What Eastern scale is this C Db E F G A Bb ? Contains video of Shawn Lane playing it for 9 minutes!

bigjon

My brain is fried, can't think what the scale is - keep getting distracted by the awesomeness of the playing ;-)

Megii

It's the 5th mode of the Harmonic Major scale, for what that's worth. Best I can find is someone calling it the Mixolydian b2 - which seems sensible enough. But if it's a traditional Eastern scale, it must have another, older name, which I'd be interested to know.

Phil_aka_Pip

Megii said:

It's the 5th mode of the Harmonic Major scale, for what that's worth. Best I can find is someone calling it the Mixolydian b2 - which seems sensible enough. But if it's a traditional Eastern scale, it must have another, older name, which I'd be interested to know.

If it were the 5th mode of the Harmonic Minor, then it's parent HM scale would be rooted on F, so the A would have to be flat.

I don't know what it is either, so I wrote out the spelling of all its modes to see if I recognised any of them

C - R b2 3 4 5 6 b7
Db - R #2 3 #4 #5 6 7
E - R b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7
F - R 2 3 4 5 b6 7
G - R 2 b3 4 b5 6 b7
A - R b2 b3 b4 5 b6 b7
Bb - R 2 b3 #4 5 6 7

... I didn't, but the last one a "minor Lydian" scale looks like it could be interesting ...

Megii

Phil_aka_Pip said: Megii said: It's the 5th mode of the Harmonic Major scale, for what that's worth. Best I can find is someone calling it the Mixolydian b2 - which seems sensible enough. But if it's a traditional Eastern scale, it must have another, older name, which I'd be interested to know. If it were the 5th mode of the Harmonic Minor, then it's parent HM scale would be rooted on F, so the A would have to be flat.

I don't know what it is either, so I wrote out the spelling of all its modes to see if I recognised any of them

C - R b2 3 4 5 6 b7
Db - R #2 3 #4 #5 6 7
E - R b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7
F - R 2 3 4 5 b6 7
G - R 2 b3 4 b5 6 b7
A - R b2 b3 b4 5 b6 b7
Bb - R 2 b3 #4 5 6 7

... I didn't, but the last one a "minor Lydian" scale looks like it could be interesting ...
Of course what you say re the Harmonic Minor is absolutely true - just to be clear, I did say Harmonic Major, which is a recognized (albeit not widely used) scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_major_scale  But I happily admit I don't know a whole lot about the scale beyond that.

Phil_aka_Pip

@Megii Sorry I should have read you more carefully

EricTheWeary

That's verging on the unlistenable for me but the technique is just incredible. Nice to see Jonas on bass. Just reading that Shawn took cortisone to deal with his arthritis and that's what lead to his weight gain, he certainly didn't look like that when he was younger.

No idea about the scale but not obviously clichéd eastern.

Megii

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@Megii Sorry I should have read you more carefully

No worries! You made some interesting points - I just wasn't sure from your post if you'd read me correctly or not to be honest. Hope someone on here knows the traditional name for the scale anyhow.

bingefeller

I'm guessing that he is playing, or thinking, about some kind of a raga rather than thinking harmonic major.  

viz

Here's my scale compendium - see the yellow scale, top right. Yes 5th mode of harmonic major is mixo b2 but actually I don't think it's a very good name because the freygish / snake-charmerish beginning coupled with the flat 7 conspire it to sound more minor than major, despite having a major 3rd. I'd call it a freygish dorian or freygish #6 or something. http://www.guitaristtv.com/Downloads/Modes 2014_02_18 - for GTV.xlsx