Some Studies in Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition

Just some quick materials I've been playing around this over the last few weeks -- one very nice resource that's existed for a while but is newly online and some stuff I invented. Enjoy!

First the nice resource that's someone else's work -- Guy Lacour's 28 Etudes, which I've owned and practiced from a bit for years is how available on YouTube in a performance by David Hernando with a score-follow by YouTuber Odhecaton:

For improvisors I really recommend stealing bits from these and developing them into your own thing, they really are full of technical ideas. Many of them are challenging enough on guitar to be interesting without being absurdly difficult. My copy of the score is the flute version, which is non-transposing and fits the guitar's range very neatly but a Bb clarinet version, if there is one, would probably be better.

As for me, I've been devising some across-the-fingerboard arpeggios from modes 4, 5 and 6. Here they are in coloured dots, which honestly is how I like to visualize them -- as usual, the dots give the scale and playing just the dots of one colour spells out a chord that lives in the scale. I've been running these up and down all six strings as a right-hand exercise, strictly alternating thumb and index finger as I've stopped using a pick recently and I think it might be a long-term change.

Mode 6 has a couple of extra ones as that's the one I'm mostly working with at the moment. I've written a pair of stacked Lulu chords so I've tried to bring out some different stuff in the breakdowns above. And I'm not sure I've ever written anything about the fourth mode (it pops up in passing here under the name "Double Chromatic"). I may or may not have anything else to say about them but there's a lot of material in the diagrams above for technical practice, melodic development or finding cool-sounding chords so have fun with them.

Here's some Messiaen to see you off -- these songs for voice and orchestra are pretty intense despite their cute name ("Mi" was Messiaen's pet name for his first wife). I think the orchestration of these is especially delicious: