If music had a hidden alley where the streetlights flicker and every shadow might be a new harmony, the A Locrian scale would live right there. On the Bb clarinet, this strange and beautiful sound feels like stepping off the edge of what you know, and that is exactly why it can be so addictive.

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The shadowy mood of the A Locrian scale

The A Locrian scale sounds like a story that never quite finds a safe ending. Its half-steps, its flattened fifth, its built-in instability all make the clarinet feel like it is whispering secrets. On a Bb clarinet, that soft, woody tone around written A, Bb, and C carries the scale's restless color perfectly.

Film composers love this kind of color. Think of the darker moments in scores by Hans Zimmer or Alexandre Desplat, where the clarinet line hovers between minor and something stranger. They might not label it “A Locrian” on the page, but the feeling is the same: uncertain ground, suspense, and a thrill that never quite resolves.

How great clarinetists touch the Locrian sound

Very few players walk on stage and say, “Now I will play the A Locrian scale.” But listen closely, and you will hear Locrian colors all over the clarinet repertoire, especially in modern works and jazz. Great artists treat these notes like spice, not a main dish.

In classical circles, players like Sabine Meyer and Martin Frost often bring out Locrian-like tension in contemporary concertos. In works by composers such as Magnus Lindberg or Kalevi Aho, you can hear clarinet lines brushing against that flattened fifth and dark second, borrowing the mood of Locrian even if the score names another mode.

Go back further and imagine Heinrich Baermann or Anton Stadler, both known for their expressive control of soft dynamics and chromatic lines. While they did not talk about modes the way we do now, pieces they inspired from Carl Maria von Weber or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart flirt with the same unstable intervals that define the A Locrian scale: edgy diminished chords, chromatic sighs, and fragile leading tones.

On the jazz side, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Buddy DeFranco all pulled into Locrian-like territory whenever they danced around half-diminished chords. Listen to Goodman in “Sing, Sing, Sing” live recordings, or DeFranco on bebop standards with dense iiø-V progressions. Their runs through A half-diminished chords hint strongly at A Locrian, even when they resolve quickly into safer harmony.

More recently, clarinetists like Anat Cohen and Eddie Daniels glide through Locrian flavors as they improvise over modern jazz tunes. When you hear them outline an A half-diminished chord over a G minor or Bb major context, you are listening to the same pitch set as your A Locrian scale fingering chart, just moving at high speed and high imagination.

Pieces and recordings where the Locrian color lives

You rarely see “Clarinet Study in A Locrian” on a program, but the sound is everywhere once your ears start looking for it. The A Locrian scale connects to diminished and half-diminished harmony, so anywhere you find an A half-diminished chord, you are close to home.

In classical and modern concert repertoire, listen for these kinds of moments:

• Claude Debussy's “Premiere Rhapsodie” for clarinet and piano, where fleeting chromatic passages brush against Locrian territory over lush extended chords.
• Olivier Messiaen's “Quartet for the End of Time,” especially the clarinet solo movement “Abime des oiseaux,” where extreme dynamics and chromatic lines create the uneasy color Locrian players love.
• Contemporary concertos by John Corigliano and Jorg Widmann, whose clarinet writing often uses half-diminished and altered harmonies that line up with Locrian fingerings.

In chamber music, the darker corners of Johannes Brahms's Clarinet Quintet in B minor and his Clarinet Trio in A minor include inner voices and passing tones that outline Locrian-type contours. When a clarinetist leans into those unstable notes with careful voicing and breath, the effect is a sudden chill in the harmony.

Jazz and popular music might be where you feel A Locrian most clearly:

• In minor iiø-V-I progressions, like B half-diminished to E7 to A minor, clarinet improvisers often use Locrian shapes on the iiø chord. Transposed for Bb clarinet, the written fingerings are close cousins to your A Locrian chart.
• On recordings by Eric Dolphy, especially the bass clarinet work on “Out to Lunch!,” angular lines trace around Locrian and other modes to heighten tension before release.
• Film scores for thrillers and psychological dramas often place clarinet on eerie, suspended lines. Think of the brooding clarinet colors in some tracks from “Inception” or “The Imitation Game” where the harmony never feels firmly rooted.

Klezmer clarinetists such as Giora Feidman and David Krakauer sometimes pass through Locrian-like intervals when twisting through freygish and other traditional modes. While those scales are different on paper, the feeling of the flattened second and sharpened inner tensions will feel familiar once you have lived with A Locrian on your clarinet for a while.

