Diatonic modes vs circle of fifths

[MadBrain]

nobody composes notes using modes like you guys think it is dumb to think you are playing modes when you start on a particular note then run through a scale from the 1st note to the octave higher and return to the 1st.

IMHO, the "start on a particular note" thing is just a device for getting a bunch of different scales starting with just one scale. In actual use, or at least in the way I use them, they're much closer to major and minor scales with an altered note:

1 2 3 #4 5 6 7 - Lydian = major #4. The #4 gives it its "light" feeling.
1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 - Mixolydian = major b7. The b7 gives it it's more "neutral" feeling.
1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7 - Dorian = minor #6. The #6 gives it it's more "neutral" feeling.
1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 - Phrygian = minor b2. The b2 gives the Arabic, arid feeling.

Of course, these alterations also alter the harmony. Dorian's #6 turns IVm into IV, which has a quite lighter feel. Phrygian's b2 adds the bII chord which is super useful - you get two dominant chords instead of one!

Modes are ways of relating scales to tonics when used in modulations strategies. At least that is the way I use them and there probably is not a right or wrong way so go ahead and do that if you want to do it that way but if I am in C ionian I can start on any note in the key of c and play any other note from c simultaneously or after that first note. If I want to hit passing notes outside of the diatonic scale then I can do that but then I am not playing in the key of C.

Not always true. If you're in the key of C, and you play Db, this is often a very fast modulation to C phrygian. You're still in the key of C though, if the tonal center is still C. Same applies to all other notes - play F# in C major and you're essentially doing a very short modulation to C lydian.

Shifting into other tonal centers is also possible but the reason that I call them modes of C is these are the keys that all contain a C. The modes of C are also related to the key of Ab since every note in that key is a root of a key with identical notes to one of the modes of C. The key of Ab (Ab Bb C Db Eb F G) is also the same notes as a backward major scale starting from C so C with a backwards major scale would be C (1/2) Db (1) Eb (1) F (1) G (1/2) Ab (1) Bb (1) C were 1 = whole step and 1/2 = half step. Now when you want to play in other keys and always play something that could sound good when your intial tonal center is C you can choose to play in any key that has as its root a not contained in Ab and this assures that you are going to be playing a key with a C in it.

But what if you modulate to the key of Ab minor? That has a root note contained in Ab (obviously), but it doesn't contain C!

The expression "The modes of C" is confusing because it can mean 2 different things:

- Modes in the key of C (C lydian, C major, C mixolydian, C dorian, C minor, C phrygian, C locrian)
- Modes derived from the scale of C major (F lydian, C major, G mixolydian, D dorian, A minor, E phrygian, B locrian)

[jancivil]

nobody composes notes using modes like you guys think it is dumb to think you are playing modes when you start on a particular note then run through a scale from the 1st note to the octave higher and return to the 1st.

I guess you mean: "if I am in C ionian I can start on any note in the key of c and play any other note from c simultaneously or after that first note." No shit, Sherlock.

Modes are ways of relating scales to tonics when used in modulations strategies.

For you, a mode seems to be a way of identify something to relate to other things. That is not really what "Modes are".

A mode is its own thing, own identity if you will, and the identity is founded in a central note; the character of a mode is defined there in the first place. If C is the center, or tonic, modes with another nominator, eg., "D Dorian" are not anything, meaning is violated.

If I want to hit passing notes outside of the diatonic scale then I can do that but then I am not playing in the key of C.

It's already been touched on, but 'key of' and 'mode' aren't to be conflated. "Key of C" and "C Ionian" have agreement, but the key signature of C major also coincides with six other modes than Ionian. THIS is why 'key of' vis a vis 'mode' is problematic.

Just the presence of non-white key notes does not through itself mean 'not in the key of C', additionally. It may be like that for you, but I'm not ruled by that consideration.

