Are they any songs that use locrian?
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Maybe pull up google, put some work in yourself and look around first? This was the second entry.
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New York Minute, The Eagles (Pino Palladino)
yes
adam neely started to do a series on modes but quit. which is a shame because they were really really good. it also shows what you can actually use modes for in the real world.
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that is the oft cited example of locrian
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Locrian gets used a ton, but not usually as a melodic tool.
In jazz and American Songbook music, it’s all over the place because it (and the minor 7 flat 5 chord that it goes along with) are great chords to set up nice musical resolutions in the minor key.
That’s where it’s most common.
To use it melodically, or for riffs, things will end up sounding weird and dissonant because it is missing the one thing that makes all of our stable, consonant chords stable, which would be the perfect 5th.
It gets singled out a lot as the weird one, so some people see it as a challenge and go to pains to write things that will purposefully use it. I had a college friend who wrote a big jazz piece all so he could prove Locrian was a fully competant, usable scale just like all the other ones.
It sounded weird.
There’s more unexplained theory in this post than I care for, but I hope some of it makes sense, and I’m happy to clarify anything that sparks curiosity.
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