Diatonic modes vs circle of fifths

[tapper mike]

Re modal playing and autumn leaves.

The falling(Chord tone)
Drift by my (Chord tone)
The autumn (chord tone)
of red and (Chord tone)
Each musical phrase ends on a chord tone which is the 3rd of the chord that lands on that beat (the one)

Not all jazz is about playing where you are. Sometimes it is focusing on where you are going to. The focus of the verse is going to a chord tone. Specifically the 3rd.
Me, not being trained classically like to refer to the approach in "Autumn Leaves" as Back Stepping however I believe you the classically informed refer to this as sequencing.

Yes, In jazz, while playing jazz, we (jazz players) are known to "Play them changes"
In it's most simplified explanation that's true. However it's not a be all end all. We have several means of approaching any given song including but not limited to chord subsitutions, non functional harmony, melodic subsitions and more. "Playing them changes" is just the foot in the door.

In the blues it is extremely uncommon to find a MA7 chord. Not so for jazz/pop/rock/country/folk/bluegrass.

When I come across a Bm7b5 I don't play a locrian mode around it. I have endless possibilites. I could treat it as ...
..A BbMajor7 it's only one note off and often jazz will use this type of chord subsition/chord walking ala "Aint Misbehavin"
..A G7add9 it has all the components save the G note it self.
..A Dm6 time to break out that other minor pentatonic scale.
..I could works out a whole-half scale.
..Or I could simply treat it as some where to drop a chord tone on and leave it at that.
..I could also work against the chord tones because it isn't going to hang around forever. Chord changes mean... the chord is going to change. all I have to do is focus on where I'm going and land on the next chord tone of the next chord to make for a happy resolution.

Most jazz guys don't think about all that stuff when they play. Because they've already thought things through and have a grasp of what they are going to do before they do it. For me and many players it's more about context of the artist.
Play like Charlie Christian or George Bension or Charlie Parker or John Coltrane or Pat Metheney or Louis Armstrong, or Pat Martino or Errol Garner or Wayne Shorter or Cannonball Adderley or Chic Corea or Herbie Handcock or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk or Horace Silver....on and on and on. Each one has their own take-a-way.

Pat Martino has used several approaches including super imposing less common subsitutions against chords. http://youtu.be/9Dur8uocnBY

Adderley doesn't get mucked into that he likes playing clearly defined easy to recognize blues scale based licks.

Parker wasn't about that. Parker concentrated on chord tones connecting them in half and whole step fashion (neighboring/passing tones).
Trane wasn't about that shortshifting he was building lines from the Lydian mode.

Errol Garner wasn't doing that. He'd play nonfunctional chords out of time with his left hand while playing straight with is right till the left would finally settle in both time and function. It was a method he used for tension and release rather then my above treatise on "how to play the blues'

When I play I'm not thinking in terms of modes. I've been there done that it's no longer a part of the thought process because I've done it enough. I'm thinking only slightly of how I'm going to move from where I am (what chord I'm playing over) to where I'm going (what note I'm going to hit and how I'm going to get there) Honestly it's not rocket science if you've ever played a jazz walking bassline. More over I'm thinking about personality. Phrasing, phrases, lines. The progression and the rhyhmic style already lay down the ground work. Creating a melody that "fits" is the easy stuff on top.

[tapper mike]

Re: F# in the key of C

If it's a chord it could be... A b5 subsition also known as tritone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone_substitution

Or it could be a passing chord a common turn around especially found in Rock blues
|G|F|C|F-F#-G|

Or an approach (neighboring) chord (bumping)

As a note In jazz it could be part of an Alt chord such as C7b5 or the extended version C#11(same difference) or a b9 such as F7b9. But more commonly it would be treated as the "passing" note in the blues scale.

[Musicologo]

I haven't read ALL the replies in detail, but If I understand correctly the OP, we can have a circle of fifths regarding mode transposition, non?

I mean if I transpose a D dorian and start playing it in A, I would use a f# in my "key signature", A would be my center and I would use a-b-c-d-e-f#-g-a as my "d dorian" sounding like, just transposed a fifth above...

And I can use the same reasoning for EVERY possible mode...

If I want to play the mode of E starting in D, I would just use the circle of fifth reasoning, that meaning two flats in my "key signature", and I would start in D as my center, and that d-eb-f-g-a-bb-c-d would sound exactly as the mode of E just transposed...

I don't see any problem or incongruence in doing this kind of math to match songs in order they sound good...

If I have a song in a tonal key of Bb and I want to follow it up with a song in the mode of E, I think i would do just that - transpose the song in mode of E to start in D. Then both songs would share most of the notes in common, so I think they would sound good overlapping and following up each other.

[tapper mike]

Apparently you didn't make it to the second page

Yes, that's right. But now I actually want to compose a track and wonder how it will work in the mix. That's why I asked for opinion of musicans who probably use different modes a lot. I never considered harmony of other modes before.

[jancivil]

Re modal playing and autumn leaves.

WTFF.

Not all jazz is about playing where you are. Sometimes it is focusing on where you are going to.

