understanding modes

[CalledToArms]

I like that you brought up the 7th chords again. As usual, I will preface my post by saying I am new to a lot of this so what I say could be very wrong. But I started messing around with some chords this weekend and saw that the modes (even if youre not really using "modal" playing I guess) come in handy when youre doing 'jazzy' chords that like to throw in augmented and diminished notes here and there.

Or even say just a dominant 7 chord , here the mixolydian sounded great since it has all the major intervals of the major scale except for the flatted 7/minor 7. Or I saw some jazz transcription today that was some major 7th with a #11 thrown in at times. I was thinking here it would be interesting to use lydian to stress that augmented 4th/11.

simple to most, and i know its not really "modal" but it seemed interesting to mess with.

[newbieguitarmaker]

I bought Doug Doppler's dvd and it helps a lot, I didn't think some of those exercises would be so hard, they seem so easy.

[rastachild]

Originally Posted by CalledToArms

I like that you brought up the 7th chords again. As usual, I will preface my post by saying I am new to a lot of this so what I say could be very wrong. But I started messing around with some chords this weekend and saw that the modes (even if youre not really using "modal" playing I guess) come in handy when youre doing 'jazzy' chords that like to throw in augmented and diminished notes here and there.

Or even say just a dominant 7 chord , here the mixolydian sounded great since it has all the major intervals of the major scale except for the flatted 7/minor 7. Or I saw some jazz transcription today that was some major 7th with a #11 thrown in at times. I was thinking here it would be interesting to use lydian to stress that augmented 4th/11.

simple to most, and i know its not really "modal" but it seemed interesting to mess with.

7th chords give your harmony more richness and flavor, but they do restrain your options more as far as what mode you can play merely due to the fact that 4 notes of the scale have been defined as opposed to 3. however, 7th chords are a great way to get a feeling for the modes and how they work (or can work for you). maybe this will help you or someone else:

MAJOR 7TH (1,3,5,7) - major (ionian), lydian
DOMINANT 7TH (1,3,5,b7) - mixolydian
MINOR 7TH (1,b3,5,b7) - natural minor (aeolian), phrygian, dorian
HALF DIMINISHED (1,b3,b5,b7) - locrian

the 7th chords above define those modes, although with a few modes, the defining note is not present in the chord (i.e., #4 with lydian or b2 with phrygian). of course there are chords that feature these notes, but they are 9th and 11th chords that come into play at that point.

one other thing to keep in mind: the modes of the major scale aren't the only modes out there. there is also melodic minor (ascending) and harmonic minor and they each have 7 modes associated with them. most people are familiar with harmonic minor's most popular mode, built off of its 5th degree, phrygian dominant: 1,b2,3,4,5,b6,b7. as you can see by the scale degrees (and by the name of the mode, lol), it works over a dominant 7th chord.

but my favorite modes by far are the melodic minor modes. don't get me wrong, phrygian dominant is an awesome mode and very useful for spicing up melodies and solos, but the other modes of harmonic minor can be a little dissonant due to the augmented 2nd interval. melodic minor has no crazy intervals, so it's got a lot of really useful modes. my faves here are lydian dominant (1,2,3,#4,5,6,b7) and mixolydian b6 (1,2,3,4,5,b6,b7). lydian dominant is just all sorts of awesome. works great over a dominant 7th and gives you the beautiful tritone without the rigid leading tone. mixolydian b6 is a mode used a lot in jazz and has a wonderful sadness to it. just playing the sequence of notes from 3,4,5,b6 evokes such emotion. at least to me, lol. it also works great over your dominant chord.

and then there are other non-modal scales that you can use too, like the half-whole diminished scale (aka octatonic or symmetrical) and the whole tone scale that work well for spicing up your music. you don't have to feel limited, there are usually at least a few options at any given time. you just need to have an open mind and experiment

[CalledToArms]

i just wanted to say that phrygian dominant sounds awesome over a full major chord was messing around with it last night.

[CalledToArms]

Alright, resident mode noob is back with a question about a chord progression Im using in a new song. I think I am a little more familiar with modes than I was the last time I started asking questions that were over my head (at least I hope ) This post is pretty long but I could definitely use feedback/ideas! I really tried to dig and do some research after posts like rasta's

The progression is PART 1 E-F-Am (x2) then PART 2 C-Am-A#/Bb (x2) in each case the first chord is a whole note and the last two chords are half notes

I wrote it without thinking in terms of music theory, it was just a progression that sounded cool to my ears, but now that I want to put a lead on top of it, I have started to kind of evaluate it this 1) so I can ultimately get a cool lead laid out for it, and 2) it seemed like a good exercise for modes after I looked at the progression I had put together.

First thing that I noticed was the presence of 2 major chords 1 half step apart to start my first progression (the E to F). They immediately gave off a cool vibe which is why I liked them when I was writing. After looking some stuff up, it seems like the E-F-Am leans very hard to being an A harmonic minor progression - more specifically an E Phrygian Dominant progression since I started with the V-VI. To me, this calls for using E Phrygian Dominant on top of the first 2 chords to really bring out the sound of those 2 Maj chords next to each other evoked -or- maybe E mixolydian over the E to E phrygian dominant over the F if starting on E phrygian dominant was too "specific" to start with. This 2nd option provides a b7 which then moves into the adding the b2 and b6 over the F which might be kind of cool.

