# Pretty chords a la Animals As Leaders



## chrisrivas1 (Aug 8, 2011)

im on a chord harmony quest, looking for the chords that sound spacey, pretty, quartal harmony, etc. learning animals as leaders point to point shows some cool chords

Bmaj7sus4add13, first chord in the song, very cool sounding. i plugged the shape into my reverse chord finder and this is what it tells me it is. after that is c#m9 and then Ab m7add9. these chords are all pretty and sound like they have a pull to them, or something.... like the notes all want to kick ass together. 

i am looking for any related chords or thoughts, ideas, comments... anything. your experiences, whatevs. please tell me about awesome chords, and why maj7 sus4 add13 or add 9 chords sound so neat and how to build good sounding chords. i know about omitting the fifth or third in chords. i also have a keyboard to practice chords on. yep, what makes some scale degrees sound prettier than others when used in chords? THANK YOU


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 8, 2011)

e 16
b o
g 15
d 16
a 14
e o
b o

bmaj7sus4add13

e 9
b o
g 8
d 9
a 7
e o
b o

c#m7add9


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## Behaving_badly (Aug 8, 2011)

chrisrivas1 said:


> im on a chord harmony quest, looking for the chords that sound spacey, pretty, quartal harmony, etc.




Allan Holdsworth....NOW


seriously though, the chords from Point to Point sound similar to the chords the Holdsworth uses in his music, some are quite dissonant while others are beautiful. Listen to his stuff, analyze it, then use it


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## SirMyghin (Aug 8, 2011)

The more notes you stuff in a chord, the more chance you are going to great enharmonic chords (chords containing the same notes). That is why your chord finder tells you it could be many things other than what you see. At the end of the day, the context which the chord us ised is often more important to then name. 

Chords with 5 individual notes and some of the doubled are generally something I am not keen on, I prefer leaner voicings, so to speak. There is no generic '7sus4add13 chords are awesome sounding' or '9 chords sound good' as I assure you the voicing, when you are working with such large embellishments are critical, and how you move from chord to chord even more so. At the end of the day, I feel voicing plays a larger role in what chord embellishments sound good than bad. 


For example

e 16
b o
g 15
d 16
a 14
e o
b o

R - 4 -R - 5- M7 - R- 13 

The last 2 roots are the same note, but slightly different timbre due to the string used. Rearranging the notes and playing with the intervals may provide some interesting results. What if you add the 3rd (D#) to the chord, then it is just a B13 (no 9)


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## celticelk (Aug 8, 2011)

chrisrivas1 said:


> e 16
> b o
> g 15
> d 16
> ...



I think your reverse chord finder is just confused about that first chord, and decided to name it based on the lowest note. To me, that chord makes more sense as Emaj9#11/B, which then moves to the relative minor C#min9. You could also think of the second chord as Emaj9(no 3rd) - that B-E-octave E in the bass is awfully suggestive of an E chord. Sounds to me like Tosin is just moving around cool-sounding clusters in an E Lydian tonality.


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## SirMyghin (Aug 8, 2011)

Emaj9#11/B does indeed also work, as it is followed by a C#min 9 in the song I am inclined to agree with you (infact I have a tune I am working on in E lydian that goes E -> C#m currently, different embellishments and I am sure the feel is quite foreign to this one). 

I had just copied the above for posterity, I don't know the tune.


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## Murdstone (Aug 8, 2011)

Tosin and I both love m9 chords. I think one of my favorite chords is Em9 on an 8 in drop E. Everything fits together so well.


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## alphrz (Aug 8, 2011)

Murdstone said:


> Tosin and I both love m9 chords. I think one of my favorite chords is Em9 on an 8 in drop E. Everything fits together so well.



Nothing sounds quite so sad and beautiful at the same time. I'm a huge fan of the m9 also.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 8, 2011)

Allan Holdsworth....NOW

i am a holdsworth fan..atic. i feel like his stuff is too far above me, i understand that he uses wide spacing in his chords and inversions because he says the standard chords are ugly, but i dunno much more and havent analyzed it. his stuff always sounds so ambiguous like mccoy tyners quartal harmony chords, but what do i know? not much. and my ear is weak except for obvious chords.