From ancient modes to modern Bb clarinet

The Locrian mode traces back to modal theory in church music and even earlier Greek ideas, but for centuries it was treated like the odd relative at the family gathering. The flattened fifth made it feel too unstable to use as a base for melodies. Organists and singers preferred Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Ionian, and Aeolian long before Locrian was invited to the party.

By the time the clarinet emerged in the 18th century, with makers like early Martin Freres workshops building simple-system instruments, tonal music was king. Anton Stadler and the clarinet composers he inspired, such as Mozart, focused on major and minor keys and only touched Locrian by accident through diminished harmony.

As harmony grew more adventurous with Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and later with Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, clarinet lines were pushed into new territory. Chromatic runs through diminished and half-diminished chords required fingerings that we now recognize as Locrian patterns. Heinrich Baermann, with his lyrical phrasing in Weber's concertos, and later players in orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic or Vienna Philharmonic, gradually normalized the sound of extreme tension leading to release.

In the 20th century, jazz musicians treated modes as tools for improvisation. When Miles Davis and Bill Evans popularized modal thinking, players on all instruments started practicing scales like Locrian to outline specific chords. Clarinetists who crossed from classical into jazz, such as Eddie Daniels or Richard Stoltzman, suddenly had reason to see the A Locrian scale as more than a theory entry. It became a direct path to half-diminished and altered sounds on the bandstand.

Today, contemporary clarinetists like Kari Kriikku or Jorg Widmann handle scores packed with modal shifts and extreme dissonance. Practicing A Locrian on Bb clarinet is not an academic exercise for them; it is everyday preparation for the way modern composers write, from extended chamber works to cinematic soundscapes.

How A Locrian feels under your fingers and in your heart

Play a simple A natural minor scale on your clarinet, then slide one note at a time until you land on A Locrian. Suddenly that fifth collapses, the second feels wrong in the best way, and every phrase you play sounds like it could break apart at any moment. That fragile tension is the emotional heart of this scale.

For a clarinetist, the beauty of A Locrian lies in the mix of control and danger. The low-register A and Bb speak softly but ominously if your embouchure and breath are relaxed. Move up toward C and Db and you can shape each interval with vibrato and dynamics so that the scale feels like a question with no answer. This is perfect for modern solos, atmospheric interludes, and slow, haunting improvisations with piano or guitar.

Practicing A Locrian also sharpens your ear. You learn to love dissonance instead of avoiding it. You start hearing how that A to Eb tritone wants to fall somewhere else but does not know quite where. Suddenly every diminished chord in Brahms, every twist in Messiaen, every crunchy voicing in a jazz combo rehearsal begins to make emotional sense, not just theoretical sense.

Why A Locrian matters for your Bb clarinet playing

So why give practice time to a scale that almost never appears as a headline in clarinet repertoire? Because this one scale quietly supports a huge part of your musical life.

Mastering the Bb clarinet A Locrian scale fingering will help you:

• Glide through half-diminished chords in jazz solos without hesitation.
• Handle modern classical passages that jump through dissonant modes.
• Shape suspenseful film-style lines that directors and composers love.
• Control soft dynamics and smooth finger transitions in awkward chromatic spots.

Teachers often use Locrian as a “fear cure.” Once a student can play an A Locrian scale with a beautiful sound, every other scale feels calmer and more stable. Your ear gets stronger, your fingers more flexible, and your confidence with strange harmonies grows quietly in the background.

A brief fingering story, not a manual

The free clarinet fingering chart for A Locrian gives you every written note from low A up through the clarion and into the altissimo range. Think of it as a map for a slightly haunted city: the streets are the same as your Bb major and G minor scales, but some corners are darker and less familiar.

You will notice that many notes feel comfortable and familiar under your fingers: A, Bb, C, F, and G. The real magic is in how you connect to Db and Eb smoothly. Practicing slow, legato A Locrian from the throat tones into the clarion register will tidy up your ring finger coordination and timing between left-hand pinky keys and right-hand pinky keys.

1. Start with slow, slurred two-octave A Locrian, aiming for perfectly even tone.
2. Add simple rhythm patterns: quarters, then eighths, then triplets.
3. Improvise tiny 3-note motifs using A, Bb, and Eb to feel the tension.
4. Finally, play the scale against a sustained A on piano or tuner to hear the instability.

Simple A Locrian practice routine for Bb clarinet

Here is a small practice plan you can tuck into your daily warm-up, right beside your long tones and more familiar scales. Adjust the times to fit your schedule, but stick with a consistent pattern for at least a few weeks.

To connect this practice to more familiar territory, you can visit related guides on scales and tone, such as the Bb clarinet chromatic scale resources, long tone studies, and breathing tips available in other articles on MartinFreres.net.