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  #1  
Old 05-27-2015, 03:48 PM
darrwhit darrwhit is offline
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Default Naming Folded Scales - Flatpicking Essentials

I am trying to keep a practice journal to document what I've practiced for the day/week/month. I'm mostly working with the Flatpicking Essentials series, and related books from Dan Miller. Lately, my practice routine has included a lot of folded scales. I was wondering if there's a standard shorthand way of describing folded scale patterns. How would you write/reference folded scales in short hand (e.g. other than writing it out in tab or std. notation)?
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Old 05-27-2015, 04:51 PM
stanron stanron is offline
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If, by 'folded scales', you mean something like for example in the key of C

C D E C
D E F D
E F G E
F G A F
etc

I would call that a scalar pattern. Others will no doubt have other names. You could describe the above example as

up, up, triple down, rising.

but for some of the more complex patterns it could get tricky. I'd be interested to hear how others name these if they don't use notation. Notation makes this stuff very simple. Tab could too.
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Old 05-27-2015, 05:27 PM
darrwhit darrwhit is offline
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I'd never heard it called "Folded Scales" either, which is why I referenced the source of the term, Dan Miller's Flatpicking Essentials. But you've interpreted it correctly, at least as far as I'm understanding and employing it in practice.

I agree that the simple scalar patterns are pretty easy to document. It's the more complicated ones that I'm having difficulty describing in my journal, at least without referencing pages of handwritten tab that require more analysis than I'd like. I've been toying with using a "mathematical" expression of some sort, and it occurred to me that I'm overthinking it. Somebody probably already has a logical syntax worked out for this.
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Old 05-27-2015, 05:50 PM
stanron stanron is offline
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Thinking about this some more, you could call the first note 'O' for original note and then 'U' for up one diatonic step, 'D' for one step down, '2U' for up two diatonic steps and '2D' for down two steps. Then rising or falling pattens could be shown by arrows or the words rising or falling. The sequence above would be,

O, U, U, O rising

How you use numbers could get interesting. Do you count steps or intervals? For instance,

C, up to G, down to B and up to C could be

O, 4U, 5D, O using steps or

O, 5U, 6D,O using intervals.

I think I would tend to go for steps rather than intervals but others might differ.

Does this help?
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Old 05-27-2015, 06:05 PM
mc1 mc1 is offline
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i'd probably call them melodic patterns.

what about just writing out the notes in the key of c until you have gone through one group, and also the starting note for the next group.

C D E C, D

or use scale numbers:

1 2 3 1, 2

can you give an example of a tricky one?
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Old 05-27-2015, 06:23 PM
stanron stanron is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mc1 View Post
i'd probably call them melodic patterns.

what about just writing out the notes in the key of c until you have gone through one group, and also the starting note for the next group.

C D E C, D

or use scale numbers:

1 2 3 1, 2

can you give an example of a tricky one?
Simpler is better of course but how do you tell if you go up to a note or down to it. This is where a small bit of scribbled notation would win every time. Five little lines and some blobs might not be too difficult to write.
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Old 05-27-2015, 06:26 PM
mc1 mc1 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stanron View Post
Simpler is better of course but how do you tell if you go up to a note or down to it. This is where a small bit of scribbled notation would win every time. Five little lines and some blobs might not be too difficult to write.
good lord, you aren't talking about notation are you?

tab would also work, i suppose.

or putting a number after the note letter to show the octave.

i'm intrigued to see a complicated pattern.
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Old 05-27-2015, 06:26 PM
darrwhit darrwhit is offline
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Yes, actually it does help. Thanks for taking the time to think about this and offer the suggestion. I'll continue to play around with this.

I've been using scale degrees rather than steps. At least for my purposes, I don't imagine I'll need to venture too far away from standard modes in my scalar/folded pattern practice. But maybe I'm not anticipating the need that will come later down the road. Why do you like the idea of steps versus intervals?
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Old 05-27-2015, 06:39 PM
stanron stanron is offline
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What I like about notation is that it gives you a 'picture' of the pattern. Tab wouldn't do that although it would record the pattern itself OK.

I prefer steps to intervals because they are simpler. From C up to D is one step but the interval is a 2nd. For people who know their scale but not much other theory, intervals could be weird, steps are simpler.

Incidentally, in Classical music, stepping a melodic phrase up or down is called sequencing. This might be confusing to people who started to do music on a computer.
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Old 05-27-2015, 06:53 PM
mc1 mc1 is offline
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the problem with using steps or intervals is typically a melodic pattern will move through a scale, like the one you first mentioned:

c d e f, d e f g, e f g a, f g a b, etc.

with intervals or steps it will complicate what is a fairly simple pattern and hide its shape. the intervals change with every new starting point. notation, note names, scale degrees, and tab don't have this issue.

notation will give a fairly close visual representation.

a piano roll or something similar representing chromatic notes might also be a good solution.
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  #11  
Old 05-27-2015, 07:14 PM
stanron stanron is offline
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I think the OP only wants to write the pattern once for the record. Here's an 8 note pattern that might be considered more complicated.

O, U, O, D, D, 4U, D, O falling or rising, please yourself.

The 4 is steps not intervals.

The notes would be

C, D, C, B, A, E, D, C
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