There is a confounding of terms from music in a 'harmonic' paradigm with terms that apply to the modal paradigm. "Modulation" carries a connotation of harmonic practice. Moving from 'key of _' to 'other key of _' means a new tonic has been firmly established as home, for awhile. We're getting into what chords do in the major/minor paradigm, and as I have said numerous times, once you do this in a modal environment, you're in danger of obviating the mode. And we're back to modes as names for something else.

Shifting into other tonal centers is also possible but the reason that I call them modes of C is these are the keys that all contain a C. The modes of C are also related to the key of Ab since every note in that key is a root of a key with identical notes to one of the modes of C. The key of Ab (Ab Bb C Db Eb F G) is also the same notes as a backward major scale starting from C.

This is a strange-looking statement. As already pointed out, 'modes of C' gives 'C' as central consideration. {'Modes of C' means to me 'C dorian, C phrygian', etc.}

A scale formation happening to contain C is related to Ab by the one coincidence, C. While giving tone/semitone upside down may do something for you, I don't find it means a relationship of the two, per se. It's just an abstraction of numbers.

And given the potential for confusion we already have here, I think it's a reach and not generally useful.

[jancivil]

Dorian's #6 turns IVm into IV, which has a quite lighter feel. Phrygian's b2 adds the bII chord which is super useful - you get two dominant chords instead of one!

Adds? What's the other 'dominant chord' of Phrygian? See, this confounds the language of harmonic music with something that isn't going to find that paradigm the most useful thing.

This tendency is shown in every case you bring, you relate everything to the major/minor paradigm, always backtracking to that. "turns iv into IV". Instead of granting Dorian its notes. Dorian had no minor chord on 4 to begin with, Dorian HAS a major IV {D Dorian is quite another thing than D minor, 'turns into' isn't true. There_is_no_Bb, full stop! So we should not sign it that way.} .
'Adds' a new chord: adds to what?

Concidentally, C Lydian compares to C Ionian by the one difference at the fourth step, but the things you're going to do with 'major' such as 'dominant-tonic' are out the window. It helps a noob out to compare, but the modes are their own thing. There are seven modes of any seven-note set. The move of making "Major" the font from which the others emanate is a mistake.

[tapper mike]

Does anyone ever actually look at sheet music around here?

Some people do compose in modes. Carlos Santana from the 60's into the 80's wrote most of his stuff in Dorian mode.

Jan is right about a few things. One isn't really changing a key when shifting from C ionian to D Dorian. A mode is not a key. Modes define where the (Now she's going to shoot me) Tonal Center is.

The most common method of song writing for over a century is the chord progression. Starting from the big picture which is form. Gives us something to work from.

Common song forms
AAA
AABA
ABCAB

Each letter represents a section.There are more forms to work from. A is the verse. Some people confuse "B" as being Bridge. B is usually the Chorus C is the bridge.

Each section ABC is comprised of progressions. The entire thing may be repeated. Jazz standards usually take AABA and then repeat every thing three times |:this area is repeated

B and C can be in different keys then A. Usually it's just B. if it's moving to a related key (a fifth or a fourth) most times it's a direct modulation. You don't have to create a super sub progression to modulate. More often then not. All progressions will share the same key. What separates them is the actual progressions and approach.

When someone speaks of playing in dorian mode. They are usually playing over a ii-V. If the key is in C then the progression or part of the progression would be D minor chord (playing a dorian mode)-G Chord (playing a mixolydian mode) Same key the different modes help to focus on the chord tones. If you've ever read one of those Lick books or even seen a video on licks they call the lick/riff/line by what chord(s) it works over. This ties the lick or line or melody to the chord. No you don't have to play in that fashion. It's just a common treatment to playing a line over a progression that makes more sense then playing any old note will do.

So progressions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

It's better then the four chords guys because the four chords guys actually get some songs wrong.

There are only so many progressions in the universe. Yes you can write your own progression based on a key. But be aware it may not be unique (having never been written before) That's the point of the video. You can also graft common progressions to write your own songs.

Remember up there when I mentioned forms and sections?
A section can be one progression or it can be one progression repeated with variation.
E-B-C#m-A
E-B-G#m-A
That is an eight measure section with two similar progressions.

