Playing in modes

[JumpingJackFlash]

Fwiw, I've studied at music at several colleges, and each handled this (and many other topics) differently.

I'm not talking about obscure technicalities here, I'm talking about basic major keys etc. - The kind of thing you (should) start learning before you get to college-level.

So tell me, what exactly is a "proper music education" (good god, what a pompous phrase)?

That was the OP's phrase, I merely quoted it.

Again, you're attempting to slap the anti-intellectualism label on me, and it doesn't fit. I'm preaching pragmatism

I wasn't specifically talking about you.
I'm sure you've got a system that works for you. It is not necessarily a good idea however to try and "teach" your shortcuts to a naive newbie whose experience is undoubtedly different.

[datroof]

If you're answering a question from, let's say, a first year theory student, what good does it do to answer them with jargon from 3rd year theory? It might make you feel warm & fuzzy about yourself, but doesn't help the student much. So, I question how much of the semantic dogma is/was necessary to answer the question.

The problem, and we get a lot of it on here, is that the question wasn't a "first year theory" question. Someone is trying to run before they can walk and trying to do "third year theory" work without first understanding the basics.

There are certain fundamentals that need to be understood before progress can be made. Learning things wrong is incredibly inefficient; it takes twice as long to subsequently learn it correctly.

Talking about major keys and so on isn't "jargon" or "dogma", it is pre-requisite knowledge for any serious musician. And if you don't have time for the basics, then why bother at all?

Interesting that in almost all the threads I've read over the internet regarding modes, they end with people fighting about it. I'm thinking the subject is pretty difficult to comprehend and agreed upon even for those of proper music theory education. Very interesting.

For people who actually have a "proper music theory education", it isn't difficult at all. The problem is that nowadays, far too many people just want to shove some loops together and call themselves "musicians", without the slightest idea of how music actually works.

I strongly advise you to get to grips with the basics. Ideally, get a teacher who can explain things to you. But start at the beginning and don't expect to become proficient overnight.

Again, I think you're confusing anti-intellectualism with pragmatism. Fwiw, I've studied at music at several colleges, and each handled this (and many other topics) differently. I believe I have what most would consider a "proper music education", and then some. But, in my experience, at least some of what you're obviously talking about when you say "proper music education", is of dubious value in real life, where rubber meets road. Now, if your life involves teaching college theory courses, then that's entirely different.

[datroof]

D'oh, I edited my post, while someone was responding to original version, resulting in 2 versions of same post. Sorry everyone, my bad.

[datroof]

So tell me, what exactly is a "proper music education" (good god, what a pompous phrase)?

That was the OP's phrase, I merely quoted it.

You're right. Sorry for the snark.

[jancivil]

He's obviously in the ballpark, has a basic understanding of what he's talking about, and his question seems fairly clear. Easiest path to understanding is to give an answer that he can understand and use.

Really? Sorry, but you don't reach "understanding" by glossing over misunderstandings (viz. modes and keys).

Well, you can probably surmise from my previous posts that I consider some of that to be outdated dogma, and some to be beyond the scope of the OP's question, which doesn't really help anyone except maybe you.

I surmised that you did what JJF noticed, glossing over a really fundamental misunderstanding. I think there are other people than the person with the OP reading.

D Dorian isn't in the key of C major. If someone wants to know what the names of these things MEAN, there it is. You're partaking of this word 'dogma' repeatedly to characterize using meaningful terms and USEFUL descriptions as though to apply a kind of taint to something normative.

"D Dorian" requires D as the central note in order to be that thing.

[jancivil]

If I want to consciously play D-Dorian, would I just need to be playing the C-Major scale and emphasizing the D note?

for it to be consciously D Dorian, D needs to be 'the tonic' as it were, the central note, ONE = D. IE: one could be 'emphasizing' D in C major and still something makes the thing C major.

[jancivil]

Interesting that in almost all the threads I've read over the internet regarding modes, they end with people fighting about it. I'm thinking the subject is pretty difficult to comprehend and agreed upon even for those of proper music theory education. Very interesting.

What are the rules about modes? Depends on who you're talking to, what school you're in, what country you're in, what book you're reading, what musician you're talking to, what day of the week it is, etc. Simple, right?

