So, another one where the journey was different from the destination I had in mind.

Zed lays this thing out, showing all the altered chords and talking about the half diminished root, clearly showing his Jazz stripes again, then you go look at the Wikipedia page for Locran and it says all kinds of things about dissonance and tension around the b5 of the tonic — - I’ve been doing this long enough to translate that quickly into “Sounds like shit through a Marshall at full gain”.

Like all former metal heads this means only one thing … you cheat a bit. There’s simply no way I’m playing a minor b5 chord in my progression, but I can create a riff with a root and a flat 5, and emphasize the flat 5 melodically, that fits the bill … other readers might be tempted to just skip the 5 all together … but then you really just have Phrygian.

So came up with a couple riffs and decided my best options for guitar were the keys of E, B or F # as they all would let me use the most open strings and natural harmonics if I wanted … I decided on E as it’s an old friend in many modes.

So there isn’t really a lot of soloing going on here, just a series of melodic concepts living in Locrian …

I had originally thought this would end up more metalish, but really ends up a bit more fusiony in feel despite the double bass drum pattern.

Hope you enjoy it!