Does anyone ever read fake book sheet music.
Most fake book sheet music only provides an outline of the song. You get the Chords names (chord chart) and maybe the melody. Everything else is up for grabs. Sometimes all one needs to do is read the chord names to get a handle on the progression without having to read each individual note. They fake it. Between ears and fingers and imagination you'd be amazed at what you can do with only a chord chart.

If you've never ever written or played a song all the way through.
Play The Blues The blues is old and it's new. Every few years a new blues song comes around. Many songs that are not typically considered blues songs still follow the blues form and the 12 bar (measure) progression. What you do with the melody is up to you.
You can focus on minor pentatonics, you can explore mixolydian playing (most common with major blues) and explore aeolian and dorian modes in the minor form.

Look before you hit play.
All the essentials are in the chord chart.
It has an intro (in red)
It has an A and a B section which all are repeated |:
And it has an ending.

Blues has some basic guidelines (best practices) In the blues the I and the IV chord are never Major 7th's If they are 7ths they are played as dominant 7's Eg if playing a blues progression in G the G chord is expressed as G-B-D-F (not F#) It's still considered the key of G

As well in the blues most of the time...one doesn't have to change mode when going from the I-IV. This give it a slight tension if you don't. If you do...well it's something of personal choice.

However one can (and they often do) accomodate for the turnaround. (V-IV-I) EG if it's in the key of G D7-C7-G7 each chord can have it's own mixolydian treatment. D7(play something off of D mixolydian) C7 (play something off of the C mixolydian mode) G7 (we've already covered that its G mixolydian)

So here is your jam track and chord chart -
http://tappermike.com/kvr/blu2u.html

It is a garden variety 12 bar blues pattern (yes, the blues does take liberies with the basic 12 bar pattern)


Here I am jamming to that same track
http://tappermike.com/kvr/blu2u1.html

I start out using a blues scale with some embelishments.
I progress to playing from the mixolydian mode and...and mixing up between the blues scale and the mixolydian scale. Then I play over the Dorian scale. The chords progression doesn't change.
I only "play them changes" on the turnaround.

There are points that intentionally sound rough. Playing and writing music isn't about "Do no harm" "I'm too afraid to make mistakes writing/playing so I'm going to avoid them" For example often when it changes to the IV chord I'm still playing around with a I7 lick. That's okay it won't last forever. When the chord returns I7 and I retain my I7 lick the situation resolves itself. Tension and Release. Sure I could have just transposed the lick up to the IV chord but it wouldn't have that type of "drama"

[jancivil]

Does anyone ever actually look at sheet music around here?

Some people do compose in modes. Carlos Santana from the 60's into the 80's wrote most of his stuff in Dorian mode.

Jan is right about a few things. One isn't really changing a key when shifting from C ionian to D Dorian. A mode is not a key. Modes define where the (Now she's going to shoot me) Tonal Center is.

I call it tonic. Everyone I ever saw or heard talk about 'Sa' in Indian music calls it 'the tonic'. JJF objected to 'tonic' as denoting 'tonal music' or 'tonality', It seems like he wanted something more like 'tonal center' to replace 'tonic' but I'm not going to do more typing every instance just to comply with that.
"Tonal" isn't "Modal", but...

[jancivil]

When someone speaks of playing in dorian mode. They are usually playing over a ii-V. If the key is in C then the progression or part of the progression would be D minor chord (playing a dorian mode)-G Chord (playing a mixolydian mode) Same key the different modes help to focus on the chord tones. If you've ever read one of those Lick books or even seen a video on licks they call the lick/riff/line by what chord(s) it works over.

Which someone does that? You do, and you are missing something and/or choosing to frame the thing according to what you understand best.

I would NEVER speak of Dorian or any mode in terms of 'over a ii-V'. What is the V of dorian? You give V as a capital letter and clearly you mean a Dominant to a tonic (if only a temp tonic) by it. Dorian does_not_have_it! There is no dominant-tonic in Dorian Mode. Dorian, eg D dorian has a v, minor quality, A minor.