SirMyghin and celticelk thank you both for the insight, the moving to relative minor bit makes perfect sense of course. 

" To me, that chord makes more sense as Emaj9#11/B, which then moves to the relative minor C#min9. You could also think of the second chord as Emaj9(no 3rd)" that makes sense because the 3rd indicates maj9 or min9.... sharped 11th? i will try that out, too. i guess its all about 9th chords and omitting thirds and fifths when necessary?

thirds and fifths, i know that the third is important for determining maj or min, and the fifth is the easiest note to omit. i will consider this when i structure chords, but does anybody have tips? other than use my ear of course. 

and seriously, thanks so much. yall have helped me out w a specific question, i feel an improvement already.


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## SirMyghin (Aug 8, 2011)

The 3rd is not there likely due to not wanting a second 9th interval (albeit it is a #11 so not as likely). But leaving it out on 11 chords is pretty normal I recall reading something from Shecterwhore about it having something to do with jazz not wanting it 9th intervals aside from R - 9 due to the dissonance, this could be a carry over.

You are correct about the 3rd determining the quality, but occasionally other intervals can help define it partially. 5ths are typically omitted just to clean up the chord some. Roots are also fairly easy to omit, in a playing context you should hear the chords properly whether roots and 5ths are there or not. This is more likely to occur in highly embellished chords.



Murdstone said:


> Tosin and I both love m9 chords. I think one of my favorite chords is Em9 on an 8 in drop E. Everything fits together so well.



As far as this goes, every chord has a specific place where it can shine. Lately I don't go too far out of my way to choose specific chords, and work with which embellishments move the best from chord to chord.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 8, 2011)

SirMyghin said:


> The 3rd is not there likely due to not wanting a second 9th interval (albeit it is a #11 so not as likely). But leaving it out on 11 chords is pretty normal I recall reading something from Shecterwhore about it having something to do with jazz not wanting it 9th intervals aside from R - 9 due to the dissonance, this could be a carry over.
> 
> You are correct about the 3rd determining the quality, but occasionally other intervals can help define it partially. 5ths are typically omitted just to clean up the chord some. Roots are also fairly easy to omit, in a playing context you should hear the chords properly whether roots and 5ths are there or not. This is more likely to occur in highly embellished chords.
> 
> ...




i guess a min 7 or 6 in a chord would define the quality as well? thanks so much for the input, i feel like a have a direction to go in for writing rhythms with large chords.


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## celticelk (Aug 8, 2011)

^^^^I named that particular chord as Emaj9(no 3rd) for two reasons: the 3rd is present in the previous chord, which sets the prevailing harmonic climate as Emaj7, and the chord contains a major 7th, which makes the major 3rd somewhat more likely than the minor. I suppose you could also call it Emaj7sus2, but that just feels more cumbersome to me.

The more I think about this, the more I incline towards thinking of this passage as just clusters suggesting E Lydian, rather than a "progression" as such - there's no significant harmonic movement implied in those three chords, and the fretted notes in the two voicings given are simply moved in parallel against the open strings (root and 5th of the key). That may also be due to my own bias for static harmonies, of course. *shrug*


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 8, 2011)

celticelk said:


> ^^^^I named that particular chord as Emaj9(no 3rd) for two reasons: the 3rd is present in the previous chord, which sets the prevailing harmonic climate as Emaj7, and the chord contains a major 7th, which makes the major 3rd somewhat more likely than the minor. I suppose you could also call it Emaj7sus2, but that just feels more cumbersome to me.
> 
> The more I think about this, the more I incline towards thinking of this passage as just clusters suggesting E Lydian, rather than a "progression" as such - there's no significant harmonic movement implied in those three chords, and the fretted notes in the two voicings given are simply moved in parallel against the open strings (root and 5th of the key). That may also be due to my own bias for static harmonies, of course. *shrug*



 booyah achieved


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## Solodini (Aug 9, 2011)

On your enquiry about suggestions toward chord voicings et c., the usual suggestions apply to mess about with 3rds, also extending them over the octave (one of my fav intervals), 6ths and 9ths but I also really like minor 2nds in the midst of a voicing.

