Choices...

[tootsweetz]

Cool, then throw modes out, stop complaining about them and get on with practicing what works for you.
Peace
Arthur
PS others are taking time out just trying to help. If you don't need modes,then don't use modes)

 

[disco_volante]

tootsweetz wrote:
Cool, then throw modes out, stop complaining about them and get on with practicing what works for you.
Peace
Arthur
PS others are taking time out just trying to help. If you don't need modes,then don't use modes)

Er...........I wasn't comlaining about modes. Just expressing my opinion on the way I think about scales/modes when playing my instrument.

Cheers

 

[tootsweetz]

Disco Volante wrote:

tootsweetz wrote:
Cool, then throw modes out, stop complaining about them and get on with practicing what works for you.
Peace
Arthur
PS others are taking time out just trying to help. If you don't need modes,then don't use modes)

Er...........I wasn't comlaining about modes. Just expressing my opinion on the way I think about scales/modes when playing my instrument.

Cheers

Er....I wasn't replying to you. I was responding to Bubbie_king, unless you are two people here which is very confusing.

Bubbie_King was definitely complaining,sounding resentful for having been taught about modes because they robbed him of precious life since they have no value in his opinion.

 

[disco_volante]

Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick Arthur. I thought you were paraphrasing me - "what works for you".

Any way, I've sure picked up some useful ideas in this thread, which is what it's all about! 🙂

Cheers

 

[bubbie_king]

Doubt serves an education.

I complain because I dont have answers. For me Modes are still "open", I don't understand why they are taught. The truth is there has to be a good reason that you cannot give me. For SOOO much to be written on the subject, there has to be a "musical" explination that eludes us all.

Maybe most of you just play them without understanding why, and cannot explain it musically to me. Thats fine, but I keep complaining because the answer is not YET revealed.

I have seen MANY post online on this subject, and there are many decent answers and explinations out there, but this is a topic that usualy DIES before it is answered clearly.

sorry for complaining too much for ya, but I dont get clear answers from you either.

randy

 

[pauloalto]

Randy,

If I understand correctly your "holy grail" of modes is to find out what makes them different from other scales that use the same notes as them.

I think the answer is really that each mode evokes a unique musical sound. When you are playing in a specific mode, it doesn't matter which key you are in, your music has the feel of that particular mode.

Therefore I feel it is useful to practise modes as seperate scales in their own right.

For example - practising playing and improvising using all the Dorian scales will familiarise me with the Dorian sound and will teach me what sounds good when playing music that the Dorian mode works with.

To me that is easier than not having modes. You would have to think of each key signature as one scale no matter what the feel and sound of the music you're playing is. You would have to switch your way of thinking when playing that scale to suit the feel and sound of each chord. You would also have to practise playing the scale in a way that suited the way the music sounds for each chord, or the particular sound you are after.

Really doing all of that is just a more complicated way of achieving what you can do more easily with the useful toolkit that modes are. To me it is more difficult than having different "modes" that you can change to when playing within a key signature in order to get a different type of feeling/sound out of that key signature. However maybe it is the same thing really but people find it easier to call it a mode, when they are referring to practising in a key signature in a way that sounds different to other ways of playing in that key signature. It's not a coincidence that the word mode in a non-music sense means "a manner or way of doing, acting or behaving".

To me it is also obvious that the same principles apply for the difference between a major and its relative minor scale.

I don't know if that is of any help at all, but that's the best I can come up with from my understanding of what modes are and why I think they are really useful and clever.

I find the relationship between modes is really interesting too. For example I like to use the relationship between mixolydian and ionian to practise scales:

Practise an ionian (major) scale for a while then flatten the 7th, and you are playing in mixolydian mode (and practise that for a bit), then keep the flattened 7th but start playing on the fourth and you play the next major scale in the cycle of fourths, then flatten the 7th of that gives you mixolydian again, then start playing on the fourth.... etc. you can go round and round. If you vary the rhythm, tempo, dynamics, articulation etc. you don't get bored.

