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  #16  
Old 06-17-2017, 10:19 AM
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rick-slo rick-slo is offline
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Originally Posted by RustyAxe View Post
No. I"m gonna say something that'll get me a lot flak. If you're new to guitar and don't already know music you're trying to put the cart before the horse. Just learn a few simple chords, learn some songs using the chords, and as you play more songs you'll begin to see "patterns" that recur. You might get interested to know why these patterns work. That's the time to begin thinking about theory. For a new guitar player to even THINK about modes, various scales and such (as some here have tried to explain), is silly ... it's just information overload. While trying to be helpful, some people post things that original poster cannot grasp, and the thread turns into a debate between pedants.

One need not know nor understand the engineering that goes into the car they drive, and can very happy just driving it. But if one cares to go further, one can.
Absolutely agree.
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  #17  
Old 06-17-2017, 10:26 AM
Gitarre Gitarre is offline
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Originally Posted by JonPR View Post
There are two ways of thinking about them: relative and parallel.

Relative modes use the same 7 notes, but a different note is treated as the tonal centre, or keynote. This is the sense in which people say "the C major scale has 7 modes". These would be as follows:
C ionian
D dorian
E phrygian
F lydian
G mixolydian
A aeolian
B locrian
While this angle is often used in teaching to introduce modes, it's the least useful and most confusing when it comes to musical application.

Parallel modes are modes which all have the same root note or tonal centre, but different scale formulas on top. So the parallel modes on C would be:
C ionian (C D E F G A B C)
C dorian (C D Eb F G A Bb C)
C phrygian (C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C)
C lydian (C D E F# G A B C)
C mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C)
C aeolian (C D Eb F G Ab Bb C)
C locrian (C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C)
This angle is much more useful when understanding how modes are used in music. (Each of those modes is the same notes as a particular major scale, but the difference is that the keynote is C in each case.)

Because so much of the music we're used to hearing is based on major and minor keys, we tend to hear modes as variations on the nearest parallel major or minor key, and it helps to list them in order from "brightest" to "darkest";
C lydian = C major with #4
C ionian = C major
C mixolydian = C major with b7
C dorian = C minor with major 6th
C aeolian = C (natural) minor
C phrygian = C minor with b2
C locrian = C minor with b5 and b2

Another common difference between music written in keys and music written in modes is that key-based music often (though not always) uses more chords, and faster chord changes. Modal music tends to have fewer chords, and one chord (or a pair of alternating chords) commonly lasts for a long time.

In jazz, there is even more difference: "modal jazz" tends to use chords built in 4ths, which sound like various types of sus chord; and when chords change, they change to chords using a different mode or scale. This is because modal jazz was deliberately designed to break with the past system of key-based music (centered around lots of chords mostly derived from the same scale).

In rock, rules are much less strict (because who cares, frankly!), and the most common practice is "mode mixture", which means the use of chords from both the parallel major and minor keys. So you can have a song "In the key of E major", using the usual E, A, B7, C#m (etc) chords (harmonized from the E major scale), but it might also use chords like D, G, C or Am, which work because they all come from the key of E minor. So you could say the tune was "in the key of E", understanding that the major/minor distinction is blurred. However those chords are used, the key centre will always sound like E.
The whole concept of keys and modes alike depends on being able to hear one note or chord as the tonal centre. We identify a key (or mode) by listening for a tonal centre (point of stability) not by looking at a piece of music.
Having said that, there's a fair amount of music around now (particularly in R&B and hip-hop) where it's hard to identify a key; the chords may well all come from the same scale, but - because of the practice of sequencing repeating chord loops - none of them really "sounds like home", the way it does in older forms of pop and rock.
I'm happy that after a bit more than 3 years of torturing a guitar I can actually understand most of this!
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  #18  
Old 06-17-2017, 11:01 AM
SunnyDee SunnyDee is offline
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Originally Posted by Gitarre View Post
I'm happy that after a bit more than 3 years of torturing a guitar I can actually understand most of this!
A year and a half for me - just a year with the instrument, from absolute novice in both music and guitar to intermediate player with an decent foundation in theory and ear-training. There's nothing wrong with learning both - to play and to understand what you're playing.
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  #19  
Old 06-17-2017, 11:13 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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I'm happy that after a bit more than 3 years of torturing a guitar I can actually understand most of this!
So, after all that torture, did you manage to "make it talk"?
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  #20  
Old 06-17-2017, 05:24 PM
FwL FwL is offline
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Originally Posted by Troyboi View Post
Anyway I was reading about Keys today such as the key of C. Am I correct in saying that if a song is in the key of C it just means that all the chords used in that song only use the notes CDEFGABC?

