The idea was just to write a chart….
Between finding chords for modal comping, three-note groups for Generic Modallity Compression, and pitch collections for improvisation it seemed I was endlessly listing sets derived from seven-tone scales. Tired of the repetition, I decided to simply create a table of the relationships between various sets and make it available to other musicians and composers. The project snowballed into something a bit larger and the result is a 322 page Thesaurus of Diatonic Sets. It’s currently available from my CreateSpace store or Amazon and should be available for ordering at local bookstores in a couple months. You can also download a pdf version for free, without the book’s formatting and prettified text.
About the Book:
The Thesaurus of Diatonic Sets is a guide to all of the sets formed by the diatonic or any other seven note scale. Every possible set is listed along with their descriptions, diatonic interval vectors, subsets, supersets, and sets which contain no common tones.
This book is ordered logically, starting by number of notes. Sets of the same number of notes are then grouped by intervallic content and each group is named for a common chord formed by it. These chords are then placed in order from those with the most evenly distributed intervals to those with the least. Finally, the sets in each group are listed by the root of their chord in order of scale degree, from I through VII.