 

[bubbie_king]

Thanks for your reply Ken.

I have been looking deeper into this subject a lot, even though it sounds as though I have given up on modes.

I will read this, and finish on some other reading, and if I come to any understanding I will post here again.

thanks again, randy

 

[Simon]

Well here's my 2c worth...

Modes: a way of labelling a scale diatonic to a major or minor scale. Modes aren't just relevant to major scales - they're in harmonic minor and melodic minor scales too! (perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned this...) 😉

Why are they taught? Because they represent MELODIES you hear in music, they're supported by music theory and they're codified (I think that's the word) around the world's music colleges to represent specific sounds in music. 'So What', 'Impressions' - dorian minor tunes; 'Norwegian Wood' - mixolydian...

You could say
"play the C Major scale from D to D for 8 bars, emphasising D, F, A and C"
or
"play D Dorian for 8 bars". Which is easier to get?

Dm7-G7-Cmaj7 -> you could use D Dorian, G Mixolydian and C Ionian respectively. Yes they're all notes from the C Major scale.
But music is only partly about note choices...

... a bar of music has upbeats and downbeats, parts of time that in themselves build tension and release. For a long time at jazz school I thought that if I chose the best scale or mode my improvisations would be better. It's not the case. Now, I find RHYTHM is more important to make a specific scale / mode sound cool!

Incidentally, try these out -

Dm7 / G7 / Fm7 / Bb7 / Cmaj7 and
Dm7b5 / Bbm7 / G7+ / CmMaj7

HARMONY!

Simon

bubbie_king wrote:
Doubt serves an education.

I complain because I dont have answers. For me Modes are still "open", I don't understand why they are taught. The truth is there has to be a good reason that you cannot give me. For SOOO much to be written on the subject, there has to be a "musical" explination that eludes us all.

Maybe most of you just play them without understanding why, and cannot explain it musically to me. Thats fine, but I keep complaining because the answer is not YET revealed.

I have seen MANY post online on this subject, and there are many decent answers and explinations out there, but this is a topic that usualy DIES before it is answered clearly.

sorry for complaining too much for ya, but I dont get clear answers from you either.

randy

 

[Linky Lee]

The way I personally look at it is:

what came first the notes or the scales?
The scales are there to give meaning to a group of notes with set intervals.

This is where Dorian D-D differs from C major C-C and A minor A-A

C major is C D E F G A B C (TTSTTTS). Dorian D-D is D E F G A B C D (TSTTTST)

And A minor A-A is. A B C D E F G A (TSTTSTT) 'or' A B C D E F G# A (TSTT(3st)S)

as you can see the relationship between the notes in each of these scales are different.

take the interval of the 1st to the 3rd.
In C major you have C-E a major 3rd.
In D Dorian you have D-F a minor 3rd.
and in A minor you have A-C another minor 3rd.

now look at the 1st and 6th.
In Dorian it's 9 semi-tones, and in Minor it's 8. Creating Major and Minor 6ths.

If you look at the scales from this point of view you notice that, yes they all use the same notes. BUT! The relationship between the notes are different.

It is this relationship between the notes that defines if they will sit well over certain chords or not.

 

[pauloalto]

Good explanation Lee 🙂

 

[Simon]

... or maybe chords came first! Why think: CDEFGABC ? Why not CEGBDFA?? This shows the intervals even more clearly and has an added advantage of helping you to see extensions: eg

C dominant chord CEGBb put a D Major on top = CEGBbDF#A = C Lydian Dominant (4th mode of G melodic minor)

So whatya saying is we can't play A Aeolian over C Ionian because of the number of semitones A Aeolian has 8 semitones between the 1st and 6th and C has 9 ? What's wrong with ACEGBD over C Major?

Incidentally, how do you get an A Minor mode of C with a G# in it?
Why not use A Dorian and A Melodic Minor over the vi as well?