Modal playing is about where you are. And enjoying the view. You don't know what it is, all of these verbose quasi-lectures about what you know is not at all pertinent to that point and all it's signalled to me is your ignorance of 'modal playing'. You must not do it and I think you don't enjoy it. In fact you've stated your distaste of its arrival via Miles. But, for a moment it seems like you get it through The Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression, i-IV = dorian... but no, then you found you had to push this other thing by some tortured argument. It's obtuse.

Evidently you understand that you're working towards a goal, so you should understand that saying you're doing D dorian on a ii chord is simply NONSENSE. One more time: if there is this 'ii chord', it means there is a I chord and in the practice a V, the goal is I (even if we land deceptively or i is the new ii). EG: it's C major, and ii is your Dm. There is no dorian here. D Dorian absolutely requires D to be home. It ['D dorian in C major'] is a meaningless tossing about of terms, no use to anybody. It's only in the way. I cannot feature how it's of use to anybody even as a n00b, even as I've tried to be generous.

So why are you obtuse, why MUST you muddy the waters when it comes up? You don't know what you're doing. I don't know why you need to act in competition in areas you lack the very first clue about except it's another opportunity to show this other stuff. Kudos to you for your understanding of jazz harmony.

STFU about modal playing though.

[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.

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).

I don't understand the minor quality v as dominant, but if you want it to be so, I'm not dogmatic about it as a word. There is no 'V', major quality, in Phrygian however. I wanted to see this, I expected this. So again, you are working back towards functional harmony as you seek to talk about modes and their use. Like I said:

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.

Well, I don't think that ought to become anyone else's issue. If it suits your music, I have nothing of dogma to impel me to object to what you want to do, but 'dorian mode' pre-existed the major/minor paradigm by a long, long time. So you seem to be less interested or uninterested in music that actually enjoys the mode, qua itself.
But I don't know what's difficult about the verb IS here. There IS no Bb in D Dorian. There never was. D Dorian is not based on, nor an alteration of D Minor just because you learned 'minor' first or whatever's creating the issue for you.

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.

No, I would never want to be hindered by any of this. If I'm IN D minor, that means that an at least temporary goal is D minor = i. What does Bm7b5 do for that, actually? It's confusing and I'm so not new to the lingo... I think it means you confused D minor with D dorian one more again*. I think there is no B in D minor, so... I would tend to take that harmony as a property of a C tonic at first glance. It isn't a property of D minor and it doesn't establish D Dorian through itself (and I would tend to avoid it as a leading chord to C major, which I've tried to reveal above), so 'modulation' didn't happen and is a misleading term for the next person.

(*: and confounded D Dorian with B Locrian from the vantage point of D minor. This is too much crap to keep up with.)

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

So it is totally what you're talking about.

FTR, I was immersed in jazz for quite some time. Mike likes a straw man of me from the academy which he's tried to put out here, but I went for that on a limited, take what I need basis for two whole years as someone that dropped out of high school at 16. I didn't know people that need the 'chord=scale' in order to locate oneself. That, to me is strictly from Nooby Island. I learned the same lesson about the essential chord tones in ii-V-I form and to look for targets and think efficiently. Thinking of three different scales 'In D minor' seems totally daft to me.

[jancivil]

Apparently you didn't make it to the second page

Yes, that's right. But now I actually want to compose a track and wonder how it will work in the mix. That's why I asked for opinion of musicans who probably use different modes a lot. I never considered harmony of other modes before.

All Musicologo said was to acknowledge that a mode on A from that mode on D is the transposition that it is, up a P5, along with agreeing that the signature for Dorian is the same signature as the major a tone down.
The only indication of a reading problem is of yours, then.

I don't know what you wanted there. The OP never considered harmony vis a vis a mode. Harmony vis a vis a mode isn't the same thing as vis a vis the major/minor paradigm, if you use the latter you have in all probability ruined the mode in favor of major, or maybe 'MadBrain' works from the belief D dorian is D altered natural minor and no problem with a dominant A7. I don't know why calling a thing what it is has to be such a problem though.

[jancivil]

, 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).

"Try it!"

Neapolitan sixth is subdominant per se. That is the impetus for it. In C minor, F Ab Db, the F or 6 in the figured bass is the subdominant, that is the thinking. It could go to V (particularly as voice-leading to F G C-B, V4/2. It has naught to do with any mode except for major or minor in the paradigm of functional harmony.

You're just using a name of a thing for another thing that it ISN'T, and there is no use value in that for the others. If you're doing harmony in the major/minor paradigm, you're in that major or minor. It's just very simple and you're confusing terms and I don't know why you want these things to be true. Ambition? See if you can relax.

You are asserting Bm7b5 is a good dominant for E phrygian. No, that's a good dominant to ruin it because it is, in fact, dominant of C, vii7 of C major and it's going to pull to it, no question. Then you leapt from 'Phrygian' to a bII6 (and a term with a real meaning that is not apt for 'phrygian') which totally belongs to the major/minor paradigm. NB: As you understand it it's a move to the dominant; well the dominant is not a feature of the phrygian. Therefore <this is not phrygian>. It is the other thing. This creates confusion. The entire 'borrowing' is from another kind of usage, it has no place, you're talking about major/minor and that's that. Phrygian is not that. Here are two things with their own meaningful name being confused, to no real point.