This brings me to the Am chord after the E and F. First thing I thought of was simply playing A harmonic minor of top of this since it is the key that my E Phrygian dominant was based off of – thus it shares the same notes and would flow pretty well. The 2nd was to play A Phrygian to kind of keep the Phrygian sound and A has Phrygian if you look at it in terms of Fmaj. The 3rd thought I had dealt with looking ahead to chords 4, 5, and 6 in my progression. I noticed that C-Am-A#/Bb is certainly NOT in A harmonic minor. These chords seemed to come from F major – or more specifically they formed a C mixolydian sound because it didn’t include an F but instead started on the C and ended on the chord based off a b7 of C.

This led me to think of doing something interesting on top of the Am chord in PART 1 to indicate/transition smoothly into F maj / C mixo. Perhaps on the last time I am playing Am from PART 1, I could think about using E Locrian over the Am chord since this is the mode of E found in F maj. It seems it would both flow well after the Fmaj chord and segueing into the C mixo progression. This would also make my lead be something like E mixo – E phryg dom – E locrian which kind of keeps it congruent and adds darker tones each time ie (b7, then b2,b6,b7, then b2,b3,b5,b6,b7) I liked this because PART 2 of my progression has significantly lighter/brighter sound and would be a good contrast to PART 1.

This of course brings me to the 2nd part of my progression, but this post is already long so I think Ill save analyzing part 2 for later and see what any of you think.

SUMMARY:

Part 1 of my progression:

E – F – Am

Possible leads:
E mixolydian (or major) to E Phrygian dominant to A harmonic minor
E mixolydian(or major) to E Phrygian dominant to A phrygian
E mixolydian(or major) to E Phrygian dominant to E Locrian

Thanks guys, you all have always helped me a ton!

[skins345669]

I've found it easier to use the logic that modes are essentially the same as a normal well known key, such as natural minor, but starting on a different note. Using the logic that all these related modes use the same notes as the Natural Minor, I realised that they are all essentially part of the same scale. Eg; A Natural Minor (or Aeolian) is the same as F Lydian. Now at this point, I lose track of quite what I did but I ended up getting this:

You can play any mode using the Natural Minor pattern, but in a different key, relative to the mode you want.

So, for an F Lydian, play A Natural Minor

or

for C Locrian, play Bb Natural Minor


So to show all of it:
Aeolian : No shift
Locrian : -2 / +10 semitones ( so play the Natural Minor with the root 2 semitones down from the key you're playing in in the natural minor [it's all the same scale remember] )
Ionian : -3 / +9
Dorian : -5 / +7
Phygrian : +7 / -5
Lydian : -8 / +4
Mixolydian : -10 / +2


This may sound confusing but when explained properly it makes it all so simple. It's great for playing lead, but I haven't tried to apply it to rhythm parts yet.

[mcmurray]

+1000 to eviltwin's post.

It does your ear no favors to think of modes relative to other scales.

Thinking of them as a major or minor scale with altered scale degrees makes sense, and most importantly, the modal flavour will be heard.

Originally Posted by eviltwin

I think most people try to explain modes by taking a scale and starting on a different note. Technically this is correct and also works for modes of more exotic scales.

But when you are playing (or composing) this doesn't really help you. IMHO it is better to think of modes as scales with one or more notes shifted. (Adressed in the second part of Troy Stetina's outline as 'Parallel Modes')

I started playing pentatonic blues scales first. I like to use Aeolian as the scale of reference since it is build up out of three superimposed pentatonic scales (i,iv,v)

In the blues scale it's actually the notes that aren't there, which can lend charater to a lick or melody: the flatted fifth, the lowered second etc.

Aeolian already contains a minor third, a minor sixth and a minor seventh. Shift the second to a flatted second, and Aeolian becomes Phrygian (check out Satriani's 'War' on how to use the two in one progression. Also shift the fifth down and you end up with Locrian (a difficult -no fifth- and extremely dark sounding scale)

Shift one up from Aeolian (raise minor sixth to sixth) and you are on Dorian, the 'happiest' of minor scales (Santana)

From Dorian you only need to raise the third to get to the first major scale in the set: Mixolydian still contains a minor seventh; Dorian and Mixolydian are pretty ambiguous. With Dorian the happy minor, comes Mixolydian: a darker major scale, good for country.

The next two are Ionian (the major scale) by raising the seventh and lastly Lydian: raised fourth. Lydian is really the happiest sounding of the lot (major second, major third, raised fourth, major sixth) A favorite of Vai, but it's also used for the Simpsons theme.

In order to use them, you should not only hear how they relate to chords and progressions, but you also need to play them as such: derived from simple box patterns across the neck (pentatonic), or within chord shapes and lastly along the neck (on one string)

Another thing to try is play a simple partial chord (root-fifth, or root-octave) or partial arpeggio, on every note of a scale all the way up the neck, while droning the root on an open string. Then repeat this with a different partial chord (root-sixth, root-ninth, etc.)

What worked for me is to visualize the half-steps (in Aeolian between 2nd and m3 as well as between 5th and m6) The halfsteps can be good reference points for the notes that make the scale.

[MattyG]

People need to understand that the major scale itself is in fact a mode, as is the natural minor scale.
These two scales date back many centuries, and are the 'leftovers' of ancient plainsong.
They were the two best suited to the harmonic writing that was developing at that stage and have remained ever since.

[_FR0D0]

Originally Posted by MattyG

People need to understand that the major scale itself is in fact a mode, as is the natural minor scale.
These two scales date back many centuries, and are the 'leftovers' of ancient plainsong.
They were the two best suited to the harmonic writing that was developing at that stage and have remained ever since.

they are the best for classic western harmony leading tone composing, but in other musical context the are not the "best" ones.

[MattyG]

Originally Posted by _FR0D0

but in other musical context the are not the "best" ones.

That's an opinion, not an actual fact, though I do agree with you.