# Scales & Modes



## adamcouture (Jan 8, 2011)

I was reading up on modes the other night, and I think I have the basic concept down. But could someone give a somewhat in-depth discussion of how modes and scales are used? I would highly appreciate it.


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## Overtone (Jan 8, 2011)

I think Joe can:




It's all about how it sounds to you. One thing that makes it kinda obvious what sound the scale is implying is to play over a drone or a pedal tone. So find the root of your mode on an open string (say the A string for A lydian) and alternate between the open A and the notes of the scale.


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## adamcouture (Jan 8, 2011)

Thanks for posting the videos. Those help quite a bit and give me more of a sense as to where to go with learning them and applying them to writing music.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 8, 2011)

This really is a huge subject, so I'll just discuss Western music very briefly for this post. My personal opinion is that it's better to understand the reasons behind music than it is to understand the structure of music. So if you don't mind, you're about to get a history lesson.

There are two ways to think of scales in music: modally, and harmonically. "Modal" means that the pitches in a scale are played one at a time, and that only the melody exists. "Harmonically" refers to the vertical arrangement of notes in chords, so that more than one note is playing at the same time, and the movement between chords is an additional concern to melody. Harmonic music is frequently grouped under the umbrella term of "tonality".

For a time, all pitch-based music in the world was modal. There were no chords. In Europe, the Christian church had masses sung with monophonic (one note at a time) music, what we know as "plainchant", or simply "chant". The pope began codifying the texts that were sung at mass (by monks; commoners were generally illiterate then), and tried to systematize the notation of melody, as well. This was all just political stuff, unity of the organization, etc., but the result was that people generally agreed what a note looked like on paper and what the distance between notes sounded like. As time went on, masses were sung as a melody against a sustained note, which was the beginning of organum. Drone notes are found all over the world, so this is nothing new.

People later figured out that it would sound nice to have two voices singing the same melody at a fixed interval. These were typically octaves or perfect fifths. They were doing power chords. It was around this time that European music started to separate from other musics of the world, stylistically speaking. Parallel organum eventually gave way to free organum, which meant that you would have one melody, and another non-parallel melody would be constructed over it. Inevitably, composers added more and more melodic lines to an organum.

Organum Duplum - Two melodies.
Organum Triplum - Three melodies.
Organum Quadruplum - Four melodies.

I don't know if there are any five-voice examples of organum.

By this time, the music of the Christian church moved into what is known as "polyphony" - multiple melodies occurring at the same time. The polyphonic organum was the predecessor to the motet. Motets were polyphonic compositions that took the melodies of old chants (called 'cantus firmus', sung in latin) and constructed polyphony on top of them, sung in the common language. The music was also given more form and had repeating sections.

In the Renaissance, the motet was given a sort of makeover. Composers dropped the repeating cantus firmus lines, and made the music more freely polyphonic. Renaissance motets frequently took melodies from madrigals, but I won't discuss that here. Motets grew more and more, and it was not infrequent to have in excess of six or seven vocal lines in a given motet. It was also during this time that music from English pubs started to infiltrate liturgical music. In a practice called "contenance angloise", the intervals of thirds and sixths began to be preferred to perfect fifths and octaves. The composer, Josquin des Prez, also pioneered a compositional technique in which voices would be moving along polyphonically, then come together for a monophonic (voices on the same rhythm, but different pitches) cadence. This technique is called "points of imitation", if you want to read up on it.

On the political side, the bureaucracy of the Church was seen by a growing group of priests as bloated and corrupt. Then, Martin Luther published his 95 Theses and started protestantism, which teaches the priesthood of all members. One of Luther's complaints about Catholicism is that services were conducted in Latin, and no commoner could understand what the ceremony was about. When he separated from the Catholic church, Luther tried his hand at composing new homophonic hymns in German. This style would come to be known as the "chorale".

The Baroque era is generally marked by the first opera, 'Dafne' by Jacobo Peri. Opera then was composed of "arias" - songs that were repetitive and didn't say anything about the story - and "recitative" - actors speaking the story with sparse accompaniment. Instruments also began taking the spotlight in "serious" music. We had the birth of the instrumental virtuoso, and pieces written for specific instruments and ensembles.

