Learnin' Your Modes

BTMN

BTMN

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Some of the coolest info I've heard in a while.

From a Dean Forum member Jag Panzer:

I would start working on my modes if I were you. They are very helpful for soloing and very easy to remember.

Why are they easy to remember? They all the same notes, but they start on a different note.

Play a basic C major scale - C D E F G A B C

Thats also known as the Ionian mode.

Now play the same notes but start and

end on the D - D E F G A B C D

Notice that the sound is very different. This is the Dorian mode.

E to E is Phrygian (very popular in metal)

F to F is Lydian

G to G is Mixolydian

A to A is Aeolian (also known as a minor scale)

B to B is Locrian

Sweet! I worked an hour this am on E and G and a lil A. Even tried B. :angry: /emoticons/default_blink.png

Life IS Good!

 
Another posted this in the thread for remembering names of modes......

If Dora Likes Mike Alls Lost

IONIAN

DORIAN

LYDIAN

MYXOLYDIAN

AEOLIAN

LOCRIAN

 
I like to think of it this way:

Ionian's your basic major scale. and if you:

- flat the 7th, you've got mixolydian

- flat the 7th and 3rd, you've got dorian (or the original minor key)

- raise the 4th, you've got lydian (or the original major key)

flatting the 6th in dorian gets you aeolian (regular minor). unflatting the 7th in aeolian gives you the harmonic minor (and 95% of Yngwie's soloing /emoticons/default_blink.png)

flatting the 2nd in aeolian (regular minor) gets you phrygian. unflatting the 3rd in phrygian gets you some nice indian/arabic sounding stuff. unflatting the 7th in phyrggian gets the same effect, and to go all out with that exotic sound, unflat both (the 3rd and 7th) :angry:

and then in phrygian, flatting the 5th gets you locrian, and then you'll find that you can't resolve anywhere and basically can only go in annoying circles. IMHO, flatting the 5th (not the same thing as raising the 4th btw), is like cutting your dick off - you *can* do it, but why?

 
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btw, I think of scales and modes in this way because A: I've gotten way lazy since my college days and I barely even read music anymore, so I hate thinking of (read: trying to keep track of) note names, and B: thinking about raising/lowering/keeping natural each step in the scale gives you hella more options than the seven traditional modes. Like, what if you ONLY want to flat the 5th? Instead of trying to remember what mode that is (none that I know of off the top of my head), ya just do it /emoticons/default_blink.png

also, by seeing which four modes I explicate most simply, you can see which ones I only ever really bother using :angry: (ionian, mixolydian, dorian, lydian, although rarely I'll use regular minor too)

 
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Some of the coolest info I've heard in a while.From a Dean Forum member Jag Panzer:

I would start working on my modes if I were you. They are very helpful for soloing and very easy to remember.

Why are they easy to remember? They all the same notes, but they start on a different note.

Play a basic C major scale - C D E F G A B C

Thats also known as the Ionian mode.

Now play the same notes but start and

end on the D - D E F G A B C D

Notice that the sound is very different. This is the Dorian mode.

E to E is Phrygian (very popular in metal)

F to F is Lydian

G to G is Mixolydian

A to A is Aeolian (also known as a minor scale)

B to B is Locrian

Sweet! I worked an hour this am on E and G and a lil A. Even tried B. :angry: /emoticons/default_blink.png

Life IS Good!
Click to expand...
That's cool for starters, but IMHO the way that's gonna be more useful over the long run is to figure out the modes from the same starting point. (This was reinforced by a lesson I had from John Scofield back in the '80s, in which he suggested the same thing.)

So from C you get:

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

And from E, which might be more congenial to guitarists, you get:

E ionian: E F# G# A B C# D# E

E dorian: E F# G A B C# D E

E phrygian: E F G A B C D E

E lydian: E F# G# A# B C# D# E

E mixolydian: E F# G# A B C# D E

E aeolian: E F# G A B C D E

E locrian: E F G A Bb C D E

IMO this gives you a better sense of how the sounds of the modes differ in relation to each other. If you just use the notes in the C scale in different combinations, it can be tricky to hear what the differences are.

Just my $0.02.

 
Here's my redneck take on it.

1. Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian are all major scales and are interchangeable as far as I'm concerned.