So we're back to this mistake of saying dorian is what happens by ii. You admit that a move to Dorian is not a key change, mode isn't key. For 'Dorian' to be TRUE, the 'tonic' is clear.

I don't have a few things right. I totally have the whole thing clear in my mind, while you are just confusing the issue, the same as every time we go here. If naming something helps you people keep track of shit, fine, but D dorian mode is NOT a product of ii chord in C major. It just doesn't do anything. It's more than one name for one thing. FULL STOP. "If the key is in C then the progression or part of the progression would be D minor chord (playing a dorian mode)-G Chord (playing a mixolydian mode)" If the key is C major both of these are extraneous names for C major scale. I do not know why this doesn't sink in after YEARS of this here.

And again you are pushing this ideology of chords as determinant. It has its place, yeppir people do write from chords first, but it does not determine a mode. A mode does not exist to clarify shit in a chord progression. This is upside-down.

You're using 'lick books' as an appeal to authority? No, I didn't operate like that. You must call a mode by what chord, per se? Well in terms of a scale, it could be true... In terms of a mode, what you have above is just meaningless and not useful.
You run into Db7b5 {the b5 sub of V in Cminor} and you must do some Db altered scale? I would do something more efficient than that. I'm looking at the goal of V, I see that figure and I should have the experience to have that whole thing at hand. I know its dominant function, first of all. It seems too much like thinking about scales instead of thinking about the musical point, and this produces a lot of extraneous crap.


Dorian mode is typified by Santana Secret Chord Progression: i-IV. the IV DETERMINED BY Dorian mode, not the other way around. i-IV is chosen because he wants to do Dorian. Dorian is not chosen to focus on the major third of IV.

[stringtapper]

It seems to me that someone like Dunbar's conception of mode is derived from the usage you find in jazz chord-scale theory rather than pre-17th century modal practice. In that paradigm improvisors will think of playing D Dorian over a Dm7, especially if it functions as ii in the harmony.* Some players will play Dorian over any m7 chord, regardless of its function. It's a different conception of mode to be sure, but one that has been taught a lot since the advent of jazz education.

*This brings up a not-unfounded criticism of chord-scale theory in that playing a tune like Autumn Leaves and thinking in separate modes for each when one can easily think of playing in one key (G minor) is much easier and arguably truer to the nature of the piece.

[jancivil]

Gobsmacking to me, that major acquires six other false names in these arguments. "Not-unfounded"? Fundament: when you're in one key, you're in one key. If you're in G major, names of modes that are not that thing are not changing that fact.

'especially as ii functions' means there is a I chord, and that means there is a tonic that isn't the tonic of that dorian. It's completely simple. The terms are now clear.

[stringtapper]

That's why the criticism of chord-scale theory for tunes like Autumn Leaves is "not unfounded."

In other types of jazz tunes it's very helpful because you have very fast modulations (really tonicizations) of several keys going on in short spans.

Also, as I stated, often jazz improvisors will use different modes regardless of the function. So over a ii-V-I in C major an improvisor might use D Dorian, G Mixolydian, and C Lydian, instead of C Ionian, because it gives them a different kind of sound.

For all intents and purposes the ii-V-I was still "in one key" but the jazz musician played a different mode. They might also play a Lydian-Dominant scale over the V, which is a mode of the melodic minor scale. Again, it's a different conception.

[JumpingJackFlash]

For all intents and purposes the ii-V-I was still "in one key" but the jazz musician played a different mode. They might also play a Lydian-Dominant scale over the V, which is a mode of the melodic minor scale. Again, it's a different conception.

It's true that this is a method sometimes used in jazz improvisation; you might be taught to use certain "modes" over certain chords.

However, it's important to realise that this is purely an aid to the improviser, something to help with working out notes and so on. It does not do anything to the actual music.

So, if you have a ii-V7-I progression in C major, it really doesn't matter what the improviser is thinking when he solos over it, the music is still in C major.

