So, there's a rather simple way of
remembering the step/half-sep structure for the modal scales if you think of
each as the scale composed of simply white piano keys starting from a given
note (Ionian for C, Dorian, for D, Phrygian for E, Lydian for F, Mixolydian for
G, Aeolian for A and Locrian for B).
But what are this all about?
But what are this all about?
I promise I won’t' give a long explanation. In fact, I
suffered having to learn the modes from paper and theory alone, never knowing
why I cared that a certain amount of notes combined in a certain way were
called this way or the other ("I'll just play the ones that sound right,
ok?). Yet all musicians with some training in theory seemed to insist on that they
were important, but only guitarists seemed to understand why.
Until.
What if I told you
there's a so-easy-you'll-be-shocked way of understanding why the fuck we care
about these names? Each mode has its own "personality", its own particular
sonority, but why is giving them names useful?
Go to your keyboard (or equivalent). Play the following (if possible, forget you are trying to learn anything, just listen a little):
Go to your keyboard (or equivalent). Play the following (if possible, forget you are trying to learn anything, just listen a little):
Asides from the utter simplicity (the idea here is
that you listen, not that you need to think of what you're doing), do you
notice how the color/personality/character of each I-V scale changes?
EXACTLY.
EXACTLY.
That's what modes are for and about. The Greeks valued
beauty, but also logic. The names are not there just for naming groups of
notes, they are there to name the "feeling" of each group. Even heard
how major (Ionian) is the "happy" scale and minor (Aeolian) is the
"sad" one? Well the rest of the modes are all the other emotions that
come from combinations on unaltered (no sharp/flat) notes.
Go ahead, have fun naming them. (PS I like to call
mixolydian the king's sober clown, and lydian his wife...)
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A different approach:
What the hell do I want a mode/scale for?
What the hell do I want a mode/scale for?
Think of a painter. he is portraying a sunset in a
rainy, inhabited forest and tries to convey the solitude, melancholy and
humidity of the situation by employing a large amount of purplish blue and grey
(a.k.a. no pure, striking colors and a lot of blue and red).
What if he suddenly wants to include a yellow parrot? How does he make it so that it does not seem like he cut the parrot out form a different picture and mercilessly stuck it there?
That's what a palette is for (asides from giving you a place where to mix paint and solvent). If the painter opened his jar of yellow and sued it pure, the parrot would look like it's first priority is to fly away and detach itself from the painting. If, on the contrary, the painter includes yellow in his palette from the beginning (using it to mix other colors, including small amounts in bright areas of other colors, and mixes a slight amount of, for instance, the lighter green he's painted so far, into the yellow he's about to use), the parrot will comfortably sit in the painting.
What if he suddenly wants to include a yellow parrot? How does he make it so that it does not seem like he cut the parrot out form a different picture and mercilessly stuck it there?
That's what a palette is for (asides from giving you a place where to mix paint and solvent). If the painter opened his jar of yellow and sued it pure, the parrot would look like it's first priority is to fly away and detach itself from the painting. If, on the contrary, the painter includes yellow in his palette from the beginning (using it to mix other colors, including small amounts in bright areas of other colors, and mixes a slight amount of, for instance, the lighter green he's painted so far, into the yellow he's about to use), the parrot will comfortably sit in the painting.
You mode is, therefore, your palette. While composing within
the confines of a certain mode, you are conferring a certain
"attitude" to your piece because of the intervals made possible and
the role they play in your composition. If you forget to prepare a palette, you
may find yourself composing a piece full of cast-away parrots. If you mind the
integrity of modes -even if you employ more than one in the same piece - your
birdhouse will stay full.