Try an Fmaj 7 voiced 5-7-R-3 but with the notes positioned on the guitar as 5-R-3-7.

As a shape, that's

E:0
B:10
G:10
D:10
A:--
E:--

The way the notes are ordered, even with a straight strum, there's some melodic movement in the chord. Heavily embellished chords can be so nice because of that inherent melody. As others have said, voicings are the most important aspect of large chords so there's a pleasant order for the notes, rather than just trying to slam them all together in the first playable order that you can. Of course, if you're fingerpicking then you are more likely to pick them in a more varied order to bring out their melodic elements but you still need to pay attention to the intervals which may be present such as b9s which can be pretty crunchy, whether you like that or not.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 9, 2011)

SirMyghin said:


> The 3rd is not there likely due to not wanting a second 9th interval (albeit it is a #11 so not as likely). But leaving it out on 11 chords is pretty normal I recall reading something from Shecterwhore about it having something to do with jazz not wanting it 9th intervals aside from R - 9 due to the dissonance, this could be a carry over.



As far as I know, it's standard practice to omit any members that create a m9 with anything but the root. This is why you see a lot of maj7#11 chords - plain ol' maj11 has a minor ninth between the third and the eleventh, and that messes with the function of the chord. Something like 7b9 is perfectly fine though, because like you said, having a minor ninth between the root and the ninth is hunky dory.

Of course, that's just a [good] suggestion. Nothing says a chord has to contain a certain pitch content.



> As far as this goes, every chord has a specific place where it can shine. Lately I don't go too far out of my way to choose specific chords, and work with which embellishments move the best from chord to chord.




--------

The way I see it, OP, you're best off learning to construct chords, chord progressions and learning to analyze them. The chords that we're talking about - Emaj9#11, C#m9, G#m9 (it's G# here, not Ab) - as mentioned, are from the E lydian scale (E F# G# A# B C# D#). I look at them and see a root movement of I vi iii. Not a functional progression, so let's figure out what's going on. The other thing that I see there is that C# is a minor third below E, and G# is a major third above E. Because I've analyzed this stuff before, I know that mediant relationships sound very colorful. Without hearing the music in question, I'm guessing that the chords get their drive from how they skirt around the tonic chord by the interval of a third. The lydian tonality and chord extensions help, and voicing is probably a big factor, but third-wise root movements tend to sound spacey, so I'm led to believe that this might be what you're looking for. Or I could be completely wrong, you tell me.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 9, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> As far as I know, it's standard practice to omit any members that create a m9 with anything but the root. This is why you see a lot of maj7#11 chords - plain ol' maj11 has a minor ninth between the third and the eleventh, and that messes with the function of the chord. Something like 7b9 is perfectly fine though, because like you said, having a minor ninth between the root and the ninth is hunky dory.
> 
> Of course, that's just a [good] suggestion. Nothing says a chord has to contain a certain pitch content.
> 
> ...



when i sweep arpeggios i like to move the shapes around major and minor thirds, i read about it as intervallic arpeggios. i understand what youre saying and agree. lydian is spacey, intervals of thirds are colorful and spacey, and the voicings have nice melody. i have to ask though, could this be in the key of b major, e being the lydian mode? i tend to group the modes into one key, its just how i learned and what feels best to me. i have practiced the mode shapes, but it makes more sense to me to have one big scale and play any notes. and then move to different keys by transposing the scale. thanks so much for the information, schecterwhore.

i have learned very much thanks to all of your answers, i feel much more confident with my playing and knowledge. im not just saying that, either. i really am shredding way crazier because im not second guessing myself. i know what sounds i need to go for, i have way more control. the 9th chords were the last piece of the puzzle. ive been trying to get that sound for a while. thanks everyone!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 9, 2011)

Welcome, dude.

