Talk:Hypophrygian mode

Project for Mode Articles: Standardization and Consolidation
The mode articles are a mess when taken together. The articles need to be standardized and some of the general information consolidated into the Musical mode article and removed from all the articles about specific modes.

a few specific propositions:

corresponding information
 * I think all the mode articles should have corresponding information in corresponding sections. For example, the intervals that define the mode should be given at say, somewhere near the top of the article in a section called "intervals" or something (whatever, as long as its standard for all articles and maximally descriptive). Also things like if the scale is "symmetric" or "asymmetiric" or whether its a "minor" or "major" scale should be all in one place (perhaps a table would be best for these things).

Information about modes in general
 * All information that is about modes in general (i.e. applies to all modes) should be moved to the Musical mode article, and not mentioned in the articles about specific modes (all articles should of course be linked to the general Musical mode article). Information about idiosyncratic properties of the modes then will be easier to find that way, and there will be no confused and redundant info (sorta like this paragraph).

''Greek vs. modern terminology confusion'
 * Information about the confusion between the greek and modern terminology should stay in the Musical mode article, with a note at the top of each article--out of the main body--highlighting the terminology confusion (to eschew obfuscation). Perhaps there should be serperate disambiguable articles for the greek modes e.g. a article for Ionian (Greek Mode) and Ionian (Gregorian Mode).

avoiding articl style divergence with later editors not privy to the standardization project
 * As time passes, people who don't know about the effort to standardize the article no doubt will add information to the article in their own style, perhaps causing the articles to diverge in style over time. To avoid this, we can make a template to go at the top of each talk page that tells editors to keep in mind the style standardization (perhaps a project page--"metawiki pages" I think they are called--with a template and style explanation). Although this may not be that much of a problem, if the style is obvious and is suffieciently elegant to begin with.

Am I getting across the idea here? What do you guys think about such a project? I know there is a way to set up a wikiproject for this sort of thing, but I've never done it before. I'll look into how to do it. Any other ideas on how to make the articles fit better together? Any objections or improvements to the above suggestions? Brentt 09:29, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

erroneous paragraph removed
This article began with the following paragraph:

"The Hypophrygian mode, literally meaning 'below Phrygian', is a musical mode or diatonic scale of ancient Greece that was based upon the Phrygian tetrachord: a series of rising intervals of a whole tone, followed by a semitone, followed by another whole tone. The rising scale for the octave is a single tone followed by two conjoint Phrygian tetrachords. This is the same as playing all the white notes of a piano from B to B: B | C D E F | (F) G A B. Confusingly, this scale in medieval and modern music theory came to be known as the Locrian mode."

If you make a scale by starting with a tone and attaching conjoint tone-semitone-tone (TsT) tetrachords, you get TTsTTsT, which is the mixolydian scale. The locrian scale is sTTTsTT, in other words it is formed by two *disjoint* sTT tetrachords. According to another wikipedia page, the sTT tetrachord is called "dorian" by the greeks but maybe "phrygian" by the moderns. What I think is going on is that the medievals called "hypophrygian" the mode that started a perfect fourth below the scale they called "phrygian". The scale they called "phyrgian" is sTTTsTT, in other words it is the scale formed by two disjoint phrygian tetrachords. They thought that "hypophrygian" or "below phrygian" meant "starts a perfect fourth below phrygian" (where "phygian" means the scale formed by two disjoint phrygian tetrachords). But actually "hypophrygian" meant "take two conjoint phrygian tetrachords and put the extra tone above them". The "hypo" didn't mean that the scale started below the phrygian but rather that the two phrygian tetrachords were on the bottom of the scale. Anyway, that is my conjecture based on spending the morning trying to learn this stuff from error-ridden Wikipedia pages. Someone who knows what they're doing really needs to look at this page and other pages on modes (some of which I think have the same mistakes - but I didn't fix those pages). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.59.74.103 (talk) 18:36, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This article again begins with the paragraph cited above. Removing it does not solve the problem, and leaves the article beginning with a paragraph quite unsuited as a lead. It is badly formed, and needs rewriting. More than rewriting, it needs a proper source, but some sort of lead paragraph must be there. It must be remembered first of all that until very recently modes were not the same thing as scales, and trying to explain them in such terms will be at best misleading.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)