Rules? You're engaging more than once in a type of sophistry. {Sophistry: It sounds good, it seems reasonable to someone that doesn't quite get the material, but it's crap.} That's almost nihilistic there, in service of what? To push your POV, and support other statements which probably aren't helpful either?

D Dorian is not "in C major". If that somehow was no problem for you as a teenager noodling around, fine. However you are not central to understanding, your experience isn't universal.
The point is: "D Dorian in C Major" is an impossible statement. It isn't true. 'C Major' is a meaningful term. 'D Dorian' is a meaningful term. Blurring them is antithetical to knowing.

[Jafo]

I think people worry too much about playing in modes when really, it's no different than playing in major or minor (major and natural minor are just different modes, after all). You just figure out what notes you're supposed to use and what the home note (ok, tonic) is, then use melodies and chords that center on the home note. After a while you get comfortable with this process, it becomes natural and easy to add or subtract notes (or even shift modes) if you want things to sound or feel a bit different -- and really that's what modes are all about: a colorful journey to a place of rest.

[jancivil]

If you're answering a question from, let's say, a first year theory student, what good does it do to answer them with jargon from 3rd year theory? It might make you feel warm & fuzzy about yourself, but doesn't help the student much. So, I question how much of the semantic dogma is/was necessary to answer the question.

The problem, and we get a lot of it on here, is that the question wasn't a "first year theory" question. Someone is trying to run before they can walk and trying to do "third year theory" work without first understanding the basics.

There are certain fundamentals that need to be understood before progress can be made. Learning things wrong is incredibly inefficient; it takes twice as long to subsequently learn it correctly.

Talking about major keys and so on isn't "jargon" or "dogma", it is pre-requisite knowledge for any serious musician. And if you don't have time for the basics, then why bother at all?

Interesting that in almost all the threads I've read over the internet regarding modes, they end with people fighting about it. I'm thinking the subject is pretty difficult to comprehend and agreed upon even for those of proper music theory education. Very interesting.

For people who actually have a "proper music theory education", it isn't difficult at all. The problem is that nowadays, far too many people just want to shove some loops together and call themselves "musicians", without the slightest idea of how music actually works.

I strongly advise you to get to grips with the basics. Ideally, get a teacher who can explain things to you. But start at the beginning and don't expect to become proficient overnight.

Again, I think you're confusing anti-intellectualism with pragmatism. Fwiw, I've studied at music at several colleges, and each handled this (and many other topics) differently. I believe I have what most would consider a "proper music education", and then some. But, in my experience, at least some of what you're obviously talking about when you say "proper music education", is of dubious value in real life, where rubber meets road. Now, if your life involves teaching college theory courses, then that's entirely different.

So why not address these things specifically? You're pushing a POV that something undefined, in general, something about school, is dogmatic as opposed to pragmatic. It seems like a lot of verbiage to state your distaste for school.

Me, I find it well peculiar that someone boasting of a lot of school came away with 'D Dorian in C major? no problem at all'. It seems to want to mollify the original post and bash JJF for sorting out a really basic mistake. It has blossomed into a rant and I do doubt the OP has seen this specific application you have insisted on as the alternative to basic statements.

Practically, there are things to avoid in modal improvisation or writing, if one is actually interested in the mode qua the mode. Mentioned so far was F to B in D Dorian. There is a reason to state that. It tends to pull to C major. You're on about the person discovers this for themselves; like it can't be useful to point that tendency out, it's part of this 'dogmatic' thing. It is a truism, however.

We see people here all the time wanting to stick chords derived from major/minor paradigm onto teh modes. Well, when you use a harmony or chord in D Dorian with F to B, it's useful to have a clue about it. We in the west are conditioned for that to turn up E and C by 'resolution', resolution of that [tritone] as a tension. Your jazz whatsit doesn't enter into it.

SO! We need to know that, in order for D Dorian to retain its whole D Dorianness, D is the f**king tonic. C is f**king not the tonic. It is not C major. One CAN do say a G7 chord under a D Dorian line if one knows what they're doing, which is based in respecting D = ONE. Otherwise G7 is V7 in C (I would avoid tacking on F there as adding nothing but bringing in a problem). And we can proceed with things that are understood, that are true per se.

[Jafo]

D Dorian may use the same notes as C Major, but its center, its home, its place of rest is D, not C. It's a world of difference.