As for this B major/E lydian thing, this is what I have to say: the "key" is defined by where you hear the tonic. That said, if you're hearing E as the tonic note, then the key is E. After that, you qualify it with a tonality - E major, E minor, E lydian, E dorian, etc. While it's true that B major and E lydian have the same pitch content, E lydian is _not_ B major. In this case, B is what we would call the relative major key of E lydian. Because, you know, they're related.


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## fantom (Aug 10, 2011)

chrisrivas1 said:


> i have to ask though, could this be in the key of b major, e being the lydian mode? i tend to group the modes into one key, its just how i learned and what feels best to me.



I strongly suggest you consider the other view of this as SchecterWhore mentioned. Under your way of learning it, the key of Am (A Aeolian mode) is really C Major (C Ionian mode). Do you see the issue here? Yes they are the same notes. No, they aren't the same key!

I found it much more useful learning modes to view them as alterations. Ie, A Phygian is Am with a flat 2 (which is NOT the key of Dm). That implies to me that if you aren't stressing the flat 2, why not just use Am?! C Lydian is C Major with a sharp 4 (which is NOT the key of G Major). Likewise, if the #4 isn't emphasized, just play the major scale.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 10, 2011)

As for this B major/E lydian thing, this is what I have to say: the "key" is defined by where you hear the tonic. That said, if you're hearing E as the tonic note, then the key is E. After that, you qualify it with a tonality - E major, E minor, E lydian, E dorian, etc. While it's true that B major and E lydian have the same pitch content, E lydian is _not_ B major. In this case, B is what we would call the relative major key of E lydian. Because, you know, they're related. 

heres my big question about separate mode thinking: we are playing e lydian chords, what do we put behind it? e lydian riffs? or any riff you want from the b major scale starting from whatever note you want? do e lydian riffs begin on the e and/or resolve to the e? can the e be in the middle or does that not count? if a riff starts or ends on the e then i feel like the note that is emphasized as the root of the riff can pull the modes out of the b major scale. does that make sense? it doesnt always work, but i hear modes quite clearly sometimes when playing the major scale however i please, i just follow the notes where they take me. i dont always start on the first degree, i just play whatever sounds good. it does always sound quite scalar though. haha. 




fantom said:


> I strongly suggest you consider the other view of this as SchecterWhore mentioned. Under your way of learning it, the key of Am (A Aeolian mode) is really C Major (C Ionian mode). Do you see the issue here? Yes they are the same notes. No, they aren't the same key!
> 
> I found it much more useful learning modes to view them as alterations. Ie, A Phygian is Am with a flat 2 (which is NOT the key of Dm). That implies to me that if you aren't stressing the flat 2, why not just use Am?! C Lydian is C Major with a sharp 4 (which is NOT the key of G Major). Likewise, if the #4 isn't emphasized, just play the major scale.



Am and C maj are not the same key, but they are IN the same key. where i start the root from is what determines the mode. i dont disagree at all, its two view points and i have studied the separate modes (i need to get them into muscle memory like i have the whole scale). i just feel like i can play in the key of x and do whatever sounds appropriate. yes, its clumsier (w practice ive smoothed it out a little), but i feel i can pull off most of what i need to do. its like the major scale is made up of different sounding licks, and i can access the sounds that i need to but view it as a whole never ending selection of notes to hit. its kind of like doing the different modes, just not as consciously. 

not trying to be an ass, just want to talk about guitar. thoughts, questions, concerns? hope that a) that makes sense and b)im not completely and totally incorrect. theoretically i can talk about modes but when playing they all feel like one.


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## SirMyghin (Aug 10, 2011)

Chris I think your big issue is you are confusing 'in key' with enharmonic. Enharmonic means contains the same notes. In key means everything is in a key. Am is not in the key of C, E lydian is not in the key of B. They are both enharmonic however. 

It sounds like you recognize the modes only as representative patterns of the relative major scale. There is just more to it than that. 

