An Approach to Scales in Some Twenty-First Century Television Music

Recent musicological scholarship claims that a set of seven “Pressing” scale types accounts for significant portions of the modernist pitch substrate in post-1900 Western art music, film music, and jazz. Three of these seven Pressing scales—melodic minor, harmonic minor, and harmonic major, which I call “unsung” scales—have appeared more often in popular screen media of the last twenty-five years, particularly in uncommon modes. Categorizing certain forms of chromaticism as modes of unsung Pressing scales illuminates some notable practices within “complex” or “peak” television’s music, as demonstrated with case studies of the music for Black Mirror, Tyrant, and The Vietnam War.