2/10/2020 The 3rd Messiaen mode - Jens Larsen

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Jens Larsen
Jazz Guitarist and Composer

The 3rd Messiaen mode

2 1

The Messiaen modes are a set of 7 scales that all have the property that they are symmetric, so that if you transpose them a certain interval you’ll end
up with the same scale. The rst 2 are the whole-tone and the diminished scale, which should be fairly familiar to most jazz improvisors.

The 3rd Messiaen mode is, for me, mostly something I place in the special e ects department rather than a go to choice for a certain change. It is sym-
metric every major 3rd, and that is probably one of the reasons the sound of it is in many ways related to augmented triads.

A few ways to view the scale and its construction.

I’ll try to break the scale down a bit. To me when I am improvising I tend to have more luck making good melodies if I have structures like arpeggios be-
sides the scale, so I’ll just try to list at least some of the material available in the scale.

The 3rd Messian mode has 9 notes. From C it would be C D Eb E F# G Ab Bb B. You could see it as a collection of these 3 melodies each a major 3rd
apart:

For Guitar that is a useful way to make an easy sym-

metrical ngering.

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Messiaen 4th mode Ex 1

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Messiaen 4th mode Ex 1

Another way to look at it is as the sum of these chords:

These last two examples has the scale broken up in the

major and minor “Coltrane” patterns in major thirds.

If we look a bit at what is contained in the scale we end

up with:

Triads:

C, Cm, Cdim, Caug, Daug, Eb, Ebaug, Ebsus4 (and then of course these triads moved up a major third and another major third)

7th chords:

Cmaj7,Cmaj7(b5),Cmaj7(#5),C7,C7(b5),C7(#5),Cm7,Cm7(b5), CmMaj7

D7(b5), D7(#5)

Ebmaj7, Ebmaj7(#5), Ebm(maj7), Ebm6

Scales:

The C whole tone scale

The Augmented Scale (C Eb E G Ab B C)

So we have a lot of di erent arpeggios and structures to choose from. To keep it a bit simple I only listed the arps for one transposition since the scale
is symmetic.

Using the scale in improvisation.

If I use this in a solo, it is mostly in a situation where I can but it on top of a somewhat static sound, ie 4 bars or longer of one chord. If the chords are
moving really fast the e ect of it is lost because everyhing around it is moving, when there is a bit more time and the ear is expecting one sound but
then getting another it is a bit easier to use in a sensible way (to me in any case..).

Here are a few examples of using the scale over di erent harmonic colors. In each case I tried to work from chords that already have a sound that is

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2/10/2020 The 3rd Messiaen mode - Jens Larsen
present in the scale. I start all of the examples by playing a bit of inside and then going into the notes/arpeggios that sound further away from the har-

monic background. In that way I am using the scale in a “functional” way and not as a scale and a sound in itself. I am not very familiar with Messiaens
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music, but I don’t think that was what he was trying to do.

My approach to making lines is pretty much stringing together the contained structures that I have listed, and examples of how I do that is found in my
triad pair blogs (part 1-3).

The rst example is over a C7 ri .

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Messiaen 4th mode Ex 2

The second example is over an AmMaj7 chord. I very often use the scale like this where it is over a chord that has an augmented sound in the upper
structure (ie C E G#) in this case and then I ignore that the A is not in the scale.

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Messiaen 4th mode Ex 3

The last example is still the same scale but now over a Abmaj7 chord. This is very e ective since the chord itself is a complete resting point and the
other sounds on top (f.ex B,G,C and E major triads) are very out.

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Messiaen 4th mode Ex 4

If you want to read more about the modes you might have a look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiaen_modes

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This entry was posted in Lesson on January 7, 2014 [https://jenslarsen.nl/3rd-messiaen-mode/] by jens.

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