Falling Down

The Xenome Diaries

Falling Down

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Falling Down

Xenomes 80C through 80F

Qid Love 🕉️💕🎸🏳️‍⚧️

Sep 29, 2024

Dear Diary

I messed up my process a bit and recorded 4 different xenome tracks today, resulting in a 4 part album. Rather than creating 4 different posts, I’ve decided to just do one to cover all 4 tracks. That does mean that the embedded audio for the podcast only includes the first track, so if you want to hear the full album, you’ll need to hit Bandcamp.

I’m going to skip the scale diagrams going forward, because I don’t really need them, and I don’t think anyone else is using them. If I’m wrong, let me know and I’ll do the work to put them in. This project is really about me “showing my work” in public, and at this point, the xenome system is working perfectly with my guitar tuning to the degree that I don’t need a visual aid to play any scale.

I’ve recently discovered the amazing website of composer Ian Ring, which is a wealth of scale information. So, perhaps in the future, instead of searching the 2600 pages of the Universal Encyclopedia of Scales, I’ll use Ian’s nifty scale finder to ease my pain in finding common scale names. I’ll link to his scale pages so you can dig deeper if you so desire. For now, I’ll also continue to include the UES names for the super rare scales.

This album completes the first set of 16 xenomes (800-80F), and in that way is significant. It took me a little over a year to accomplish this, so only 128 more years to go. Seriously though, I do plan to pick up the pace, so perhaps these multi-track posts will become the norm.

About the album

This one feels close and personal, like an invitation into the back room of my soul. That’s probably why I recorded 4 tracks today.

There’s a purposeful flow between tracks, and it’s a narrative if you pay attention. As with all my solo guitar albums of the past 4 years, the guitar plays the protagonist. And like most of my albums, this was fully improvised in one take.

I’ve been beta-testing a new app called GlitchStep, so you’ll hear it driving SUBscription synth, but that’s all I can say about that for now.

Xenome 80C (Part 1)

80C is a 3-note xenome with 2 anchor notes. Mr Ring tells us that according to Justin Pecot’s Dozenal system, this is the ENBian scale. Mr Ring calls it Scale 769. The Universal Encyclopedia of Scales calls this one Mixolydian b9 Trichord Mode 3.

Xenome 80D (Part 2)

80D is a 4-note xenome with 2 anchor notes. 3 of those notes are in the last niblet of course, which gives this a more diatonic scale kind of feel at the upper end. This scale also relies almost solely on a Dozenal name, “RUHian”. Mr Ring calls it Scale 2817. The UES says Altered Tetrachord Mode 4.

Xenome 80E (part 3)

80E is another 4-note xenome, but at this point the last niblet is almost chromatic. Guess what happens in part 4? Once again, Mr Ring has only a Dozenal common-ish name to offer, “LAJian”, and calls this one Scale 1793. The big bad encyclopedia calls this Messiaen VI Tetrachord Mode 4.

Xenome 80F (part 4)

80F is our technically our first pentatonic xenome. Unfortunately, 4 of those 5 notes are crammed in at the end, so this is functionally chromatic. Mr. Ring’s Exciting Universe of Music Theory dubs this Scale 3841, and also offers Pentatonic Chromatic Descending. (Kind of like “falling down”). The UES calls it Chromatic Tetrachord Mode 4.