Major Locrian

Not the Locrian mode

The Locrian mode is 1 b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7 and it is built on a half-diminished chord. This scale keeps the flat fifth but restores the second and the third to their natural positions, so it sits on a dominant chord instead: C E G♭ B♭ from C, a 7♭5.

That single difference changes everything about how the two are used, and it is worth stating plainly because the names invite the mistake. If you are looking for the seventh mode of the major scale, that is the Locrian and it has its own page here. This is a different scale with an overlapping name.

Building it from any root

Count: whole, whole, half, half, whole, whole, whole. In C the notes are C D E F G♭ A♭ B♭; in G, G A B C D♭ E♭ F; in E, E F♯ G♯ A B♭ C D.

The simplest route in is through the major scale: play it and flatten the fifth, sixth and seventh. The first four notes are untouched, which is why the scale sounds ordinary for half its length and then does not.

The chord it belongs to

Major Locrian is an altered dominant scale. Over a 7♭5 chord it supplies every chord tone plus a natural ninth and a flat thirteenth, which makes it more consonant against that chord than the fully altered scale is — a useful middle ground when the altered scale sounds too far out.

The place it comes up most in practice is the tritone-substitution area of a jazz progression, and over dominant chords that resolve down a half step. Held over an unaltered dominant it will clash: the flat fifth is the point, and the chord underneath has to want it.

Where it sits in the family

Major Locrian is the second mode of the Neapolitan major scale, and it belongs to the same corner of the catalogue as the Lydian dominant and the altered scale — sets of notes that exist to describe dominant chords with alterations rather than to serve as keys of their own.

That is the honest framing for it: it is a tool for one chord type, and it is used by players who are already thinking in terms of chord-scale relationships. As a scale to write a melody in, it has little to offer on its own.

What it is confused with

The Locrian mode, as above, is the main one — different second and third, different chord, different use. The Lydian dominant is the other near neighbour: 1 2 3 ♯4 5 6 b7, which raises the fourth instead of flattening the fifth. Those two intervals are the same pitch on a keyboard and are not the same thing in a chord.

The half-diminished scale (Locrian ♯2) also gets mixed in. It has a flat third and belongs over a half-diminished chord, not a dominant one.

Frequently asked questions