Let's take the C Major scale which consists of C, D, E, F, G, A, B and back to C.The bare basic way to think about the modes is: play the scale starting at another note.So, the C major scale can be played starting at C:C D E F G A B C (C - C)Or starting at D:D E F G A B C D (D - D)It's the same exact notes of the scale, you just start at the 2nd note & end at the second note. This is Dorian.You can keep on going; start & end on the 3rd, then the 4th, then the 5th, then the 6th and finally the 7th.Putting it all together we get 7 modes of C Major.
Ionian (CDEFGABC). Dorian (DEFGABCD). Phrygian (EFGABCDE). Lydian (FGABCDEF). Mixolydian (GABCDEFG).
Aeolian (ABCDEFGA). Locrian (BCDEFGAB)Again, you take the basic C Major scale & start & end it on another note. Same pattern, same intervals, just change where you start & end it.The usage is 100% up to you. If you want to play in C Major (continuing the example) you now have more options. You can play any of the 7 C Major modes and still be in key.Another great use of the modes is that you can string them together.
Since each note shows up on the fretboard many times you can string modes together to help you move up and down the board. Play C Ionian on the 8th fret of the 6th string; when you get to the C octave on 4th string fret 10 you can then slide into 12th fret of the 4th string (which is a D) and start Dorian. Now you're starting up an octave and you've moved hand position up the board by a couple frets. You can continue that all the way thru.Creatively string together the modes (you don't have to play all the notes each time) yield you a decent little solo =).
Modes are often seen as one of the trickier musical concepts to get to grips with, but once the basic theory clicks into place you’ll see that it’s very easy to introduce them to your compositions and create distinctive melodic feels. Enter the exciting, nuanced world of the seven musical modes with our guide to understanding, building, and using these expressive scales.
Arin's answer has some truth but potentially confuses things. Playing the notes in the C scale starting on D is in fact a Dorian scale but it is the D Dorian. Playing the same notes found in the C Ionian scale but starting on E gives you E Phrygian (not C Phrygian as some may interpret Arin to mean). The various modes are differentiated by the relative intervals between the notes (whole or semi tone).
Neil Meyer's answer below gives further explanation of the notes in the other modes of C (all of which contain notes unique to their respective modes).–Jan 16 '15 at 18:18. An analogy would be like throwing a ball at a coconut shy: You can either do the maths which calculates the trajectory, force required, etc and stand a good chance of hitting the coconut each time, or you can just chuck the ball and learn from how it 'felt'. Some like the maths & prediction, but 'play by ear' types (myself included) find it more fun to just throw the ball. Then you find out there's mathematics/theory which describe what you just did, which you feel you don't need to keep on doing it.–Dec 20 '16 at 11:22. The thing to realize about modes is that they are simply emphasizing different key notes in the same collection of notes.Take a scale, any scale, and 'emphasize' one note. This will make the 'Scale' sound different than if you emphasize a different note.C ionian and A aeolian are the common major and minor(almost) type of sound.
But they are exactly the same notes. What makes them different is that in one you are emphasizing C and in the other you are emphasizing A.That is, you somehow make the listener lock onto the root note. You do this by setting it up using certain techniques.For example, if you take CDEFGAB as your 'scale' but play a B in the background underneath everything you play, B will seem to dominate(not to be confused with the dominant) the sound. Every note will be heard against that B and your ears will treat B as the 'king' of all the notes.This means if you play a C against it you are playing a min2nd interval.
This interval doesn't exist in C major because the 2nd interval is D which gives a maj2nd. The other intervals are just as important and all of them relative to B give that characteristic sound which we call locrian.Now if you simply changed the root emphasis to A then that C is not a min3rd which gives a minor sound.For example, if you take a single line solo and play a B bass note it will transform the sound than if you played any other note.In fact, if you want, you can think of all modes, scales, keys, etc. As simply coming from the chromatic scale and whats makes all the different sounds different is simply emphasis. C major is the emphasis of the note C followed by others less and less so. A min is the exact same 12 notes but we emphasis an A as the root and others less and less.Effectively we create a hierarchy. You have your king, queen, prince, servants, etc.The best way to really hear it is to simply play the same scale over a minor chord and then a major chord and hear how it changes.Note that it is possible to play sort of major sound over a minor chord by emphasizing that a major sound in your solo.