In the Baroque era, music became increasingly secular, and composers began to think more in terms of chords and key. Harmony was narrowed down from eight church modes, used in plainchant, to just the major and minor scales. The harmonic and melodic minor scales saw their birth here, as a way to make pieces in minor keys sound stronger. Music did not just stay in one key, though: it modulated into different keys. Composers used this to create harmonic tension. Chromaticism - adding notes from outside of the key - was also a flowering practice at this time. Chords were expected to resolve into other chords and find their way to the "home" chord, or "tonic". This was when music became decidedly tonal, and the modal origins of the contemporary music were abandoned. Another aspect of Baroque music is the classification of contrapuntal forms. Imitation and counterpoint became a subject of interest among composers, and we most often remember baroque music for Bach's fugues and inventions.

The period we call the "Classical" era followed the Baroque and saw a strict formalization of music. Ideas from the Enlightenment thinkers weighed balance and reason against emotion. Out of harmonic ideas established in the baroque era, the symphony became a quickly rising form.

Within the symphony was the "sonata allegro". The idea of "sonata form" was that it would start in a given key, a melody composed of short ideas would be played, then a second melody would begin in a key that was a perfect fifth away, followed by a development of the ideas in both sections, and finally returning to the first section, in the home key. This is an ABA form, where the two main melodic ideas are the A, and the development is the B. These sections are always referred to as, in order, the "exposition", "development", and "recapitulation". Composers would take the development to do interesting things, and rich people liked it. It works out, too, because nobility employed musicians at this point. Composers did as kings and emperors said.

Opera continued to develop, and national schools were established, with Italian and French opera being dominant. Composers began to chip away at the repetitive arias and the dry recitatives, because that shit is boooring.

In 1776, there was the American revolution, and the notion of absolutist kings began to seem dated. Beethoven was only six at this time, and he grew up in a world that was becoming increasingly democratic. The French Revolution and the exploits of Napoleon Bonaparte influenced him profoundly. As a result, Beethoven did not cater to nobility and compose as others wanted him to, but rather he took the emotional side of music and used harmony to express himself. Unexpected key movements, twisting forms, and long and complex compositions became his hallmark.

Beethoven was extremely popular during his lifetime, and his music struck a chord with all of the famous composers that came immediately after him. Beethoven's were realized in what we call the "Romantic" period. Composers wrote music that focused on emotion, the human condition, and personal experience. Titles began to reflect more tangible ideas, instead of the old system of abstract numbering, with "Symphony no.43", "Prelude, op.39", and so forth. Furthermore, music began to tell a story with the advent of "program music" and the "tone poem". Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique", for example, tells the story of a dude tripping on opium and killing his wife, but without words (the story is on his program notes).

Another event that shaped music at this point was the Industrial Revolution. Factories employed people to make cheaper, more accurately produced goods, which attracted populations to cities and allowed for a rise in middle class populations in Europe. The middle class, with its time freed up, could be educated and taught both academic and artistic subjects. Musically, this meant that there were more performers and composers playing and composing for more people. More solid products also meant better instruments, and by the time Beethoven died, he had commissioned pianos that could play lower, higher, and louder than any piano that came before. This allowed for more virtuosic playing and musical ideas that were inconceivable before.

There was also a surge of nationalism in the 1800's, and people associated certain sounds with certain countries. These differences were profound in opera. However, there was a consensus throughout Europe that recitative musically interrupted the course of an opera. As a result, the line between aria and recitative became blurred, and sometimes, the two disappeared all together. Richard Wagner exemplified this deterioration, and wrote reeeeally long operas that were completely non-stop music. He utilized key changes and chromaticism that obscured the tonic, used chords for their color rather than their function.

Toward the end of the 1800's, Impressionism developed as a response to the excesses of Romanticism. Impressionists looked toward the newly opened Asia for influence, and that is where Western composers started picking up exotic scales and listening to new music. They also started looking at the major scale modes: dorian, phrygian, lydian, etc.. Impressionist composers were more concerned with the color and character of their music than they were of how one chord went to the next.

Going into the twentieth century, impressionism and romanticism left their mark. Continuing where Wagner left off, Arnold Schoenberg imagined music that had no sense of tonic. He rejected scales and chords, and perceived of every note having an equal part. Musical communism, if you will. Romantic traditions lived on in orchestral music for a few decades, but advancements in technology made it possible for more people to accumulate more wealth and listen to more music. Recording technology was also bringing down the barrier that traditionally held classical music for the social elite, and popular music for lower classes.