You could play B major over a E lydian progression sure, B is the 5th of E and if you choose carefully it will probably work out, but the progression itself is going to be very different from what you would normally here on B, so you note choices would be comparatively odd. Chances are if all the modes 'feel like one' you are not really going out of your way to accentuate what makes the mode. If you aren't going out of your way to bring the mode out, through your progression, accents, etc, then you aren't really playing in it.

A way to look at it is this, I am going to play 3 notes G#, B and D#. Immediate thought is that is a G# minor, right? But what happens if then I play F# followed by a B? Wasn't a G# afterall then, it was a E maj7 with no root. That same context applies to modes, in a slightly different way.


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## fantom (Aug 11, 2011)

@chrisrivas1

I also think you are confusing "key" with "enharmonic". The overall feel will be based on the tonic. Instead of running scales all over the place (which can lead to awesome shred skills downstream), consider a different approach. Pick a modal progression and only play the arpeggios of each chord over the progression. As you get comfortable, start throwing in other notes from the mode. When you are happy with something, keep the same progression but switch to the "natural" scale. Ie, if you have a cool E Lydian progression (which hopefully has a F# major chord in it), try turning that F# major into a minor chord and arpeggiate it with the A instead of the A#. That would get rid of the "Lydian" sound and make it desperately want to resolve to B Maj. I think it will aid you in "hearing" the difference.


As far as soloing with modes, I'm not the best for advice about changing modes mid song or jazz theory, but the general idea is that you want to color a chord with a mode that makes sense in the progression. IE, if you have a F#5 to EMaj7 in E Major (E Ionian), you could color the F#5 with an A# to give a E Lydian feel during the F#5 (assuming it sounds good). The better way to look at that is to use the F# Mixolydian instead of F# Dorian over that particular chord. One of the few times where you ignore the "root" of a chord comes from dominant 7s, and the scale usually "dances" around the root of the V chord.



SirMyghin said:


> A way to look at it is this, I am going to play 3 notes G#, B and D#. Immediate thought is that is a G# minor, right? But what happens if then I play F# followed by a B? Wasn't a G# afterall then, it was a E maj7 with no root. That same context applies to modes, in a slightly different way.



Or you love minor keys too much and see G#m7. And wouldn't that be EMaj7add2 with no root? Seems more like a G#m7 to me... or at least a G#m into a B.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 11, 2011)

Context is everything. SirMyghin's envisioning a melody that ends with a cadential figure in the key of E (F# B E, which are the roots of F#m B7 E, or ii V I).



fantom said:


> EMaj7add2



Whenever you have a seventh in the chord, anything that's not part of the normal triad becomes an extension. Emaj7add2 is a mouthful, so check out the difference here:

Eadd2 (or add9) - E G# B F#
Emaj9 - E G# B D# F#

Makes for a shorter chord symbol.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 11, 2011)

D'OH! 

"Ie, if you have a cool E Lydian progression (which hopefully has a F# major chord in it), try turning that F# major into a minor chord and arpeggiate it with the A instead of the A#. That would get rid of the "Lydian" sound and make it desperately want to resolve to B Maj. I think it will aid you in "hearing" the difference."

hang on, this would get rid of the e lydian mode but would it be an e major scale? also weird to me is the fact that you would be getting rid of the leading tone A# that wants to resolve to B, but the dominant 7 B chord of e ionian has a flat 7, am i following you? is it the ii V I progression that youre referring to? i guess that makes sense, because f# min would want to go to the V then the I. sigh. 



"The better way to look at that is to use the F# Mixolydian instead of F# Dorian over that particular chord. One of the few times where you ignore the "root" of a chord comes from dominant 7s, and the scale usually "dances" around the root of the V chord."


is this because the f# mixolydian would come after the e lydian and we are trying to get get that modal sound out of a progression in e ionian? could i also, say change the chords to Emaj7 to C#min (natural minor) and play dorian instead of aeolian? would this pull the lydian sound out of the scale? seems to me that dorian still has that major 6 which in this case would be sharping the fourth of the e major scale = lydian. could i also put a phrygian mode there and pull a mixolydian sound? sorry if im still getting it backwards.

