modes...

[hubcapsc]

As I stumbled through learning what little I know about
theory, I remember struggling with modes of the major scale
and why they're important and what you can do with them.

I decided modes in the major scale are just offsets from the
first mode:

ionian: w w h w w w h
dorian: w h w w w h w
and so on...

I guess it is important to name them so you can talk about them.
You could just as well say "the first mode", "the second mode" and
so on to I guess.

Today, though, I was listening to Rick Beato's "scales and modes"
video, he got to talking about lydian and played some of the intervals
on his piano... da da da da da... BOING... why that's Todd Rundgren's
"don't you ever listen". I googled it up and there it was, people talking
about how "don't you ever listen" has a lydian structure.

Ida know... I thought it was pretty cool...

-Mike

[Kerbie]

I love noodling in various modes, especially Dorian, Aeolian and Mixolydian. I know... call me nuts... I enjoy it.

[TBman]

What do you do with modes though?

How would modes affect a instrumental based on a I V VI progression for instance?

[hubcapsc]

Originally Posted by TBman

What do you do with modes though?

How would modes affect a instrumental based on a I V VI progression for instance?

I can't speak to your example (anyone?)...

But by recognizing by ear that a song is in a particular mode, you
could start guessing the chord structure by poking around with
chords that are common to that mode in that key...

-Mike

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

As I stumbled through learning what little I know about
theory, I remember struggling with modes of the major scale
and why they're important and what you can do with them.

I decided modes in the major scale are just offsets from the
first mode:

ionian: w w h w w w h
dorian: w h w w w h w
and so on...

I guess it is important to name them so you can talk about them.
You could just as well say "the first mode", "the second mode" and
so on to I guess.

Today, though, I was listening to Rick Beato's "scales and modes"
video, he got to talking about lydian and played some of the intervals
on his piano... da da da da da... BOING... why that's Todd Rundgren's
"don't you ever listen". I googled it up and there it was, people talking
about how "don't you ever listen" has a lydian structure.

Ida know... I thought it was pretty cool...

-Mike

You've got the idea.

Modes are not things that are part of the major scale, "offsets" of it as you thought first. Lots of guitarists make that mistake (due to bad teaching or picking partial info from the internet).

They are sounds in their own right. Like keys, but with specific alterations.

So lydian mode is "the major key with #4". It's a rare sound, but two good rock examples are Joe Satriani's Flying in a Blue Dream and Pink Floyd's Terminal Frost.

Mixolydian mode is "major key with b7" and is much more common, in fact it's rock's favourite mode. Common in folk music too (She Moved Through The Fair, Blackwaterside, etc). In rock it's usually mixed in with the major key - e.g., you'll find songs in E major with a D chord (mixolydian bVII) as well as a B chord (major keyV). Just occasionally you get a pure mixolydian song, like the Beatles She Said She Said.

Dorian mode is "minor key with major 6th" (and no harmonic minor raised 7th). Pretty common, again in folk (Scarborough Fair) and in jazz (So What). In pop/rock, examples are Oye Como Va (Santana), and Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees).

Aeolian is the minor key without any harmonic minor alteration - ie., natural minor alone. Pretty common, but maybe less common than you think. Examples: All Along The Watchtower, and Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill.#

Phrygian is "minor with b2". This is almost as rare as lydian mode, and has a distinctive "dark" or "Spanish" sound. In rock: Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. In hip hop, Montell Jordan's This Is How We Do It. It's easy to confuse phrygian with major phrygian, which is a much more "flamenco" sound than plain phrygian. E.g., if you make Em your home chord, and alternate it occasionally with F, you have phrygian mode. But if you make E major your home chord, still with an occasional F, then you have major phrygian, aka phrygian dominant, or (more accurately) "hijaz", an Arabic scale.

Locrian is rarest of all, and I only know one tune in pure locrian mode: John Kirkpatrick's Dust to Dust. Bjork's Army of Me is often said to be locrian mode, but it's only locrian in part, and not very clearly.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by TBman

What do you do with modes though?

How would modes affect a instrumental based on a I V VI progression for instance?

In short, they don't. You might have a choice of scale, but the mode is fixed by the chords.

It depends whether you mean those chords are all major, and if those are the only chords you have.