War and technology provided the canvas upon which the latter half of the twentieth century was painted. Existentialism found a place in art after two horrific wars and inventions that gave humans the potential to do things that were, in previous centuries, thought to be attainable solely by God's power. As secularism and science postulated on what constitutes our universe, John Cage postulated on what constitutes music. For the first time, you could hear dripping water being used as a musical instrument on a recording. Objects jammed between piano strings. Nothing at all.

In the world of jazz, performers were connecting tonal ideas to modal ones. Functional chords were married with a scale vocabulary borrowed from the Impressionists. Bebop expanded the technical repertoire of jazz, as well as its chordal language. Atonalism from the classical world met jazz, and a jazz avant-garde was born.

The psychedelic movement brought about an interest in world music in the West. By the end of the sixties, synthesizers became commercially available. Musicians in the jazz and rock world jumped on this new instrument. A school of rock musicians sought to raise rock to the respectability of classical music and jazz by incorporating elements from both. The harmonic tendencies of this style of rock provided the mould for thrash and death metal.

From there, you probably know the rest. I avoided specifics in this post for the sake of painting a general picture. What you should get is that we started with some scales that stayed in one key, then added some notes on top of them, got chords, went out of that one key idea, got crazy with the key changes, abandoned key altogether, then settled on a weird system where everything gets play. Hopefully, this will feed the discussion.


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## Kurkkuviipale (Jan 9, 2011)

^ 

Longest post I've seen here. Again, perfect!


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## TimothyLeary (Jan 9, 2011)

the last part on satriani video 2 is for me the most challenge part on modes. have a simple chord progression, look at it, need to see all the notes on the chords, recognize them from a key, and then "choose" from all the modes to play against it, or simply move from the original key, to a "mode key". 

Schecterwhore, your last sentence make me think, and nowadays, it seems that everything we play is right, even if it sounds bad. I don't know if I'm explaining myself the right way, but, sometimes people listen some strange music, and they make an effort to explain it with music theory, and then they call it "free music", or "alternative/experimental". What I mean is, even if we choose a "wrong" mode, for a specific chord, there will always be someone in the public, who will enjoy it, or try to explain it. Maybe there is no rules anymore?

Apologies to the OP, for my deviation thought.


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

That's the point of a lot of the experimental music of the twentieth century: certain sounds do not exist for our appreciation, rather we must be attentive and learn to appreciate all sound. It's more of a philosophical statement than a musical one, but art and philosophy are never far apart. Many cannot grasp the implications of total artistic freedom, and are infinitely more content to know which three chords to use to make a three-minute love song. And it's true that you can't just answer a compositional question with "do whatever you want," because while it is good advice, it doesn't get more nebulous than that. You need to have learned and mastered a language before you can hope to use it artistically. Unfortunately, most of the debate on musical complexity versus musical expression is fought out by people who only know the language from a perfunctory standpoint (that is to say, they know the theory and follow it as a rulebook), and those who know that you should do what you feel, but have no knowledge of the language. Music is never an absolute, and neither is expression, so such a debate is often futile. If I'm playing scales up and down, I'm probably not making an artistic statement, and if I'm bitching that the guy who's playing scales up and down isn't playing with feeling, then I'm not putting my money where my mouth is. Even if I do respond in my defense, then what have I accomplished? How many great musicians are known for telling somebody that they did something incorrectly? History does not tend to honor such petty dick moves. That's why I posted that huge monologue on European classical music history: we accept Beethoven as a great composer, but few people know why. We know that there is atonal music, and we know that we don't like it (Or maybe you do. It's music like any other.), but few among us know why anybody ever thought to make it. Music is not something that appeared in a flash, and having the understanding of how things came to be is far more useful than knowing how to mess around with a chromatic scale, and even helps with that.

With that said, The Modes! 

There are two ways that you can relate modes to key: relative, and parallel. Relative is what most people learn, where there are seven modes of the major scale, and they neatly come one after the other, in the order: ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, and locrian. The key signature of C major is also the key signature of D dorian, E phrygian, F lydian, G mixolydian, A minor, and B locrian.

Parallel relationships require a little more thought, and a knowledge of scale construction. We have a numerical formula for scales, based on the major scale, where each note is assigned a number: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Plug in a C major scale, and you get this:

1 = C
2 = D
3 = E
4 = F
5 = G
6 = A
7 = B

There is no 8, because 8 is C, and C is 1.

Everything is measured from 1, and all intervals from 1 are either major or perfect.

1-1 is a perfect unison
1-2 is a major second
1-3 is a major third
1-4 is a perfect fourth
1-5 is a perfect fifth
1-6 is a major sixth
1-7 is a major seventh

If you transpose this to, say, the key of F, you will find that the formula holds true.