"the general idea is that you want to color a chord with a mode that makes sense in the progression. IE, if you have a F#5 to EMaj7 in E Major (E Ionian), you could color the F#5 with an A# to give a E Lydian feel during the F#5 (assuming it sounds good). "

this makes sense to me because when you have sharp the fourth note, or A of e ionian it turns it into lydian. so making the F triad have a major third changes the sound of your relative major scale. 

   

ill bust through one day



Edit: I also wanted to thank sirmyghin, fantom, schectorwhore, and the rest of yall for correcting me.



so is true modal playing based on modal progressions? is that where the magic is? 

******i am searching the forum as to not waste yalls time explaining again and again. what i find is that modes have progressions if you number them accordingly and form diatonic triads. then you solo over your nice modal progression using said mode and bam, momentous mazing magical modality. im looking into this, thanks everyone.******


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 11, 2011)

> Edit: I also wanted to thank sirmyghin, fantom, schectorwhore, and the rest of yall for correcting me.



You're welcome, dude.



chrisrivas1 said:


> "Ie, if you have a cool E Lydian progression (which hopefully has a F# major chord in it), try turning that F# major into a minor chord and arpeggiate it with the A instead of the A#. That would get rid of the "Lydian" sound and make it desperately want to resolve to B Maj. I think it will aid you in "hearing" the difference."
> 
> hang on, this would get rid of the e lydian mode but would it be an e major scale? also weird to me is the fact that you would be getting rid of the leading tone A# that wants to resolve to B, but the dominant 7 B chord of e ionian has a flat 7, am i following you?



He's posing a hypothetical. And, yes, that would get rid of the lydian sound.



> is it the ii V I progression that youre referring to? i guess that makes sense, because f# min would want to go to the V then the I. sigh.



Yep. Here's ii V7 I in E major: F#m B7 E
And II V&#8710; I in E lydian: F# Bmaj7 E

Making modal progressions is kind of difficult at times, because it usually involves messing around with the cadence, and the resolution of the V7 to I is so culturally ingrained in us that it's difficult to hear otherwise sometimes.



> "The better way to look at that is to use the F# Mixolydian instead of F# Dorian over that particular chord. One of the few times where you ignore the "root" of a chord comes from dominant 7s, and the scale usually "dances" around the root of the V chord."
> 
> 
> is this because the f# mixolydian would come after the e lydian and we are trying to get get that modal sound out of a progression in e ionian? could i also, say change the chords to Emaj7 to C#min (natural minor) and play dorian instead of aeolian? would this pull the lydian sound out of the scale? seems to me that dorian still has that major 6 which in this case would be sharping the fourth of the e major scale = lydian. could i also put a phrygian mode there and pull a mixolydian sound? sorry if im still getting it backwards.



Yeah, you can do that. In chord-scale theory (which I personally think is a little unrealistic), you can pair any given chord with a number of scales.

Emaj7 - E major, E lydian, E something else that contains an Emaj7
Em7 - E minor, E dorian, E phrygian (more rarely)
EmMaj7 - E harmonic minor, E melodic minor
E7 - E mixolydian, E phrygian dominant, E altered dominant, E lydian dominant, E H/W octatonic, E whole tone (provided the fifth of the chord is omitted)... there are tons of these for dominant chords.
Eø7 - E locrian, E super locrian, probably a few more.
E°7 - whatever the seventh modes of harmonic and melodic minor are, E H/W octatonic, E W/H octatonic
E+ - E whole tone, E lydian augmented, E nine-tone augmented, E augmented hexatonic

With that sort of framework going on, you can mix and match. So, let's take the standard ii V I, F#m7 B7 Emaj7. This is one possible interpretation:

F#m7 = F# dorian
B7 = B alt dominant
Emaj7 = E lydian

And here is another:

F#m7 = F# minor
B7 = B phrygian dominant
Emaj7 = E major

Truthfully, I've never had a chance to get enough notes in before the chord passes to exploit that style of thinking, and I've always found it to sound better when I just go by the chord tones and figure out the stuff in between on my own. Modality, to me, means something completely different than the chord/scale approach.