My point: you can use any modal sound you like as long as your aware of resolution and rhythm. TTSTTTS approach is a good way to learn the scale alphabet but I've found it tends to lock your thinking into playing one scale for one chord in a linear fashion, which in jazz sax improv anyway, isn't all that helpful.
Simon

Linky_Lee wrote:
The way I personally look at it is:

what came first the notes or the scales?
The scales are there to give meaning to a group of notes with set intervals.

This is where Dorian D-D differs from C major C-C and A minor A-A

C major is C D E F G A B C (TTSTTTS). Dorian D-D is D E F G A B C D (TSTTTST)

And A minor A-A is. A B C D E F G A (TSTTSTT) 'or' A B C D E F G# A (TSTT(3st)S)

as you can see the relationship between the notes in each of these scales are different.

take the interval of the 1st to the 3rd.
In C major you have C-E a major 3rd.
In D Dorian you have D-F a minor 3rd.
and in A minor you have A-C another minor 3rd.

now look at the 1st and 6th.
In Dorian it's 9 semi-tones, and in Minor it's 8. Creating Major and Minor 6ths.

If you look at the scales from this point of view you notice that, yes they all use the same notes. BUT! The relationship between the notes are different.

It is this relationship between the notes that defines if they will sit well over certain chords or not.

 

[Linky Lee]

not sure how to do quotes yet.. but you said

(Incidentally, how do you get an A Minor mode of C with a G# in it?
Why not use A Dorian and A Melodic Minor over the vi as well?)

There are two Minor scales. Melodic and Harmonic.
In one of them you raise the 7th note. In A minor this is G - G#
In the other, you raise the 6th and 7th but not on the way back down.
creating A B C D E F# G# A G F E D C B A.

The notes are named A B C D E F G A not C E G B D F A because they used the alphabet to relate the notes to a rising sequence. With more than 26 notes and 12 Semi-tones to an octave they decided A-G was what should be used.

I can assure you notes came before chords. That's kind of like saying the saxophone family was invented before each individual saxophone. Or a country was founded before the people were there.

I didn't mean to say you can't use something over any chord obviously there are no wrong notes. I only meant to give a way of looking at scales, modes and arpeggios (though I didn't cover them the principal can be applied) in terms of intervals as I believe that music is about the intervals between the notes you play and the gaps between them as well.

Music is based on intervals between the 12 semi-tones.
Hence the whole idea of key signatures.
If it was based on a note pattern E major would end up being EFGABCDE and we all know that E major has sharps to accommodate the interval changes between E and F, B and C.

Hope that cleared any misconceptions of my previous post.

P.S. Thanks PauloAlto

 

[Simon]

Only two minor scales? I thought Dorian, Phrygian and Aeolian were all minor scales as well? Or do they not count cos they're modes?

This raised 6th 7th things is a classical angle - you can use melodic minor ascending and descending. But you've gotta be careful with this minor thing - melodic (jazz) minor and harmonic minor both have their own modes.

I was thinking of CEGBDFA as ascending! Sure it's in thirds but why not think of this as C major? Same notes, different order.

"Notes came before chords..." does this matter? Who cares? I'm fully aware that scales are important to learn.. however there doesn't just have to be one rigid way to look at them. Cos at the end of the day it's how it sounds that matters.

Yes there are wrong notes - try a b9 over a minor chord or a sustained 4th over a major. Sounds dissonant to me. So you resolve to the root or a third. You don't need to know the names of these intervals - you can hear them!

Simon

Linky_Lee wrote:

There are two Minor scales. Melodic and Harmonic.
In one of them you raise the 7th note. In A minor this is G - G#
In the other, you raise the 6th and 7th but not on the way back down.
creating A B C D E F# G# A G F E D C B A.

The notes are named A B C D E F G A not C E G B D F A because they used the alphabet to relate the notes to a rising sequence. With more than 26 notes and 12 Semi-tones to an octave they decided A-G was what should be used.

I can assure you notes came before chords. That's kind of like saying the saxophone family was invented before each individual saxophone. Or a country was founded before the people were there.