1 = F
2 = G
3 = A
4 = Bb
5 = C
6 = D
7 = E

Now, we can represent different types of scales through this system. If we attach an accidental in front of a given degree, then we alter the major scale formula that we started with, and therefore alter the scale. Check it out:

Key of F.

1 = F
2 = G
3 = A
#4 = B
5 = C
6 = D
b7 = Eb

Because #4 is not 4, 1-#4 is no longer a perfect fourth, but an augmented fourth. And because b7 is not 7, 1-b7 is not a major seventh, but a minor seventh. This happens to be the fourth mode of C melodic minor, but you need not know that yet.

Anyway, we can apply this to all of the modes to show a parallel relationship with the major scale.


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## epsylon (Jan 12, 2011)

Thanks for the great explanations SchecterWhore (including the historical post, I laughed when reading "they were doing power chords", haha).


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## viesczy (Jan 12, 2011)

SchecterWhore always gives great modal responses... wait that sounded odd... responses about modes.

Easiest what to approach modes (to me) is this, the modes are scales. They are the scales of other keys, you're just playing those "other" scales in a different key. 

Stay with me...

If you're in C and you run the F scale, what is that? Mixo mode but still the same notes as the F scale.

You're in C and you run a G scale,what is that? Lyd mode but still the same notes of the G scale

Say the piece is written in G and you run the G scale but add a C# note, what dija just play? The D scale but since the music/chords were based around G it was the Lyd mode (#4). 

You're in F, you run about those regular scale but then you decide to put in an Eb and an Ab. You've just played the notes of an Ab scale, but that's to F that is dorian (3b-the Ab, 7b-the Eb).

The chords/key of the written music names what you just played. 

Just think of scales as the physical act of playing notes/warming up/, & modes as the act of creating music based on your physical act of playing and applying that act over chords/in the context of actual music. At a certain point you're not even thinking of the physical act of what you're playing as your heart/ear are guiding your fingers which notes to choose based on how you're feeling/hearing the music. 

Being able to machine gun off/out the modes and not applying them musically is like being able to count but not do math. I might be able to count to infinity (twice) but not be able to do calc... one is the application of the other. 

That help?

Derek


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## rectifryer (Jan 12, 2011)

^^^That helps.

If I get what you are saying, you are sayings modes are in reference to the original key. 

I didnt understand the point of designating modes before when you could just say you are playing scale x over scale y but I think I get it now. Scale x is a mode of scale y so its better to say mode x for scale y so its clear its in reference to the original scale of the song. 

Is this right?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 12, 2011)

viesczy said:


> SchecterWhore always gives great modal responses... wait that sounded odd... responses about modes.
> 
> Easiest what to approach modes (to me) is this, the modes are scales. They are the scales of other keys, you're just playing those "other" scales in a different key.
> 
> ...



Good post. But...



> You're in F, you run about those regular scale but then you decide to put in an Eb and an Ab. *You've just played the notes of an Ab scale,* but that's to F that is dorian (3b-the Ab, 7b-the Eb).


You mean Eb.




rectifryer said:


> ^^^That helps.
> 
> If I get what you are saying, you are sayings modes are in reference to the original key.
> 
> ...



The other way to think of it is that you have a key, and you name it only by its tonic. Let's take E, for instance. With E as a tonic, you can play whatever scales and harmonies you want, so long as you hear E as the tonic. This is a particularly good way of thinking, especially when you are dealing with changing modes, or modal interchange ( Modal Interchange - Altered Chords ).


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## rectifryer (Jan 12, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> The other way to think of it is that you have a key, and you name it only by its tonic. Let's take E, for instance. With E as a tonic, you can play whatever scales and harmonies you want, so long as you hear E as the tonic. This is a particularly good way of thinking, especially when you are dealing with changing modes, or modal interchange ( Modal Interchange - Altered Chords ).


 THANKS!


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## adamcouture (Jan 13, 2011)

Thanks to everyone for their responses. This all makes everything so much clearer, and I now have a more general idea as to what modes are and how they're used.


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## grim505 (Jan 14, 2011)

"the fewer the notes in the chords, the more freedom you have melodically..." 
wise wise words

Satriani is the man, next to paul gilbert of course

also do you have a copy of the guitar grimoire by adam kadmon, if not look into it...


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## QuickNick7 (Jan 19, 2011)

Thanks guys I found this thead/videos great!


