The whole thing always go back to "scales" and "chords" everytime. When it is so much simple if you just think about notes, and tonalities. If you alter a note, you may have two things - just a "coloraturs" in which case the altered note is just a passing note, and doesn't affect the tonality, or you have and effective alteration of the base tonality, in which case you just have to figure to where you are going.yessongs wrote:It makes sense to me and acts as a really cool way to visualise modulating to other keys. You see these notes are also to be found closely related to each other on the circle of 5ths as well so that can serve as a popular tool as well in fact other than G the rest of the notes in the key of Ab are all to the left of C in the circle of 5ths and all connected to each other. As you investigate this methodology it helps if you are a guitarist as well as a keyboardist because we who play both instruments approach music a lot differently than those who just play and master one instrument and we visualize the notes in a different way. A lot of guys will write music and try to keep every note diatonic. I like to experiment and play in lots of different scales at the same time, so I need to do things in ways that allow me to shift my mind faster and experiment without working my mind too much and this to me is a simpler way to approach modes. All I need to do a s a guitarist is move a pattern down by a backwards major scale which accomplishes the same thing. For instance if I want to play c dorian I need to move my pattern down a whole step if I want to paly phrygian I move the pattern down 2 whole steps then whole step whole step and half step. Basically you are taking your scale patterns down the neck along a backwards major scale pattern. We see such patterns more easily on a guitar than on keyboards so this approach works for us if your a keyboardist ony then this may not be an effective strategy.
Sure any tonality that has flats is to the left of C in the circle of fifths, as well as each tonality that has sharps is to the right, but if you keep going left you'll end in the right part, because it's a circle.
Moving between tonalities has nothing to do with modes, because modes are different things. You may use those as a mnemonic (no problem, each musician has his/her own personal bag of tricks, I guess) but you should bear in mind that it's just that - a mnemonic, like there are others to memorize maths and physics formulas, etc. NOT a system.
The system you are using is the same old and plain "tonal system", nothing else. No need to confuse things.