E.g., if you play C E G over a static A bass note you'll have a more major sound than if you play C E A. This is because you are outlining(called an arpeggio) the C major chord even when the bass note is A.
Depending on a lot of factors you might hear the A note as being part of the C chord rather than the G being part of the Am chord. I.e., you have the notes A - C E G. But depending on context your brain might group them as A C E - G or A - C E G. The first case we have a sort of Am called Am7 and the second we have a sort of Cmaj6. Most likely you will hear Am7 unless the A bass note is very quite.In any case it doesn't matter much about the theory as you need to learn the sounds. You just have to know that it all depends on emphasis and context.
If I'm playing a Cmaj chord and you're playing a Dbmaj chord at the same time what key are we in(assuming that's all we are playing)? The answer is that it depends. They are part of our western music tradition. They are no harder to learn that any other scale. You can use them to give a feeling to the music that is unlike anything else.
To there uses I can say there use is the same as any other scale. They are used to make music.This explanation relies on you at the very least knowing what semi tones and whole tones are.
I do not think it is possible to learn them without you knowing that. I strongly you urge you to ask a theory teacher to explain that to you.You should not see them as any different to any other scale. A scale at its core is a set of notes with the semi tones and whole tones in specific places.
The Major scale has its semi tones between the third and fourth note in the scale and the seventh and eight. Seeing as the various modes have semi tones in different places they do not sound alike. If you play any popular type music training your ears to recognize the modes would be a tremendous skill to possess.No matter on which note you start from if the semi tones are at that spot you have a major scale. This is why to a certain degree all major scales sound alike. The distance between the notes are the same in all the Major Keys.So with that in mind we can use our knowledge of semi tones and whole tones on the Modes so we can learn what notes they have regardless on what note we start from.
A scale is not a stack of seconds - it is a collection of scale degrees, and the seconds between the notes is just something that happens whenever there's more than two notes involved. Classical students learn scales using intervals because that's how they were taught, however, that doesn't mean that it's correct. For example: The intervals of the Ddorian scale (WHWWWHW) appear when playing C major from D. That doesn't mean that you just played a D dorian. The only thing that matters is the tonic, and what the relations of all the notes played to it.–Feb 17 '17 at 17:10. What you describe (know the active chord, the tones in the chord and notes related to those tones) is tantamount to knowing your modes. You're basically saying you need to know your modes, just maybe not their names.
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It's like saying you don't need to know the C major scale as long as you now the C major chord, the tones in the C major chord and the notes related to those tones.So you don't need to know the C major scale, but you need to know the C major scale. How does this help?– user26571 Feb 15 '16 at 9:16. This answer ignores a broad swath of music that does not rely on chords but is distinctly modal. The overlap between such music and more chordal music is considerable, for example areas in songs or charts where a musician is allowed or required to expand on a single tonal center. Not all tonal centers are chord-based. Also, chords do not tell you all there is to know.
Consider a minor 7 chord on C. If the mode is phrygian, the neighbor tones are different from dorian. In the first, one would play D-flat and A-flat, in the second one would play D- or A-natural. Very different character.–Sep 2 '16 at 2:12. Ignore or forget anything that says 'starts from'.melodies that start on C might not be in the key of C or any of it's modes. It could be Em phygian or A minor!
'pickup notes' can be misleading. I would've understood modes 6 years earlier if every book or article didn't say 'STARTS FROM'. It's incredibly misleading and just plain wrong.situation #2 - chord progressions may produce modal changekey of C feels different with F in the bass vs B in the bass. What you're actually hearing is the difference between F Lydian and B locrian!!! This is the key to begin understanding.
It's still key of C, but when the bass changes it's a new CONTEXT.modal changes are better thought of as CONTEXTUAL changes.situation #3 - key changes may produce modal changePlay key of Ab with a C in the bass. Then move to key of G with a C in the bass. Bass note stays the same but what you're really hearing is Cm Phrygian moving to C Lydian. It's a key change AND a modal change!rule #1 - modes are directly related to style and emotion. Modal changes are better thought of as 'Mood Changes'you will never understand modes until you learn to quantify the emotional experience resulting from a mode and associating it accordingly. MAKE A LIST on your own of the MOOD you feel when you hear each mode. Do not listen to other's opinions of whether the mixolydian mode sounds 'bluesy' or 'jam band' or if the locian mode sounds like 'the circus' or 'sludge metal' or if Ionian sounds like 'lullaby' or 'pop punk'.