If you mean a diatonic I V vi, such as C-G-Am, then in theory two scales could fit: C major or G major; the difference being whether you use F or F# in your melody or improvisation.
What mode you call it then depends on which chord is the key chord. That's not necessarily the first chord, but the chord that sounds most like "home", the tonal centre.
If C is "home" then it's C major or C lydian. I-V-vi.
If G is "home" then it's G major or G mixolydian. IV-I-ii.
If Am is "home" then it's A aeolian or A dorian. III-VII-i.
Of course, your choice of F or F# might well determine which chord does sound like "I"; but more likely it would be the chord that lasts longest, the one you'd end on.

OTOH, if you had a sequence like C-F-G, or C-Am-F-G, then the scale is determined. It's pretty clearly C major the whole way and modes don't apply (unless you want to call it "C ionian"). You could, in theory, change your scale for each chord, but it would sound weird.
But if your sequence was G-G-G-F-C-G and so on, then G is likely to sound like the key chord, meaning it's G mixolydian mode. I.e., it's "in G", not "in C". A classic rock example is Gloria, which is "in E", with D and A as passing chords. It's obviously not "in A major", but neither is it "E major", becuase it has D and not B.

Lastly, if you really did mean something like C-G-A, all major, then you have "mixed mode", because of the C# in the A chord. Mode mixture is pretty common, in fact it's the central principle of rock theory. What scale(s) you use might depend on the style of the song, but you clearly have to make some kind of change around the C and C# at least.

In short, however, as a musician you really don't need to care about any of this. The Beatles used modes without knowing or caring about any of the jargon, and so do folk singers. The problem with learning theory is you can start to believe there are rules about what you can and can't do.

[hubcapsc]

Originally Posted by JonPR

You've got the idea.

Modes are not things that are part of the major scale, "offsets" of it as you thought first. Lots of guitarists make that mistake (due to bad teaching or picking partial info from the internet).

They are sounds in their own right. Like keys, but with specific alterations.

Thanks for all the examples ... if this chart is right, it is
why I tried to describe the modes as offsets of each other...
I screen-shotted my chart since I don't know how to
preserve white-space on the forum...



As you say, they are sounds in their own right... it seems
that if we could recognize these sounds when listening
we could be a step closer to being able figure out songs
by ear.

Rick Beato also described the modes in terms of formulas,
as in your So lydian mode is "the major key with #4",
but I don't yet see that from looking at the chart in my picture.

-Mike "I can figure out 1 4 5 songs in major keys sometimes "

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

So lydian mode is "the major key with #4",
but I don't yet see that from looking at the chart in my picture.

Major key (ionian): wwhwwwh

Now, sharp the 4th note in the scale. Your sequence would now be ww... sharp the next tone so we have a w, then back to a h... wwwh. Put that all together, and we get

Lydian: wwwhwwh

The chart is correct but a bit misleading, since they lydian mode doesn't start on the 4th note of the scale. It still starts on the first note of the scale; it just uses the pattern that would come from starting on the 4th note.

[JonPR]

Just to say what Chipotle said, slightly differently:

C major scale: C   .   D   .   E   F   .   G   .   A   .   B   C
               |   W   |   W   | H |   W   |   W   |   W   | H | 
              
C lydian mode: C   .   D   .   E   .   F#  G   .   A   .   B   C
               |   W   |   W   |   W   | H |   W   |   W   | H | 

C is the keynote in both cases.

Here's that Satriani C lydian study - listen out for the F# note (the D chord over the C bass):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SINl5JY7LhI
It's not C lydian all the way, it changes to Ab lydian (1:00), and to G and F lydian later.

[hubcapsc]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Just to say what Chipotle said, slightly differently:

C major scale: C   .   D   .   E   F   .   G   .   A   .   B   C
               |   W   |   W   | H |   W   |   W   |   W   | H | 
              
C lydian mode: C   .   D   .   E   .   F#  G   .   A   .   B   C
               |   W   |   W   |   W   | H |   W   |   W   | H | 

C is the keynote in both cases.

Here's that Satriani C lydian study - listen out for the F# note (the D chord over the C bass):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SINl5JY7LhI
It's not C lydian all the way, it changes to Ab lydian (1:00), and to G and F lydian later.

That picture does it for me... my confusion has been focusing on
the intervals, not the notes... it is clear now that the fourth note
is sharped by changing the third interval...

Not only that but I see how you used "code" to keep the whitespace
and I guess "font" to pick something non-proportional ...

-Mike

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by TBman

What do you do with modes though?

How would modes affect a instrumental based on a I V VI progression for instance?

