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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pauloalto" data-source="post: 584565" data-attributes="member: 10200"><p>Randy,</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Therefore I feel it is useful to practise modes as seperate scales in their own right. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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".</p><p></p><p>To me it is also obvious that the same principles apply for the difference between a major and its relative minor scale.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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:</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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