Only you can match your subjective reactions to the modes with the mode names themselves.Afterwords, you can use modes at will to cause an emotional effect. (I want to sound happy, now I want to sound evil) for example. For some styles of music, some modes (moods) are inappropriate and will never be used. Death Metal crowds do not want to hear Ionian. Pop Punk crowds do not want to hear Locrian.
Hippes LOVE mixolydian. Goth kids scream in terror when they hear mixolydian, unless if maybe it's coming from The Doors. Your answer is really close to the truth - correct regarding the tonal center and not the intervals, however, the tonal center is a single note, not a chord. The reason why we hear something as major or minor is because we've been spoonfed only ionian and aeolian music, which have 3 different scale degrees, thus are very audible.
However, the third really doesn't matter Higher level education tends to build on the that incorrect axiom that major and minor are entirely different things - and on the incorrect axiom that scales are audible (they are just theoretical guidelines).–Feb 17 '17 at 17:21. Modes are scales which share the same notes, but the context is different. What does that mean? Context means tonality - If we play C with the tonic (tonal center, most stable note) being C, it will sound a lot different than if the tonic was B (making C the b2, a very unstable note).For example: The modes of the C Major Scale are C Ionian, D Dorian, E Phrygian, F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian and B Locrian. The letter refers to the tonic and the name of the mode refers to the scale degrees:. Ionian: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.
Dorian: 1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7. Phrygian: 1-b2-b3-4-5-b6-b7. Lydian: 1-2-3-#4-5-6-7. Mixolydian: 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7. Aeolian: 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7.
Locrian: 1-b2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7So how do we make a certain note the tonic? A mistake made by a lot of people is to think that a you get a mode when you start on a different note. The tonic is the most used note, or the note of resolution for a phrase. If you play the notes of the C major scale from F, you are not going to get F Lydian, but C major. However, if you play the notes of the C major scale (doesn't matter on which note you start) with F in the bass, or always return to F (or F in the harmony, so on.), you will hear F Lydian.However, there is nothing mystical about modes and scales. You absolutely do not hear the sound of the mode, but the sound of its 'characteristic' scale degrees - Scale degrees that are different from what you're so used to hearing: In the Lydian scale, you hear the #4. In Mixolydian, you hear the b7 and so on.This is why scales are useless for ear training and for ear based improvisation - only serving as 'training wheels' for people without a strong ear, and a poor excuse for people to not do ear training.
Modes are one way of thinking about melodic lines and their underlying harmonies. They can be used as a compliment or an alternative to the 'usual' diatonic way of thinking about harmony. They predate diatonic harmony by a number of centuries in Western music. The diatonic system grew out of the modal system as it became more polyphonic because certain melodic tensions seemed to always resolve in certain ways (See for an excellent overview of the details). As other posters have pointed out, modes are basically just inversions of a scale.
As such, all scales have modes, though symmetric scales, like the diminished, have fewer modes than they have scale degrees (the diminished has eight degrees but only two modes). That said, the modes that have specific names are primarily inversions of the major scale.In modern usage modes are often a way to build more interesting melodies that fit with certain chords, or sometimes to generate chord changes themselves.An example of the first type of usage would be playing C Lydian over a C Major triad. The F sharp (a raised 4th) from the lydian doesn't clash with any of the chord tones, so if a composer or improviser wants a fourth in the melody she can chose to use the sharp four from the lydian.
That may not be the only or best way of thinking about or analyzing this note (maybe it's meant to imply a secondary dominant, for example), but this sort of chord/scale relational thinking is common especially in jazz.Also, each mode has a characteristic 'flavor.' So for the most common modes of the major scale: lydian sounds playful and whimsical (e.g.
Saria's song from the game Ocarina of Time), Mixolydian sounds like a primeval version of the major scale with it's flat leading tone ('In a Silent Way' is the best example I can think of), Phrygian is oftern associated with flamenco music (more stereotypically, you'll have heard it in the 'bull fighter' music that's played at sporting events), and Dorian has a funky, tongue in cheek sound (Herbie Hancock's 'Chameleon', Miles Davis' 'So What'). From these examples you can probably infer that these characteristic sounds emerge most clearly when the harmony remains relatively static or vamps between two or three chords. Modes are used in many types of music; from sacred music to jazz to rock.
