I ran across an interesting passage in an old British detective novel. I don't have it in front of me, but the purport is this: an impoverished character was being interviewed in her rooms and she had a broken down piano with loose wiring. Whenever the train would pass by her window or whenever anyone walked too close, the piano would emit a jumbled aeolian melody. This isn't high literature. However the author could still rely on his audience to know their modes to follow that passage. In the last century we have gained a lot but left a lot of information behind.
I have been cooking all day. I received my new pressure cooker and made some habichuelas, some pinto beans, some basmati rice to go with my habichuelas, and some porridge for my wife. Now I'm making some fondant potatoes for a midnight snack.
To accompany all this, I was practicing the pentatonic minor modes on my Kamaka (re-entrant, so only one set of shapes to worry about). For some reason I had become foggy about the mediant shape and the leading tone shape (the one up there around the 12th fret).
Later on, I am going to try to practice my harmonic minor modes on my Yorkie. That will mean trying to remember both sets (the GCE and the CEA). That is one of the advantages of the linear tuning. It can play everything the re-entrant can, plus it has a whole other set of shapes using its G string.
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