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## viesczy (Jan 25, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> Good post. But...
> 
> You mean Eb.
> 
> [/URL] ).



SchectWh-good catch! Wasn't even paying attention there, Eb has the 3 and Ab has 4 flats (off of C). 

I always found that folks over think modes too much, they get lost in what is this and that w/o realizing the know the physical shapes and it is the music they're creating that makes the mode, not the shape. 

Once Pat Martino's work became less of a mystery to me, the scales fell from my eyes (and ears)!

Now I dare you, throw me into some modal progressions (Giant Steps or later) and then watch me completely flounder after 40 seconds when I lose track of the progression and my playing simply because physical exercises of dexterity and trying to tie goofy things together!  Oh yeah, it is a sight!  To this day I'm not confident in playing anything in modal jazz, inside to outside or vice versa... makes my ear hurt! 

Derek


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## Explorer (Jan 25, 2011)

A point was raised earlier to which I'd like to respond belatedly...

There can be certain dissonances, but normally the point of music is to make something which sounds correct to the human ear. Someone with a more developed "palette" may be able to appreciate more dissonant music, but if a solo is built on a scale/chord which has *no* tones on common with the basic chord, or even with a normal set of extensions of the chord, then it won't be very pleasant listening. 

So, if someone tells me that they're soloing in (say) F, while the chord progress has E major as the I chord, then there will be *no* tones in common. 

I agree with SW (if this is one of the things he meant) in that a lot of people who have to talk about what they're playing in order to justify it might not get it. 

Let's just say, the people who go on to inspire people to cook are normally good cooks themselves. However, a shitty cook will still provide many lessons to be learned, although possibly not the lessons they themselves intend. *laugh*


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 26, 2011)

Explorer said:


> I agree with SW (if this is one of the things he meant) in that a lot of people who have to talk about what they're playing in order to justify it might not get it.



Yes. I argue that there is a desirable balance between the heart and the mind - know your chord functions, but know the humanity of the music, too. If you're at either extreme of the spectrum, you get crap for either being too academic or too simplistic. If you have a cozy spot in the middle, you can at least defend from both sides.


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## viesczy (Jan 26, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> Yes. I argue that there is a desirable balance between the heart and the mind - know your chord functions, but know the humanity of the music, too. If you're at either extreme of the spectrum, you get crap for either being too academic or too simplistic. If you have a cozy spot in the middle, you can at least defend from both sides.



Exactly! With our physical ability, our own ears and own hearts, we create works of art!

And for the haters 

Like right now, I'm throwing the bebop scale in everything, just that one stupid note, no matter what I play. Sometimes I dabble into the dominant too with it... that just sounds amazing to me right now! 

Derek


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## Maniacal (Jan 27, 2011)

@SchecterWhore

Do you know much about orchestration? (you seem to know everything)

Are you studying to be a composer, teacher or lord of the forums?


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## ShadyDavey (Jan 27, 2011)

Maniacal said:


> @SchecterWhore
> 
> Do you know much about orchestration? (you seem to know everything)
> 
> Are you studying to be a composer, teacher or lord of the forums?



All of the above - he's answered any question I might have and elaborated to the point my head exploded simply through a glance 

Great guy who's prepared to share - wish more were like him


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 27, 2011)

Maniacal said:


> @SchecterWhore
> 
> Do you know much about orchestration? (you seem to know everything)



I'm no expert, but I have some intuition regarding the matter, as far as ranges, dynamics, and techniques go. I don't work with a full orchestra very often (like, ever ), so I don't have much experience with balancing instrument families and such. Harmony and counterpoint are my strong areas. However, I'm taking orchestration this semester (so soon I will know EVERYTHING ).



> Are you studying to be a composer, teacher or lord of the forums?


Yes, yes, and yes. 



ShadyDavey said:


> All of the above - he's answered any question I might have and elaborated to the point my head exploded simply through a glance
> 
> Great guy who's prepared to share - wish more were like him


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## Maniacal (Jan 27, 2011)

Good man. 

Do you write much orchestral music? Got a website?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 27, 2011)

Maniacal said:


> Good man.
> 
> Do you write much orchestral music? Got a website?



I have a few pieces for smaller ensembles. I want to re-orchestrate one of my string quartets for a decently-sized orchestra. I do not, however, consider myself accomplished enough yet to warrant a website. It seems like a bit of a foolish investment right now, seeing as most of my classical work is pretty unpolished.


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