138. IMPROVISATION FOR MEDITATION WITH A MELODY IN A SCALE ACCOMPANIED WITH THE ROOT OR SINGLE NOTE OF THE SCALE

(This post has not been written completely yet)

This type of improvisation is of the simplest and beautiful ones. Practically no chord accompanying of the melody is used. The only simple harmony is the continuous sounding of a single note which is usually the root of the scale. For this single not accompanying is used usually a monochord string instrument, but it could be used a guitar and other instrument making a conscious trill or repetitive hitting of one note.

Here are examples of it by Shastro with bansuri flute

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7YsFn22F1g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi2WtNfmfJI&list=PLV1q2ZPK3-lCbyLxCrLC3v8HmBB3B8s8o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjLZujyt-Dw&t=542s
etc

The characteristics of this type of improvisation are:

1) The monotone continuous background sounding of the root of a single (diatonic) scale

2) Rather slow e.g. 58 beats/min (like whales or dolphin whistles) suggesting an ocean feeling.

3)  Melodic themes, of this single diatonic scale that are mainly independent and integrate their meaning by themselves and not by the plot and combination of them.

4) The beauty of the total melody is the statistics of its "Dolphin words" (order-topological shapes of melodic themes) 

Extensions of this type of improvisation are if instead of a single note we repeat a single interval of pure 5th or single triad chord.



 If one wants to add more clear harmony inside the scale, he could "walk" all the sequence of chords by 4ths"  iii7->iv7->ii7->V7->I7->IV7->iii7 etc

ONCE ONE HAS MASTERED THSI SIMPLE FORM OF IMPROVISATION HE WILL PROCEED TO THE MORE GENERAL METHOD AS IN POST 296 ABOUT MODES AND LONGITUDINAL CHORDS.

137. 5-notes /4-notes sub-scales improvisation on any 7-notes scale. Pentatonic scales contained in the diatonic , the harmonic minor (1st Byzantine minor) and harmonic double minor (2nd Byzantine minor) 7-notes scales.

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One of the most beautiful melodies improvisations is to go up and down in a 7-notes scale but only with 5 steps (5-notes sub-scales) or 4-steps (4-notes subscales or chords). We do not need to go up and down with the same 5-notes/4-notes  sub-scale, but we need to go up or down from root to higher or lower octave next root,  with only 5-steps or 4-steps (creating thus a 5-notes/4-notes  subscale).  The reason, of course, is that in this way we increase the percentage of intervals of 3rds and even we might make them more than intervals of 2nds in the melody, thus we increase the harmony in the melody. Beautiful melodies are created especially if the underlying 7-notes scale is the harmonic double minor (2nd Byzantine minor) scale.

In a 7-notes scale flute, this is done by keeping 2-times or 3-times during ascending or descending the scale, two fingers as if tight together. We change each time which of these fingers would be.

We show in this post that the well known Japanese pentatonic scales like Akebono, Insen etc of Koto music and many more unknown but beautiful pentatonic scales are contained in the Harmonic minor (1st Byzantine minor) and harmonic double minor (2nd Byzantine minor, or Gypsy minor or Hungarian minor ) scale.

We list 5 more,  and beautiful, 5-notes scales of the 7-notes harmonic double minor scale