Composers use it to add 'flavor' to their compositions in order to avoid predictability. It is formed by naming a different note as the root (1st) instead of the original root of the scale. Thus, in a way, modes can be defined as displaced major scales.Types of Modal ScalesIonian - Also known as the major scale; follows the pattern W-W-H-W-W-W-H.Dorian - Constructed from the second note of a major scale; follows the pattern W-H-W-W-W-H-W.Phrygian - Constructed from the third note of a major scale; follows the pattern H-W-W-W-H-W-W.Lydian - Constructed from the fourth note of a major scale; follows the pattern W.
This post was excerpted from lesson 7 of ‘s Berklee Online class,. The Construction of the Major ModesThe term modal scales is applied to a group of scales commonly used in pop and jazz music. Modes are different than the “regular” major and minor scales most students are familiar with. Each mode has a name, and mode names come from the Greek language and from a time before major and minor (as we know them) were clearly defined.The scale we now know as major was originally called the Ionian mode and its relative minor was known as Aeolian.We will use these two commonly known scales as a point of reference, as we look at the modal scales.Let’s look at the three major modes first: the Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian, each of which has major 3rds.Each mode has characteristic notes—particular notes that clearly set each apart from the regular major, or Ionian, scale. For example, notice that the 4th degree of the Lydian scale is a half step higher than its counterpart in the Ionian or major scale, and the 7th degree of the Mixolydian scale is a half step lower.When we talk about what key a piece of music is in, we often describe both the tonality (the tonic pitch), and the modality (the type of scale on that pitch). For example, “A minor” tells us the tonic pitch is “A” and the type of scale is “minor.” Using the same terminology, if we say a piece of music is in “G Mixolydian,” we are saying that the tonic pitch is “G” and the type of scale based on G is “Mixolydian.”Here is a simple melody in the key of C major.
Listen to how its character changes as it is “adjusted” to become first a Mixolydian, then a Lydian melody.There are four minor modes (those with minor 3rds), and we have already seen one of them, Aeolian. Since we are familiar with Aeolian—we know the scale by its other name, natural minor —we will use it as a point of reference. The following contrasts the Aeolian scale with the other three minor modes: Dorian, Phrygian, and Locrian.Notice that the Dorian scale has a 6th degree a half step higher than that found in Aeolian; the Phrygian scale has a 2nd degree a half step lower; and the Locrian scale has not only the lowered second degree but a lowered 5th degree, as well. These notes characterize the sound of these modes, setting them apart from “regular minor.”Let’s look at these minor modes on two other tonics—C and E.Let’s revisit our melody and see how it sounds, first of all adjusted to Aeolian as written, then as Dorian, Phrygian, and Locrian.Notice that Dorian sounds brighter than Aeolian, but Phrygian and especially Locrian have a much darker sound quality. Writing Modal MelodiesBecause our ears are more accustomed to hearing melodies in major, and to a lesser extent, “regular” minor, modal melodies have to work extra hard to promote their tonality and modality. Keep these points in mind as we approach our assignment, in which you will write a four-measure melody in each of the modes:1. Make use of all of the notes of the scale.
In the following melody, scale degree 6 is not used, making it impossible to know if Dorian or Aeolian.2. Make frequent use of the characteristic note of the scale. This melody could stand a few more F#s to ensure a Lydian sound.3. Emphasize the tonic note by using it frequently and for notes of longer duration, especially those on strong beats. Assuming this melody is supposed to be in C Mixolydian, it needs more C notes—especially those of longer duration and falling on strong beats.4.
Use a “melodic cadence” of scale degrees 2 to 1 and/or 7 to 1 at the end of each of your four-measure melodies. Melodic cadences, like harmonic cadences, resolve more strongly toward the tonic pitch than other scale members, helping to give the tonic greater emphasis. Notice in the following example that the sense of rest (cadence) is much stronger on C, in the example below.5. Avoid leaping or spanning the interval of a +4th or o5th, which occurs within each modal scale. This is an unstable interval with a strong tendency to resolve—but not to a place that we want it to go! It implies the dominant 7 of the relative major (the major scale with the same notes), and we do not want to go there.
In the following C Dorian example, the interval E ♭ to A, whether leaped or spanned, implies an F7, the dominant of B ♭ major, and we do not want B as the tonic; we want C.