2. The other modes are all minor scales.

3. All of the minor modes have five common tones. Yep, you guessed it, our good old friend, the pentatonic minor. The five tones, by number, are the 1 or root, b3, 4,5,b7.

4. The 2 and the 6 are what I like to think of as "color tones." Between the first two notes of your pentatonic minor scale, you have two choices as to which note you'll use for the 2. The fret right above the first note sounds really evil. The next fret up sounds less evil.

5. Same concept holds true for the 6.

6. In summary, I wail over the good old pentatonic minor and whichever color tones I feel like using at the moment. I've also been known to use the b5 on occasion, if I'm feeling really obtuse.

7. I also know the modes in three-note-per-string patterns like JackButler (Kevin) illustrates in Intelli-Shred. Learn the pattern for the first six notes, forget about the 7th, and start the pattern over on the next root note an octave higher.

Cool thread btw. I'd give points to BTMN for this if I could! /emoticons/default_blink.png

Edited to add that I use the pentatonic major scale and add color tones in the same way for Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian.

 
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Ok now my brain aches not to mention my fingers! :angry: /emoticons/default_blink.png

 
Dude, this is off topic, but it's very hard to read your posts. Get hip to the typeface/colors that's easy on the eyeballs. Arial and Black would be a good start. /emoticons/default_blink.png

 
Not sure why it is hard to read for you. My posts all look good and clear on my screen in all the posts I've made. /emoticons/default_blink.png I like a lil color.

 
There is alot of conflicting information about modes around. First of all a mode is when the tonal center of a piece of music is not "doh."

For example, let's say you need to solo over a two chord progression, like A-G (full major bar chords, like the solo in the Door's "Light My Fire." You know you are not playing in either the key of A or the key of G because both chords are major.

You can always go back and forth between the A pentatonic and the G pentatonic, or you can use a seven note scale. In this case, you need to find the tonal center. Ask yourself which key has the A and G chords? Answer?: D The G chord would be the 4 chord and the A will be the 5 chord. Therefore, D is the parent key, and the tonal center is A-G.

Therefore, if we treat A-G as the tonal center, you can play the NOTES of a D major scale, which would be A Mixolydian.

This way, you dont have to memorize different scale patterns, just play the major scale pattern of the parent key, resolving to the tonal center.

BTMN's example is a basic outline. The problem is that the notes in the modes are not the same as the notes in the major scale. So, yes, C Dorian should start and end on D (D being the tonal center), but there is an Eb and a Bb in there, which is not in the key of C major. The mode has the quality of the Dm7 chord. That is why I don't like Scofield's way of learning the modes.

 
There is alot of conflicting information about modes around. First of all a mode is when the tonal center of a piece of music is not "doh." For example, let's say you need to solo over a two chord progression, like A-G (full major bar chords, like the solo in the Door's "Light My Fire." You know you are not playing in either the key of A or the key of G because both chords are major.

You can always go back and forth between the A pentatonic and the G pentatonic, or you can use a seven note scale. In this case, you need to find the tonal center. Ask yourself which key has the A and G chords? Answer?: D The G chord would be the 4 chord and the A will be the 5 chord. Therefore, D is the parent key, and the tonal center is A-G.

Therefore, if we treat A-G as the tonal center, you can play the NOTES of a D major scale, which would be A Mixolydian.

This way, you dont have to memorize different scale patterns, just play the major scale pattern of the parent key, resolving to the tonal center.

BTMN's example is a basic outline. The problem is that the notes in the modes are not the same as the notes in the major scale. So, yes, C Dorian should start and end on D (D being the tonal center), but there is an Eb and a Bb in there, which is not in the key of C major. The mode has the quality of the Dm7 chord. That is why I don't like Scofield's way of learning the modes.
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The beauty of Scofield's approach is that it's really a better way to hear modes as what they are in themselves, so you don't always get stuck trying always to refer back to some parent major scale, which often does not exist in the piece in any meaningful way. For example, if you're playing a tune, like, I dunno, "Down By The River," which spends a lot of time on just Em and A, you're better off just thinking of yourself as being in E dorian for those sections. It's doesn't make sense to think of being in D, because you're not. There's no D chord around, and D is not acting as the harmonic center.