[stringtapper]

Sure. I don't think my post said anything to the contrary, did it?

[JumpingJackFlash]

Sure. I don't think my post said anything to the contrary, did it?

Just clarifying.

[MadBrain]

Dorian's #6 turns IVm into IV, which has a quite lighter feel. Phrygian's b2 adds the bII chord which is super useful - you get two dominant chords instead of one!

Adds? What's the other 'dominant chord' of Phrygian? See, this confounds the language of harmonic music with something that isn't going to find that paradigm the most useful thing.

The other dominant is V as usual, where you can borrow V7 with temporary scale changes, exactly like how you borrow the V7 chord in minor because Vm7 is kinda weak. Or you can use Vm7b5, which stays in the mode and actually works as a dominant (try it!). Vm7 also works. If you play bII followed by V, then bII turns into a subdominant (see: Neapolitan 6th).

This tendency is shown in every case you bring, you relate everything to the major/minor paradigm, always backtracking to that. "turns iv into IV". Instead of granting Dorian its notes. Dorian had no minor chord on 4 to begin with, Dorian HAS a major IV {D Dorian is quite another thing than D minor, 'turns into' isn't true. There_is_no_Bb, full stop! So we should not sign it that way.} .
'Adds' a new chord: adds to what?

Concidentally, C Lydian compares to C Ionian by the one difference at the fourth step, but the things you're going to do with 'major' such as 'dominant-tonic' are out the window. It helps a noob out to compare, but the modes are their own thing. There are seven modes of any seven-note set. The move of making "Major" the font from which the others emanate is a mistake.

Dunno, to me the border between modes and tonality has always been somewhat porous: in the songs where the 3rd degree is minor, sometimes all IV chords are major and Bb never appears (so clearly dorian), and sometimes all IV chords are IVm and Bb is all over the place (minor), but then there are songs that are clearly halfway between. There's no wall between D minor and D dorian: the distribution between Bb and B can be anywhere between 100% Bb and 100% B. The song can even use the pentatonic minor scale, in which both Bb and B can be totally absent and it's impossible to say if you're really in dorian or in minor.

For everything that tapper mike said: yes that's the chord=scale technique of jazz (which I also use, of course), but that's not what we're talking about here. When you play Bm7b5 in D minor, you're going to play B locrian over that, but you're also doing a temporary modulation to D dorian, since you're switching Bb for B for the duration of the chord but the current key is still D. These are two different views of the same thing. As for the blues, that's well known to be hard to analyze - I'd put it somewhere between mixolydian and dorian but that's half wrong and there are a zillion exceptions.

Also, for me, "key" and "tonal center" are synonyms: saying "you're in the key of D" is the same thing as "the tonic is D".

[JumpingJackFlash]

Dunno, to me the border between modes and tonality has always been somewhat porous: in the songs where the 3rd degree is minor, sometimes all IV chords are major and Bb never appears (so clearly dorian), and sometimes all IV chords are IVm and Bb is all over the place (minor), but then there are songs that are clearly halfway between. There's no wall between D minor and D dorian: the distribution between Bb and B can be anywhere between 100% Bb and 100% B. The song can even use the pentatonic minor scale, in which both Bb and B can be totally absent and it's impossible to say if you're really in dorian or in minor.

This betrays a lack of understanding on how minor keys work.

In minor keys, the sixth and seventh degrees are variables. A piece in the key of D minor for example could contain Bb, B, C and C#. - This doesn't mean the mode changes; it's still in the key D minor regardless.

And in analysis in general, the mere prescience of chromaticism isn't enough in itself to state that the music has changed key (or mode).

play F# in C major and you're essentially doing a very short modulation to C lydian.

No, it doesn't work that way. Or at least, this is a very unhelpful way to look at things.
An F# appearing in a piece in C major might indicate a modulation to the dominant (G major), but not necessarily.

[stringtapper]

Right. Depending on the context an F# played in the key of C major might only be a chromatic passing tone. Or it could imply the secondary dominant V/V.