> "the general idea is that you want to color a chord with a mode that makes sense in the progression. IE, if you have a F#5 to EMaj7 in E Major (E Ionian), you could color the F#5 with an A# to give a E Lydian feel during the F#5 (assuming it sounds good). "
> 
> this makes sense to me because when you have sharp the fourth note, or A of e ionian it turns it into lydian. so making the F triad have a major third changes the sound of your relative major scale.
> 
> ...



You're getting there, don't worry. 





> so is true modal playing based on modal progressions? is that where the magic is?



In my opinion, yes. You get the most characteristic sounds of a mode when music employs the mode for at least a few chords. These give you plenty of time to comprehend the sound of a particular mode.

Alex Masi - Disembodied in Mojave - A good example of phrygian dominant.


Anthrax - Intro to Reality - Got some lydian going on here.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 13, 2011)

Emaj7 - E major, E lydian, E something else that contains an Emaj7
Em7 - E minor, E dorian, E phrygian (more rarely)
EmMaj7 - E harmonic minor, E melodic minor
E7 - E mixolydian, E phrygian dominant, E altered dominant, E lydian dominant, E H/W octatonic, E whole tone (provided the fifth of the chord is omitted)... there are tons of these for dominant chords.
Eø7 - E locrian, E super locrian, probably a few more.
E°7 - whatever the seventh modes of harmonic and melodic minor are, E H/W octatonic, E W/H octatonic
E+ - E whole tone, E lydian augmented, E nine-tone augmented, E augmented hexatonic

With that sort of framework going on, you can mix and match. So, let's take the standard ii V I, F#m7 B7 Emaj7. This is one possible interpretation:

F#m7 = F# dorian
B7 = B alt dominant
Emaj7 = E lydian

And here is another:

F#m7 = F# minor
B7 = B phrygian dominant
Emaj7 = E major

Truthfully, I've never had a chance to get enough notes in before the chord passes to exploit that style of thinking, and I've always found it to sound better when I just go by the chord tones and figure out the stuff in between on my own. Modality, to me, means something completely different than the chord/scale approach.

Here's ii V7 I in E major: F#m B7 E
And II V&#8710; I in E lydian: F# Bmaj7 E




needed a second to digest that info, and well, i get it. i even made my own melodic minor chord progression earlier and soloed over it. thanks for the post, this is what ive been looking for. you are so awesome for posting this, i will share it with everyone i can and spread the word of modes.


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## fantom (Aug 13, 2011)

chrisrivas1 said:


> D'OH!
> 
> "Ie, if you have a cool E Lydian progression (which hopefully has a F# major chord in it), try turning that F# major into a minor chord and arpeggiate it with the A instead of the A#. That would get rid of the "Lydian" sound and make it desperately want to resolve to B Maj. I think it will aid you in "hearing" the difference."
> 
> hang on, this would get rid of the e lydian mode but would it be an e major scale? also weird to me is the fact that you would be getting rid of the leading tone A# that wants to resolve to B, but the dominant 7 B chord of e ionian has a flat 7, am i following you? is it the ii V I progression that youre referring to? i guess that makes sense, because f# min would want to go to the V then the I. sigh.



Yes it would be the E Major scale, which makes it non-Lydian sounding. I was trying to stress to look at the mode of the current chord, not the key. Downstream, that will let you change keys a bit easier.

And your comment about the A# resolving doesn't really make sense to me. I'm not the best at this stuff, but I would think that the expectation is that a dom7 chord causes the cadence. In E Major, that is B7 or F7 (the flat 5 substitution). If you look at the 3/7 of both those chords, they are A and D.



chrisrivas1 said:


> "The better way to look at that is to use the F# Mixolydian instead of F# Dorian over that particular chord. One of the few times where you ignore the "root" of a chord comes from dominant 7s, and the scale usually "dances" around the root of the V chord."
> 
> 
> is this because the f# mixolydian would come after the e lydian and we are trying to get get that modal sound out of a progression in e ionian?


