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locrian

The mode on the seventh degree, with a diminished home chord and no stable fifth, so it barely works as a key.

The mode built on the seventh degree of the major scale, and the oddball of the family. Its problem is structural: the fifth above its home is a tritone, not a perfect fifth, so the home chord is diminished and there is nothing stable to rest on. That is why almost no music is written in Locrian, and why it is the doorway to the truly strange scales. Its characteristic note is the flat 5th that wrecks the home.

Learn it: Modes

The one-sentence definition at the top is the same one the Theory Aide extension shows as a tooltip inside Ableton Live. Hover any dotted term for its own.