Nice! Maybe I'll actually finish this series then...

@@alexrockwellmusic Yes, that would be pretty cool.

The Messiaen modes are the secret sauce. They're kind of unwieldy if you've never used them before though. All the symmetry and chromaticisms can be hard to navigate. The key is to lean into any harmonic possibilities you can find.

Long awaited

Hmm that's a good observation. I'm not sure why he would have included both. Maybe the alternation of semitone, major third, semitone in each half of the scale was sonically distinct enough to him that he felt it should be included. It was probably something to that effect, because Mode 1 (the whole tone scale) could be considered a truncation of Mode 6 if you remove the two notes with semitones on either side of them. But the whole tone scale is highly distinct in its sonic color.

I got even more nerdy but perhaps that should be taken off line 😊

That's the neat part, you don't! They're atonal scales, so they can only be used in tonal music in certain ways that make sense. Most of them have some place over the top of a V chord, but in a simple I-V-vi-IV progression like that, you usually don't have a lot of time to bring out the scale's unique flavor. If you're hanging on the V chord for a bit, then there's plenty of opportunity.