I named this improvised piece of music based on a faerie mythology. In Scottish folklore, the seelies are good-natured, benevolent and blessed fairies who nonetheless punish severely if they take offence at something, however they will provide a warning first. They can be tricky and ambiguous, but they are also radiant and light and help humans when treated with respect. The unseelies are malevolent and dark, often attacking humans at night or causing misfortune, like a curse.
The seelies and unseelies are symbolic of the duality and ambiguity of life and nature — light and darkness, blessings and misfortune, joy and pain. But their complexity shows us that it is not as simple as good vs bad. You can’t have shadow without light, and light inevitably leads to shadow.
For me, the F Dorian flat 2 mode (aka Phrygian natural 6) conveys the ambiguous darkness due to its Phrygian flat 2, and light due to its Dorian major 6th degree; creating that uncanny and magical character of the seelies.
My continuous use of fast broken chord patterns in this piece represented the volatile and chaotic energy of the eerie fairies. At some point along the way the ground falls from under our feet with a sequence of descending chromatic chord planing — i.e. the harmony slides downward through a series of parallel minor triads, moving a long way out of the key, still in the fast broken chord figurations, its unsettling and alien sound representing the malevolent unseelies, drifting like a sinister bank of fog.
Then we return to the still unsettled and strange, but more harmonious F Dorian ♭2.
Mode Table With Note Names and Parent Scale
| Mode | Notes | Parent Scale | Modal Relationship |
| F Dorian ♭2 | F G♭ A♭ B♭ C D E♭ | B♭ Melodic Minor | 2nd mode of Melodic Minor |
Interval Formula:
- Dorian ♭2: 1 – ♭2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – ♭7
The Dorian flat 2 mode is also known as the Phygian natural 6 mode, because it shares the distinctive Phrygian sounding flattened 2nd, as well as the flat 3 and 7 of the Phrygian mode, and yet the 6th degree is a major 6th. The “natural” in the name refers to the fact that the 6th degree is unaltered compared to the major scale, as opposed to it actually being a natural. In some Phrygian natural 6 modes, the 6th is actually a sharp. Read more about the Dorian flat 2 or Phrygian natural 6 mode here.
Learn more about modes in general here: Complete Guide to Modes of the Major, Melodic Minor, and Harmonic Minor Scales
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