question is there any pop songs that use the latverian mode so the Locrian mode is the seventh mode of the major scale and the thing is the thing that makes Locrian unique is that the first six modes of the major scale all have very useful interesting melodically pleasing qualities that each bring a lovely distinct flavour to a song but la Creon is the odd one out la Creon just doesn't sound very musical it's very difficult to make it sound good to make it useful the problem is that Lockean has a flat fifth it has a diminished fifth whereas all of the other modes have a perfect fifth and the perfect fifth is along with the octave one of the foundations of what makes music sound harmonious to us what makes it sound at rest so without that sense of being at rest the la créme mode always sounds directionless a bit like it needs to resolve somewhere else because it has a flat if the root chord of the Locrian mode is a diminished chord and diminished chords are quite unstable they always want to resolve somewhere else so are there any pop songs are there any popular songs that use the Locrian mode [Music] army of me by Bjork released 1995 centers for the most part around sea Locrian it starts with this quick repeating bassline now at this point the bass line is all we're getting that's got any tonality to it so the route is a little ambiguous as we're quickly jumping between notes however the line sits briefly at sea at the end of each bar which gives the sea a bit more weight suggesting it has the route and you can see here the G flat in the bass line that is giving us that la Korean sound but it's when the vocals come in that it becomes clear that sea is our route that the vocals are really hitting sea home as in the root of our scale [Music] so just like the baseline Bjork's vocal in the verse never hits the natural fifth no never hits G and it sits nicely in the Lockean mode but you might be thinking how does Bjork make this lockrey and melody sound nice the baseline is purposefully chaotic and intense its harnessing the deceptive power of La prions but the vocal straddles lock Crean carefully what I mean is that the vocal line never actually hits the fifth degree of the scale the melody avoids locrians trickiest note the flat five by doing this the vocal melody alone is technically not actually lockrey and if you isolated the vocal melody would actually just be in C Phrygian but because we're against this backdrop of a C la pre and bassline the Phrygian melody slots in and takes on the Lockean sound so by avoiding Lachlan's most dissonant note that flat 5b up creates a melody that works in Lockean without sounding too dissonant furthermore the vocals use slow flowing notes or small intervals which contrasts against the bass line which uses intense fast rhythm with big disjunct leaps now unfortunately we can't call our me of me a purely luck Korean pop song because the chorus diverges away from lockrey and unfortunately let's take a look at what the choristers [Music] [Music] so as we enter the chorus the bass line which hasn't changed yet from the 1 bar loop that we've got used to switches to this line moving chromatically down from D to C so now we've got a D natural in the bass so we've already lost that Locrian feeling where la Creon's should have a deep flap adding to this Bjork now finally sings the fifth degree of the scale albeit briefly and we get the G natural not the G flat that we'd want from la Crean so we're really not in la Korean anymore in this chorus but considering that our me of me was a top 20 hit across Europe getting to number 10 in the UK and number one in Iceland I think we can say that it's the best example of lockrey and in a pop song that we can find now some of you guys did have some other suggestions for Locrian songs John Davidson asks is juicebox by The Strokes in la creme so I can see what John means the opening baseline for juice box is La Creon thanks to its flattened fifth and the flattened second which are the two defining features of a la Creon scale the problem is when the guitar enters although the guitar does follow some of the lot Korean features like the flattened fifth and the flattened second here we also get a lot of the natural v that'd be natural and this repeated use of the B natural really fights against the LA Korean sound that the bass has established adding to this when the vocal comes in it really isn't in LA Korean either [Music] the vocal gives us even more natural fifths instead of lot Koreans flat fifth and we also get the natural second-degree the f-sharp instead of La Koreans flat second-degree but despite all this the Locrian bassline is still pushing through underneath creating a bittersweet dissonance with the notes above solo Korean is definitely an element of what makes this song work is definitely an element of the song but I'm not really sure that the use of LOC Korean in this song is extensive enough for us to be able to call it a lottery in song another suggestion I had from you guys fellow Korean songs was from Pablo he says the intro for seek-and-destroy from Metallica is la creme and I can see why Pablo is saying this you could make an argument that the first bar of the song is an a la Creon in the first file we get an e-flat and a b-flat so that's the flat 5 and the flat 2 in a minor which are the two essential notes for a la Creon so yes this first bar this very first bar is in a la creme however it's the only bar of the intro that is in a la creme because in the very next bar we get to e naturals and as I mentioned earlier we really can't have the regular fifth degree being played when we're meant to be in la creme you can't have a natural in a la Creon so really what's going on here is that we're in E Phrygian which is almost the same as la creme without the flat fifth and this e flat isn't really pointing towards a la Korean it's more of a Blue Note a chromatic note added to give a bluesy flavor so sorry about that Pablo I can't see where you're coming from but unfortunately it's not actually in LA Korean so I hope you enjoyed that look at the outcast of the modes the LOC Korean mode if you can think of any other examples at all even if it's just in one segment of the song like army of me was please let me know because the long Korean mode is a very rare Beast and I would like to look at any example which you can find the last thing I wanted to talk about today is that I've just started a patreon patreon is a platform where you can pledge a certain amount of money every month to help me make these videos and don't get me wrong I really really enjoy making these videos and I'm blown away every time but the response I get from you guys but the thing is these videos as you can probably imagine take a lot of time and effort there's different perks available by pledging on different levels everything from getting a credit at the end of the video to seeing vlogs of what I'm up to during the week and behind the scenes if you're not in a position where you can pledge any money don't worry about it just keep watching and enjoying these videos that's what means the most to me but any support you can give will be massively appreciated so thank you in advance and see you next time [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 2,295,216

Keywords: army of me locrian, songs in locrian, songs that use locrian, locrian mode, do songs actually use locrian, how to use locrian, locrian songs, metallica locrian, metalica, metallica, bjork, Björk, the strokes, juicebox locrian, bjork locrian, modes, locrian explained, locrian music theory, music theory, locrian, locrian scale, what is locrian

Id: Q6JBsOzOFaQ

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sombl]

My friend showed me your video and I was very impressed. Thank you for sharing this - the video was very well written and produced :)

[u/BostonBoy87]

Great video, I love getting to look under the hood of Bjork's songs, and you explained the theory very clearly. Cute vlogger too ;)

[u/Kirosky]

Super cool thanks for sharing

[u/decepticondirge]

Omg! I just saw this post, and I never thought you would be on this subreddit! This video is what made me listen to Björk, and honestly changed my entire life! Thank you soooo much David!

[u/[deleted]]

excellent analysis