I didn't mean to say you can't use something over any chord obviously there are no wrong notes. I only meant to give a way of looking at scales, modes and arpeggios (though I didn't cover them the principal can be applied) in terms of intervals as I believe that music is about the intervals between the notes you play and the gaps between them as well.

Music is based on intervals between the 12 semi-tones.
Hence the whole idea of key signatures.
If it was based on a note pattern E major would end up being EFGABCDE and we all know that E major has sharps to accommodate the interval changes between E and F, B and C.

Hope that cleared any misconceptions of my previous post.

P.S. Thanks PauloAlto

 

[Linky Lee]

(Yes there are wrong notes - try a b9 over a minor chord or a sustained 4th over a major. Sounds dissonant to me. So you resolve to the root or a third. You don't need to know the names of these intervals - you can hear them!)

Nothing wrong with dissonance. you even said to resolve it.

I didn't intend for my ideas or suggestions to be taken so seriously. It's only opinion and my personal way of understanding things.

If it doesn't work for you - which it clearly doesn't. Please don't bother yourself with it. Rejoice in the fact that you can understand it! There are many that strive to get more knowledge about modes for years. Be proud of the fact you can understand, don't worry if you go at it from a different angle.
There are no rules, only ideas.

 

[Pete Thomas]

Linky_Lee wrote:
not sure how to do quotes yet...

just write "quoted" (but in squarebrackets) before the quoted text, and "/quoted" in square brackets after the quoted text. Except without the "

(See the help link above)

 

[Simon]

Hi Link

My point with this (referring back to the original question) is that to simply play a mode over a certain harmony, in this case, Dm7-G7-C play a Dorian then a Mixolydian and then the Ionian (major) as a scale is only a point of reference and not really helpful in improvising. It's a 'paint by numbers' approach to music.

It's more use playing the sound of the chord on a keyboard and hearing that and how the 3rds and 7ths change over a moving bass note of 4ths.

My reasons for saying this - too many sax players get locked into playing the scales on beat 1, ascending the whole way through a la Aebersold patterns. So after months if not years of doing this they then realise that it isn't what they hear on recordings anyway and it's 'vanilla.' 7 notes don't work - hence bebop scales!

Yep, you're right - theory can be viewed from different perspectives. The point is not to let it dictate what you play!

Simon

Linky_Lee wrote:
(Yes there are wrong notes - try a b9 over a minor chord or a sustained 4th over a major. Sounds dissonant to me. So you resolve to the root or a third. You don't need to know the names of these intervals - you can hear them!)

Nothing wrong with dissonance. you even said to resolve it.

I didn't intend for my ideas or suggestions to be taken so seriously. It's only opinion and my personal way of understanding things.

If it doesn't work for you - which it clearly doesn't. Please don't bother yourself with it. Rejoice in the fact that you can understand it! There are many that strive to get more knowledge about modes for years. Be proud of the fact you can understand, don't worry if you go at it from a different angle.
There are no rules, only ideas.

 

[Linky Lee]

Yep, you're right - theory can be viewed from different perspectives. The point is not to let it dictate what you play!

Exactly! (Yay! I got the quotes working, cheers Pete.

 

[lee_]

Wow, this thread almost made my head explode. :x

I would add only this: the "modes" approach appears to be more useful for guitar players, because the modal terminology describes fretboard patterns or shapes. (The various patterns remain the same; they are just moved up or down the fretboard to account for the appropriate key). I didn't even know what a mode was until I started taking lessons on the electric bass a few years ago. Using a fretboard for the first time instead of a linear tonehole arrangement was enlightening, to say the least.

 

[Linky Lee]

Yeah, I've always found that when studying theory it's a lot easier on a keyboard where there is a strong visual relationship as well as the oral.

It makes the whole interval, scale thing make a lot more sense. That's until you go into the fact that a piano doesn't play in tune on any of it's black notes. They're all compromises to split an octave into 12 equal chunks where there actually isn't twelve notes of equal interval in an octave!

Split key instruments solve some of this, but I think the piano method works the best as it enables all of us to play together whatever instrument we are using! And that's only good.

 

[mfox]

try this randy