F# Mixolydian is the same notes as E Lydian, so if you are playing over a F# chord, I tend to think that you are playing F# scales, not E scales. It's easier to remember your 1/3/5/7/9 intervals that way . F# Dorian would be like playing in E Ionian. Regarding the progression, all I can say is that a modal progression doesn't necessarily mean staying in the same mode. The progression drives the chord changes. The melodic content just needs to be locally ok. Granted, I pretty much always stay on the mode...

I spent a long time getting myself into a "stay in key" mentality that eventually lead to an even more ingrained "stay in a mode" mentality. It is a pain in the butt to break that habit. I can break it when writing on paper, but it is not intuitive at all if I'm improvising or just writing on guitar. I've been trying really hard to retrain my brain into thinking that playing over a chord is completely different than playing in a key. A modal progression can drive the harmonic content, but the melodic content over the chords doesn't have to be the same.



chrisrivas1 said:


> could i also, say change the chords to Emaj7 to C#min (natural minor) and play dorian instead of aeolian? would this pull the lydian sound out of the scale? seems to me that dorian still has that major 6 which in this case would be sharping the fourth of the e major scale = lydian. could i also put a phrygian mode there and pull a mixolydian sound? sorry if im still getting it backwards.



Yes. You are getting it 



chrisrivas1 said:


> "the general idea is that you want to color a chord with a mode that makes sense in the progression. IE, if you have a F#5 to EMaj7 in E Major (E Ionian), you could color the F#5 with an A# to give a E Lydian feel during the F#5 (assuming it sounds good). "
> 
> this makes sense to me because when you have sharp the fourth note, or A of e ionian it turns it into lydian. so making the F triad have a major third changes the sound of your relative major scale.
> 
> ...


You are getting it. Just keep in mind that theory explains what people have done in the past. Learning the "rules" is not as useful as understanding why people started using them before they were really defined... or better yet why people started breaking them 



chrisrivas1 said:


> so is true modal playing based on modal progressions? is that where the magic is?



I'm the wrong person to answer this. I try to learn modal playing on my own, but for the most part I stick to 1 or 2 scales a song (unless there's a modulation).

I really started getting more serious about this when I started learning Scar Symmetry songs. They tend to treat parts of songs as a modal progression. If you listen to something like Mind Machine, the song is pretty much Bm, C#m, D, F#m. If you look at it like chords, that is a really straightforward minor progression. If you realize that they turned it into a KEY porgression, it's different. So they run Bm (diminished), C# Aeolian, D Lydian, D Aeolian. In C#, they never actually play a 2, so it could be interpretted as C# Phygrian in the greater context. Of course each part also elaborates more chords in the modes. But the thing to note is that each part of the song uses a different scale. If you view this from the key's perspective, you end up with B dim, B Dorian, B Dorian, B Dorian... so that looks a lot less "fun".

I would just say at that point that the song is in B Dorian with an atonal part. But if you listen to it, the song very blatantly pulls itself out of a "B Dorian" sound. Ya, it doesn't really do much in terms of breaking the B Dorian mode (except the synth during the intro riff playing diminished stuff), but try to look at things more "local" to the song and not as 1 big key that controls everything. It's definitely breaking the D Dorian sound during the verse and prechorus. The chorus sounds like a modulation (and it actually is), but it is a progression in F#m that leads back to B minor.


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## chrisrivas1 (Aug 14, 2011)

fantom said:


> And your comment about the A# resolving doesn't really make sense to me. I'm not the best at this stuff, but I would think that the expectation is that a dom7 chord causes the cadence. In E Major, that is B7 or F7 (the flat 5 substitution). If you look at the 3/7 of both those chords, they are A and D.




what i meant about a# resolving was about b major scale, not b 7 chord. you are talking about making a progression, i was confused and thought you meant go to b major scale not b7, b major has the leading tone or 7th scale degree of a# going to b. b7 has a flatted 7th of a. and this will guide to b7 chord. hope that makes sense. you rock man.


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