Can anyone explain how to use modes?

Question:properly? are they just the same scales as major but starting on a different root note...?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: properly? are they just the same scales as major but starting on a different root note...?

There are a few ways to think of them.

First, you can think of them as scales relating to certain chords. For instance, the mixolydian scale is the major scale with a flatted seventh note - which handily matches up to the notes in a dominant 7th chord. Thus, you could play the mixolydian scale over a dominant 7th chord.

Second, you can think of them as flavors of major and minor keys, that is, ways to give your major and minor progressions useful, closely related harmonic freshness. For instance, the dorian mode is closely related to the aeolian mode, aka the natural minor scale. Most of them time when you can use the natural minor scale you can use the dorian mode instead for a different flavor. It doesn't always work, but it is one way to think about the modes.

Thirdly, you can think about the modes as ways to play progressions without being specifically bound to that leading tone resolution that is characteristic of the major scales. Playing modally requires a different way of thinking about your progressions, because often the resolutions aren't as strong and definite as your ears might be normally accustomed to.

Whie the notes of the modes are the same as the major scale, just not starting from the root, the important thing to remember is that emphasis needs to happen on the root note of the mode, and not of the major scale's root. This is not always an easy task - as i said earlier, harmonic resolution isn't as final modally as it is normally.

Maybe I should give a quick example?

A major progression might look something like this -

F - G7 - C ( IV - V7 - I )

This progression gives a very strong resolution back to the tonic - it's probably the biggest defining resolution in western music.

What about if we were to play a progression in Lydian? We can't play the #4 instead of a IV, since diatonically speaking the #4 is a diminished chord, and it sounds icky (technical term). So perhaps we look instead to the circle of fifths for a different resolution.

D - G - C ( II - V - I )

Still has the finality of a V-I resolution, even if we don't have the dominant 7 to strengthen it or the IV-V movement to build tension. So, it could be considered a modal progression in C Lydian. Play the two. Can you hear how the second has less of a feeling of resolution than the first?

Anyhoo, that's the idea. Good luck!

Saul

No, not the same as major starting on a different "root note"--that would just be major in a different key.

The modes used in western musical tradition are named after different provinces of Golden-Age Greece: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Lacrian. If you sit down at the piano and play an eight-note scale using only white keys, then depending on what key you start with ("root note"? the formal term for that is "tonic") then you'll be in a different mode.

So if you start on C and play eight notes up to the next C, all on white keys, you're in Ionian.
Start on D = Dorian
E = Phrygian
F = Lydian
G = Mixolydian
A = Aeolian
B = Lacrian

Note that Ionian is identical to major, and Aeolian is identical to natural minor (but not melodic minor or harmonic minor).

The differences lie in the arrangement of whole-steps and half-steps. Since I suspect you don't understand the terms, a "step" is the smallest interval between two different notes--on the piano, its the interval from one key to either of its neighbors. You'll notice that there is no black key between B and C or between E and F, so the intervals between those two sets of adjacent white keys is a half-step. All the other white keys have black ones between them, so the interval between those white keys is a whole-step.

Got that? Good. Now you'll notice that each mode has a unique arrangement of whole- and half-steps.

Ionian: wwhwwwh
Dorian: whwwwhw
Lacrian: hwwwhww
Lydian: wwwhwwh
Mixolydian: wwhwwhw
Aeolian: whwwhww
Lacrian: hwwhwww

You can start a mode on any note. Begin on Bb or G# and play any of those sequences of whole- and half-steps, and you're playing in the key of Bb or G# "that mode".

The half-steps in the scale are what give its distinctive character. We're accustomed to feeling that major (Ionian) is bold, confident, happy, bright--a lot of that mood comes from that final half-step, known as the "leading tone", which seems to pull inevitably back to the tonic. Minor (Aeolian) is romantic, mysterious, sad, due to that first half-step and the absence of strong leading tones.

The other modes convey similar moods in some cases: Mixolydian comes across much like Ionian but without the leading tone, which makes it useful for rock-and-roll leads since it's not so hard to come up with a descending riff that sounds good; Dorian comes across much like Aolian.

Phrygian and Lacrian are rarely used in western music, that initial half-step just doesn't sound right to us, usually.

Hope that's clear enough for you. Leonard Bernstein did a great televised young people's concert about the modes back in the 1960s, maybe your library can find a video of it?

The above answer is correct except that it is "locrian"....not "lacrian".

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