[fmr]

Every time I see statements like "dorian mode over Vm7b5" or something like that, I always wonder if people know the meaning of what they are writing. Clearly, it seems not to be the case.
I said several times: "modes are not scales"; "modes don't have harmonic functions". Mixing concepts always lead to erroneous concepts and conclusions.

[jancivil]

The notion of using the chords as though you're constructing them exactly as you would from major is misplaced. The mode, through itself, has a whole world to offer you with no need for the chords AT ALL.

But sure, we have Santana going i to IV, obviously supports his dorian noodling, or Zappa with the Inca Roads solos I to bVII perfectly suits the mixolydian excursions he enjoys. More than a couple of chords will tend to obscure that, though. This whole <seven notes means seven chords>? for this modal world it's DULLSVILLE.
Over the years here I have noticed that western musicians rely on chords to a kind of unsettling extent, like chord progressions is the very font of all musical action.

[fmr]

Over the years here I have noticed that western musicians rely on chords to a kind of unsettling extent, like chord progressions is the very font of all musical action.

Not "western musicians". I would restrict that to musicians that come from pop culture or jazz culture, where there is a kind of "chord slavery".

[jancivil]

I wouldn't, I notice it from the classical training as well. Western as opposed to say ICM or Maqam. IE., the whole thing in Arabic pop music or Bollywood where the traditional sound is made to fit 12tET and now chords applied is conforming to western thought. Chord theory is Western Europe, per se. Even as 'jazz harmony' is described at all, 'ii-V-I', that's classical music derivation. Ice Cream Changes is classical music derivation. Classical music theory, the figured bass comes from counterpoint and at a certain point it became chord-centric. Now, an educated musician understands such a distinction while a particular jazz person here abhors to consider the linear but I would say that my 'western musicians:chords' vs 'eastern thinking about music:linear' is while perhaps glib kind of a truism.

[jancivil]

It is a thing with eg., tappermike, that chords come first, but again there is a whole thing in jazz where a revolt came about out of it, that ii-V-I got to be 'this is some boring shit, Jim' , 'you're a hip cornball with that shit' and modality became the escape hatch. And then people with the synthetic scales, which totally is copped from the east...

THIS is where forward-thinking jazz people had decided they'd had enough of pop music as the model for their creation. ii-V-I and 'rhythm' (I Got Rhythm) changes relate jazz to the popular song, or Broadway musical of the time, and this is all about making a living playing in nightclubs of course; and a different consciousness forms that this can be music qua music or art for art's sake, with political ramifications, *freedom*... Bitches Brew was a statement.

Serial Dodecaphony was a revolt too and this was embraced by certain people in jazz at least the effects of it or 'atonality'.

[fmr]

It is a thing with eg., tappermike, that chords come first, but again there is a whole thing in jazz where a revolt came about out of it, that ii-V-I got to be 'this is some boring shit, Jim' , 'you're a hip cornball with that shit' and modality became the escape hatch. And then people with the synthetic scales, which totally is copped from the east...

THIS is where forward-thinking jazz people had decided they'd had enough of pop music as the model for their creation. ii-V-I and 'rhythm' (I Got Rhythm) changes relate jazz to the popular song, or Broadway musical of the time, and this is all about making a living playing in nightclubs of course; and a different consciousness forms that this can be music qua music or art for art's sake, with political ramifications, *freedom*... Bitches Brew was a statement.

Serial Dodecaphony was a revolt too and this was embraced by certain people in jazz at least the effects of it or 'atonality'.

Well, I would say that western music escaped from chord slavery in the transition from romantism to XXth century. Sure, chords were used by Mahler, or Richard Strauss, or Schoenberg, in the beginning, but Mahler already gave much more importance to the "colour" (with the use of the orchestra), and to the melodies.

And Schoenberg did the last step, completely avoiding chords when he embraced atonality (we were still in the beginning of the XXth century). The same happened with Berg and Webern.

Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinski, all did works where there was no "chord progressions" at all (sometimes, they used modal progressions, sometimes just sound aggregates, without any chord significance - even when there were chords there).

Debussy wrote many pieces where there isn't any chordal thinking, rather a very modal, melodic thinking. Ravel did that too, as well as polytonal pieces on pair with more traditional harmonic pieces.

Messiaen has a thought that has no relation with traditional harmony whatsoever, but is much more related with the modal thinking (with influences from indian musical thought too, in the rhythms, coupled with bird singing for the melodies and melodic cells), and created his own modal system, which can be rooted to Debussy.

Ligeti has a thought that also has nothing to do with chords or harmony - at all.

[jancivil]

Definitely all true. Of the brilliant minds, much as in jazz quite a bit later and as people availed themselves of a musical education more than just the street learning.

But as my professor in 'harmony' at CCM was very interested in Messiaen, his job was to train us to part-write by roman numerals and figured bass.

Many of the developments have to do with embracing linear concepts which is where harmony sprouted out of, so as I say, the educated musician makes the distinction and I acknowledge my dichotomy as a bit glib. I would shine a light on the tendencies there that did look to the east.