The idea that should be abandoned is the idea that if you're playing in a mode, there's gotta be some parent major tonality around. Sometimes there is, but surprisingly often in popular music, there isn't. For example, there's an old Miles Davis tune, "So What," in which you just go, D dorian, Eb dorian, D dorian. If you're hung up on the parent major scale idea, you'll tell yourself that it's really going C Db C. But this is wrong and misleading, because there's not a single C chord, and at no point is C ever the tonal center. The modes in this piece *are* the tonal centers.

 
You forgot phrygian in your sentence. I learned the modal sentence as "If Dora Plays Like Me Alls Lost". Is that a mnemonic device? I've forgotten the word for that. As Richard said, it wasn't until I started playing them from the same starting point that I could hear what the feel or mood of each mode was. I have a book I picked up a few years ago by Dave Celentano called modal jams and theory that was pretty helpful and came with a CD of backing tracks so you could jam along in each mode(that helped me alot). Its been a while since I've looked at that now and I think I've forgotten it all so probably time to go back and relearn it again.

 
Richard,

I agree with you 100% that the modes are the tonal centers. The point of my post was to show an easy way to play modes without memorizing 7 different scale patterns.

In your example of down by the River, the tonal center is Em-A (or E Dorian)...you can play the notes of a D Major scale as long as you resolve to Em or A, and not D.

If you play Em-Am, you can get E Phyrigian, and all you have to do is move the scale pattern down a whole step. This works real well if you play the E minor at the 9th fret because you have the notes of the C Major scale (root at the 6th string, 8th fret) right under you.

 
Richard,I agree with you 100% that the modes are the tonal centers. The point of my post was to show an easy way to play modes without memorizing 7 different scale patterns.

In your example of down by the River, the tonal center is Em-A (or E Dorian)...you can play the notes of a D Major scale as long as you resolve to Em or A, and not D.

If you play Em-Am, you can get E Phyrigian, and all you have to do is move the scale pattern down a whole step. This works real well if you play the E minor at the 9th fret because you have the notes of the C Major scale (root at the 6th string, 8th fret) right under you.
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I know what you mean, and I agree that what you suggested may be the easiest way of introducing players to the Wonderful World of Modes . :angry: And what you say about playing the notes contained in a D major scale when you solo over Em-A in DBTR is quite right too.

My take is just that *in the long run*, we might as well bite the bullet and memorize the 7 patterns (and others, depending on how far we want to take the modal thang). The reason is that once you do this, you can call on the modes in a one-step process rather than making it a two-step process, as you would have to when referring back to an "original" major scale. It's just neater, at least to me.

Now, there's a whole other question related to modality and "parent keys"--like, when you're playing on an Em within a song nominally in the key of C, have you really switched to E phrygian, or are you merely emphasizing different tones within the overall parent key of C?

But that would be a topic for a whole other post.... /emoticons/default_blink.png

 
I agree that learning all the modal fingerings is a definite plus for the long term. Bear in mind that there are -different- conventions for the fingerings also.

The one's I learned (from a teacher) are not the usual box-pattern ones I've seen since. They are three notes per string, with a slightly ascending pattern. Cool thing is that the pattern on the high e-string mirrors the next modes low e-string pattern.

 
lotsa good info, guys.

i'm like toby in that i learned all the modes back in college, but now i usually just throw in various color tones (over a maj or min pentatonic) instead of sticking to one mode.

learning what modes go w/ what chords will make them useful in real playing situations. again, like toby, i hardly ever found myself in harmonic scenes where i needed lydian; if a chord had a b5, i'd just nail that tone then move on instead of thinking "ok, time for lydian". ymmv.

another useful thing is liknking the mode patterns on the neck;

if C-maj has the same notes as D-dorian and E-phrygian,

you can connect the 3 fingering patterns together, in this case from

the 8th fret C-maj pattern up thru the 12th fret E-phrygian pattern.

try it.

 
I found the Modes section of Matt Smith's Chop Shop to be very helpful. It addresses the seven different modal shapes or "fingerings", but within the parent key concept. He also hits the tonal flavor differences between the different modes.

For me it provided clarity on what had been a confusing subject (tritone substitutions anyone??), as well as an easy way to get ideas for appropriate runs based on the both the key of the song as well as the chords within it that the song keeps resolving to...

It is a great book for the intermediate player that wants to push on.

edited for typ[o

 
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