Jon's already posted some great answers. But I'll throw in that this is a common confusion. I remember (too long ago...) first encountering modes as well as altered jazz scales, and thinking that you could just apply them over standard chords. I'd try soloing over, say, a Beatles' tune chord progression and using a different mode, or adding b5's from a jazz scale and so on, and it just sounded wrong. I was puzzled at first - why did people get so excited about these things? They didn't fit. The answer is that scales and harmony are intricately connected. You don't just play, for example, Dorian mode over a I-IV-V progression. Modes imply both a scale and a harmony, you have to use them together.

This is why the all too common approach of treating modes as being offsets from a major scale isn't helpful. Yes, you can derive the modes that way, but it has nothing to do with how you use them or how they sound. It's better to understand the interval relationships and the sound/harmony. For example, the difference between mixolydian and a major scale, is that mixolydian has a lowered 7th. The difference between Dorian mode and the natural minor scale (aka Aeolean mode) is that Dorian has a raised 6th. So for example, harmony (1, 4, 5 chords) in the key of D natural minor might be Dm, Gm, Am, while in Dorian mode, you would use Dm, G (major) and Am because D Dorian has a B natural in the scale, while D Aeolean has a Bb.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

That picture does it for me... my confusion has been focusing on
the intervals, not the notes... it is clear now that the fourth note
is sharped by changing the third interval...

Not really.
I know what you mean, but you're using "interval" in a misleading way.
Intervals (in scales or chords) are measured from the root, at least when defining the scale or chord.
The changed interval is indeed the 4th. In the major scale (and in fact in all modes other than lydian) it's "perfect" (C-F, 5 half-steps). In lydian mode it's "augmented" (C-F#, 6 half-steps).
The 3rd interval remains the same: C-E = "major 3rd" (4 half-steps).

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

Not only that but I see how you used "code" to keep the whitespace
and I guess "font" to pick something non-proportional ...

-Mike

Yes!

[hatamoto]

I'd like to share this since Locrian doesn't get much love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el1ZhkN85Mc

[hubcapsc]

The changed interval is indeed the 4th. In the major scale (and in fact in all modes other than lydian) it's "perfect" (C-F, 5 half-steps). In lydian mode it's "augmented" (C-F#, 6 half-steps).

Your post made my eyes glaze over ... I've looked over it twice and
thought about it some. I do see that in my chart every mode except
lydian begins with two W's and one H in whatever order...

There was a fellow in my high school, Rickey Godfrey, who went
on to become a professional musician out of Nashville. I got the
chance once in high school to ask him to figure out a song for me.
I put on either "To Ramona" or "Stuck Inside of Mobile" and he
commented incredulously "you don't see how to play that?"...
Anywho... some of us get it more easily than others, but it is still
fun ...

-Mike

[TBman]

Originally Posted by JonPR

In short, they don't. You might have a choice of scale, but the mode is fixed by the chords.

It depends whether you mean those chords are all major, and if those are the only chords you have.

If you mean a diatonic I V vi, such as C-G-Am, then in theory two scales could fit: C major or G major; the difference being whether you use F or F# in your melody or improvisation.
What mode you call it then depends on which chord is the key chord. That's not necessarily the first chord, but the chord that sounds most like "home", the tonal centre.
If C is "home" then it's C major or C lydian. I-V-vi.
If G is "home" then it's G major or G mixolydian. IV-I-ii.
If Am is "home" then it's A aeolian or A dorian. III-VII-i.
Of course, your choice of F or F# might well determine which chord does sound like "I"; but more likely it would be the chord that lasts longest, the one you'd end on.

OTOH, if you had a sequence like C-F-G, or C-Am-F-G, then the scale is determined. It's pretty clearly C major the whole way and modes don't apply (unless you want to call it "C ionian"). You could, in theory, change your scale for each chord, but it would sound weird.
But if your sequence was G-G-G-F-C-G and so on, then G is likely to sound like the key chord, meaning it's G mixolydian mode. I.e., it's "in G", not "in C". A classic rock example is Gloria, which is "in E", with D and A as passing chords. It's obviously not "in A major", but neither is it "E major", becuase it has D and not B.

Lastly, if you really did mean something like C-G-A, all major, then you have "mixed mode", because of the C# in the A chord. Mode mixture is pretty common, in fact it's the central principle of rock theory. What scale(s) you use might depend on the style of the song, but you clearly have to make some kind of change around the C and C# at least.

In short, however, as a musician you really don't need to care about any of this. The Beatles used modes without knowing or caring about any of the jargon, and so do folk singers. The problem with learning theory is you can start to believe there are rules about what you can and can't do.

Can a progression be the basic framework of the instrumental and use different modes to get distinct flavors for melodies written within that progression?