[Jafo]

Oh, and there's no reason you can't temporarily tonicize a different note in an otherwise model piece -- you could all of a sudden make F# the tonic in D Dorian if you wanted to (even if F# doesn't exist in D Dorian).

[D.Josef]

Interesting that in almost all the threads I've read over the internet regarding modes, they end with people fighting about it. I'm thinking the subject is pretty difficult to comprehend and agreed upon even for those of proper music theory education. Very interesting.

That's because, in my opinion, people tend to misunderstand modes. They are a different paradigm from modern, vertical music theory. They are sometimes called "church" modes, because they were (and are) originally used in chants.

Chants, that were melody-based as opposed to harmony-based, and actually lacked harmony in the modern sense in its entirety, as they were always sung in unison.

I don't know the first thing about jazz theory except that they have an odd liking for exotic scales and modes, and doing everything differently than mere mortals , but outside jazz, confounding modes (which are a melody-based paradigm) with keys (which are tonality, which is a harmony-based paradigm) just results in misunderstandings.

The question was, what will happen if he plays a D-Dorian track over a C-major base... Well, what will happen in my opinion is, that the D-Dorian track will become a C-major track. So when he thinks he's playing, for example, a bIII, he's, in fact, playing a IV.
It should work, even if it breaks all the classical rules of melody - in pop music those have been overturned decades or centuries ago. It just won't be Dorian. It will be C Major.

[tapper mike]

One doesn't hear a lot of Dorian modes elaborated in jazz because.... it's passing.

In jazz many songs incorporate the ii-V-1 or just ii-V. Those pass very quickly usually a measre or half measure per chord. When improvising a common technique is to either simply play the arpeggios or "lines" that connect the chords together via chord tones.

A measure is too short to fully involve all that the dorian mode could offer. It's there and then it's gone. Because jazz (for the most part) focuses on the chord progression as a pathway. While you are in "the mode" your goal is to transition to the next mode to compiment the next chord.

Pay special attention to what Barney Kessel states at about 1:16 regarding how to improvise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX9svJk1Ob8

When you'll hear dorian mode explored most is when it has more then a measure to work out. These are often "Vamps" A vamp is when the chord doesn't change for several measures. Dorian mode is very popular in latin rock and is often used in Minor Blues.


The term "modal jazz" refers to a variant of jazz. It is not all engulfing. Not all jazz has the same structure. and as you enter into the constructs of modal jazz you leave trad, modern and other variations of jazz behind.

Modal Jazz uses a basic scale structure then may construct different supporting (somewhat like couterpoint) structures http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/ ... _jazz.html


If you try to apply the constructs of modal jazz to progression jazz it's not going to work
And same with vice versa.

[jancivil]

One doesn't hear a lot of Dorian modes elaborated in jazz because.... it's passing.

If it's 'passing' it was never Dorian mode. Now you have it finally though, a term such as 'Dorian mode' means modal music.

[jancivil]

Interesting that in almost all the threads I've read over the internet regarding modes, they end with people fighting about it. I'm thinking the subject is pretty difficult to comprehend and agreed upon even for those of proper music theory education. Very interesting.

This outcome is why I fight. Here is this perception that it's cloudy. It isn't. It isn't difficult. There is no controversy, there is just misunderstanding. I don't know what 'proper music education' is until I see it. The only time I saw 'modes theory' in honors curric at CCM was in Music History talking about the old Church Music, which predates chordal think by quite a span of time. I don't know how anyone with a *proper* education would come away with any confusion on it. There is no D Dorian "In C Major". There is a coincidence, but Major is not the fount from which Dorian springs. That is not what happened even as classification. Dorian is older. You can say 'D dorian is the seventh mode of C ionian' as a true statement, but equally true will be 'C ionian is the seventh mode of D dorian'. In the old Church practice, 'Ionian' is a later classification for what was done with Lydian, and this is before there was any major/minor paradigm.
Now should you write out a D dorian tune, I would advise a clean score which one might see and go, 'ok, C major' as there are no sharps or flats, but this is coincidence. C major is rooted in C, 'D dorian mode' needs that to be D and you really are dealing with two different ways.

If a jazz guy sez 'you do the dorian mode on the ii chord and mixolydian on the V' they are giving three names for one thing. If it's a ii-V driven music, the de facto 'I' or 'i' provides THE scale. That's the same mistake as simply stating 'D Dorian is when you do a C major scale from D'. I hope you see why.