This is way too simplistic a view of the concept of key to be useful.

What makes a song "in the key of C" is that C is set up as the tonal center or "home base" regardless of the notes or chords used.

While simple songs may stick to only chords built from the C Major scale, you don't have to travel very far before you start running into all manner of variations and deviations. Even before the concept of keys was established it was already common practice to use Bb in place of B in what became the C Major scale.
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  #21  
Old 06-17-2017, 07:09 PM
Troyboi Troyboi is offline
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Wow...thanks for the replies and detailed information. It's great to finally find a forum where there are plenty of active members.
Well I can't say I now fully understand modes and scales after reading all of that (I'm still a bit confused with some of it) but I certainly do understand it a little bit better than I did before.
But I think I will take the advice of some replies and just concentrate more on learning to play and maybe worry about the theory further down the track. I thought I needed to learn the theory now in order to be able to play and understand chords etc.

I found a good site justinguitar.com and he has a PDF on Practical Music Theory with exercises etc so I might read that and do the exercises just so I can understand the basics at least.

Thanks again for the replies.
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  #22  
Old 06-17-2017, 07:47 PM
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rick-slo rick-slo is offline
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Originally Posted by Troyboi View Post
Wow...thanks for the replies and detailed information. It's great to finally find a forum where there are plenty of active members.
Well I can't say I now fully understand modes and scales after reading all of that (I'm still a bit confused with some of it) but I certainly do understand it a little bit better than I did before.
But I think I will take the advice of some replies and just concentrate more on learning to play and maybe worry about the theory further down the track. I thought I needed to learn the theory now in order to be able to play and understand chords etc.

I found a good site justinguitar.com and he has a PDF on Practical Music Theory with exercises etc so I might read that and do the exercises just so I can understand the basics at least.

Thanks again for the replies.
Sounds like a good plan. Report back from time to time on what you are working on.
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  #23  
Old 06-17-2017, 09:07 PM
FwL FwL is offline
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Originally Posted by Troyboi View Post
Wow...thanks for the replies and detailed information. It's great to finally find a forum where there are plenty of active members.
Well I can't say I now fully understand modes and scales after reading all of that (I'm still a bit confused with some of it) but I certainly do understand it a little bit better than I did before.
But I think I will take the advice of some replies and just concentrate more on learning to play and maybe worry about the theory further down the track. I thought I needed to learn the theory now in order to be able to play and understand chords etc.

I found a good site justinguitar.com and he has a PDF on Practical Music Theory with exercises etc so I might read that and do the exercises just so I can understand the basics at least.

Thanks again for the replies.

You don't need theory to play music. All you need is technique.

But you do need theory to understand music.

Nothing says you can't work on both at the same time if you so desire.
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  #24  
Old 06-17-2017, 10:56 PM
Troyboi Troyboi is offline
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Originally Posted by FwL View Post
You don't need theory to play music. All you need is technique.

But you do need theory to understand music.

Nothing says you can't work on both at the same time if you so desire.
I'll work on both but I think I might understand the theory better as I progress and learn more about chords and hear them and play them etc.
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  #25  
Old 06-18-2017, 04:55 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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I'll work on both but I think I might understand the theory better as I progress and learn more about chords and hear them and play them etc.
Exactly. The music makes sense of theory, rather than vice versa.

Theory only really describes what's going on in music, and is often somewhat clumsy at doing even that. It certainly doesn't explain music, IME.
Still, those descriptive terms, however crude and simplistic, are useful! Where would you be as a guitarist if you didn't know this weird finger shape was called "G", while this other one was called "E7", etc. Those are theory terms. The more terms you know, the easier it is to talk about music. But you have to play it (and hear it) to understand it.
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  #26  
Old 06-18-2017, 08:13 AM
RustyAxe RustyAxe is offline
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I'll work on both but I think I might understand the theory better as I progress and learn more about chords and hear them and play them etc.
Yes, exactly. That's how a structured program does it. Hear it, play it, understand it. Make the music first, then learn why it works the way it does.
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  #27  
Old 06-18-2017, 03:19 PM
Wyllys Wyllys is offline
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Originally Posted by RustyAxe View Post
Yes, exactly. That's how a structured program does it. Hear it, play it, understand it. Make the music first, then learn why it works the way it does.
Yup.

As my sig states: Theory is the post mortem of music...
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