I Swore I'd Never Touch It Again: The Strange Pull That Keeps Pulling Composers Back to the Darkest Mode

There's a running joke in certain corners of the music world: you don't choose the Locrian mode, it chooses you. And then you spend a year telling people you're done with it. And then it shows up in your next album anyway.

This isn't a fringe experience. Talk to enough working composers, producers, and session musicians, and a pattern emerges that's almost comically consistent. Someone discovers the mode — usually by accident, usually while chasing something that feels wrong enough to be right — builds a piece around it, feels vaguely unsettled by what they made, and then announces, at least to themselves, that they're moving on to something more livable. Something with a stable tonic. Something that doesn't feel like the musical equivalent of standing at the edge of a cliff.

And then, six months later, there it is again.

The Breakup That Never Sticks

Marcus Ellery, a Brooklyn-based composer who writes for both film and independent releases, describes his relationship with Locrian as "the worst ex I keep texting at midnight." He laughs when he says it, but he's not entirely joking.

"The first time I really leaned into it, I was scoring a short film — pretty dark subject matter, lots of interior dread," he says. "And it worked. Uncomfortably well. But when the project was done, I felt kind of wrung out. I told my collaborator, 'I need a break from that sound.' And I meant it."

That break lasted about four months before Ellery found himself building a new piece around what he eventually recognized as a Locrian center. "I didn't even clock it at first. I was just following what felt emotionally true for what I was writing. And then I played it back and thought, oh, we're here again."

This accidental return is something a lot of musicians describe. The mode doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it sneaks in through a chord voicing that feels right, a melody line that keeps wanting to resolve somewhere it technically shouldn't, a bass note that creates tension no other root would.

Why It's So Hard to Quit

Part of what makes the Locrian mode so sticky — despite its reputation as unusable, or at least deeply inconvenient — is that it does something emotionally that other modes simply can't replicate. The flattened fifth at its core creates an instability that isn't just theoretical. Listeners feel it, even if they couldn't name it. There's no comfortable landing spot. No place the music is clearly trying to go. That quality of unresolved tension maps onto certain emotional states with an accuracy that more conventional harmony just can't match.

Sophia Crane, a producer and multi-instrumentalist based out of Chicago, puts it plainly: "When I'm writing about something genuinely unresolved in my own life, everything else sounds like a lie. Locrian doesn't pretend. It just sits in the discomfort with you."

Crane released an EP two years ago that she described in press materials as a departure from her earlier, more dissonance-heavy work. She called it her "cleaner" record. Listening back now, she admits the Locrian influence is still audible in at least two tracks. "I think I was telling myself a story about what I was making. The music knew better."

That gap between stated intention and actual output is where things get psychologically interesting. Musicians are often the last people to accurately describe what they're doing while they're doing it.

The Rationalization Game

When composers do consciously return to the Locrian mode — when they can't pretend it snuck in — they tend to construct elaborate justifications. It's a tool, not a crutch. It's the right choice for this particular piece. They're using it differently this time, more sparingly, more intentionally.

Ellery recognizes this pattern in himself. "There's definitely a thing where I'll spend twenty minutes convincing myself that what I'm about to do is sophisticated and deliberate, rather than just admitting that I love how it sounds and I keep going back to it because I can't help it."

That rationalization isn't entirely dishonest, though. The Locrian mode genuinely does demand more from a composer than most other options. Because the tonic chord is diminished — inherently unstable — building anything that functions as a coherent piece around it requires real craft. You can't just plant a flag and let the harmony do the heavy lifting. You have to earn it, structurally and emotionally.

That difficulty might actually be part of the appeal. Several musicians mentioned something like a challenge-response dynamic — the mode resists easy use, which makes successful use feel like an achievement. "It's not a comfortable tool," says Crane. "Which means when something comes together in it, you know you actually did something."

The Mythology Doesn't Help

There's also the cultural baggage. The Locrian mode has a reputation — the forbidden scale, the one classical theorists barely acknowledged, the one metal guitarists invoke when they want to sound dangerous. That mythology creates a weird double pressure for working musicians. Using it too openly risks seeming like you're performing darkness. Avoiding it entirely means letting a genuinely powerful tool gather dust because you're worried about optics.

The result is a lot of quiet, slightly sheepish returns. Records that don't mention the mode in their press releases but feature it prominently in the actual music. Composers who'll discuss their harmonic choices at length but sort of glide past the part where they landed, again, on the flatted fifth.

"Nobody wants to be the person who only has one move," Ellery says. "But also — what if it's a really good move?"

Coming to Terms With the Cycle

The most honest musicians seem to be the ones who've stopped fighting the pattern. Crane says she's made a kind of peace with it. "I don't announce anymore that I'm moving on from it. I just let myself work and see where I end up. Usually I end up there. And usually the piece is better for it."

There's something almost liberating in that surrender. The Locrian mode, for all its instability, seems to function as a kind of home base for a certain type of creative mind — not a comfortable home, exactly, but a known one. The place you keep coming back to not because it's easy, but because it's true.

And maybe that's the real paradox. A mode defined by its refusal to resolve keeps pulling people back. A scale that has no stable resting point somehow becomes the thing musicians can't stay away from.

They'll probably say they're done with it after this album, though. They always do.