Your thoughts on modes

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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You're high, aren't you. I do not have a misconstruction of terms, I have no problem to admit, no first step of 12 to take.
tapper mike wrote: My hope is for the explorers looking for different directions to take their music and offer them suggestions for exploration, not flatheads to beat into submission and obedience.
The first thing you went to do is contradict what I said 'modes are not based in chords'. And you really ran with that.

I just want someone to know what a mode is, and not confuse it with harmonic function. It's not about making anyone obey me. We're going to do this dance into perpetuity like we're in hell, evidently. Your confusion does not have to be the next person's confusion is all.

You really think an EDM person is going to springboard off what you're doing in this thread? But like I said, when it's useful it is and I gave you that, there could be all kind of people reading this. That's one reason I feel it has to be said: it is not useful to confuse major with the modes, or key with mode, or ii-V-I with mode.
Look man, you know what modal jazz is right? You know that it was all about getting away from ii-V-I show tunes basis for lines, don't you? But no, you have to mix the two things in, like you're just very obtuse. You go with all the people that came before you using modes as scales - which I totally get, no worries - to say more than that, "modes can come from chords". No, the thing in itself is the thing in itself, these particular usages are not the definition of the thing. Modes are there, self-sufficient. This is a point of basic logic, the thing in itself.
If you would just relent and call the things what they are, SCALES, I'm good. But the topic is 'Your thoughts on modes'. You do not have thoughts on modes, you have thoughts on other things.<-This is a true statement.

I do not come to this through school. Very little was relayed to me about modes in the school I was in, it was medieval church music, it applies differently in a number of ways.
I was a modal player naturally, I gravitated to rock and jazz that did that, and I found Indian classical music at around age 15. It interests me. I think it's as valuable as you think your interests are. I would like you to grant people the space for it rather than twist it out of recognition so you can have the floor.

IN SUM: There is no point in all of this extraneous lingo to deal with a chord borrowed essentially from a minor type of mode.
If it's Aeolian it is, and it's simple to make a useful distinction.

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janiksutice wrote:Also, if you know some examples of existing songs using one of these modes, please comment them below. I'll give it a start:

Coldplay - Paradise (Dorian)
Hans Zimmer - Time (Dorian)
Alesso - Years (Dorian)
Porter Robinson - Language (Lydian)
In the solo for Jane's Addiction's "Three Days", Dave Navarro deftly switches from Dorian to Ionian to Phrygian. That's my favorite solo of all time.

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Uncle E wrote:
In the solo for Jane's Addiction's "Three Days", Dave Navarro deftly switches from Dorian to Ionian to Phrygian. That's my favorite solo of all time.
Sorry but I find both this song the the solo really boring - but these things are
matter of taste. To me jazz, rock and folk is full of much more interesting examples.
Folk music in different cultures uses almost all different modes, maybe the "celtic" dorian mode is one of the best known in Europe (see e.g. Scarborough Fair).
(Western) classical music, which has used (and uses) folk much also music themes, has some brilliant examples: I take one from my country, listen e.g. Sibelius 4th symphony,
which starts with a tritonus, uses the dorian a-minor, but very soon changes to the lydian C-major. To me THIS is interesting progression of the modes. H.

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Gamma-UT wrote:
Your teacher needs a smack upside the head. Seriously. Next he'll be telling you sus2 isn't a proper chord.
"suspended" in this context means "to raise up" or "sharpen"
The 3rd is suspended up to the 4th, in a "sus4" chord.

You cannot suspend the root/tonic up to the 2nd.
You can drop the third and add a 9th though ;)


The best part of Music Theory is the semantics :)
Prestissimo in Moto Perpetuo

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Melkor wrote:
Gamma-UT wrote:Next he'll be telling you sus2 isn't a proper chord.
"suspended" in this context means "to raise up" or "sharpen"
No it doesn't.
Suspended in this context means to "hold over". In traditional usage, the suspended note is held over (or repeated) from a consonance in the previous chord (known as the "preparation" for the suspension).
Unfamiliar words can be looked up in my Glossary of musical terms.
Also check out my Introduction to Music Theory.

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duplicated post
Unfamiliar words can be looked up in my Glossary of musical terms.
Also check out my Introduction to Music Theory.

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Melkor wrote:
Gamma-UT wrote:
Your teacher needs a smack upside the head. Seriously. Next he'll be telling you sus2 isn't a proper chord.
"suspended" in this context means "to raise up" or "sharpen"
The 3rd is suspended up to the 4th, in a "sus4" chord.

You cannot suspend the root/tonic up to the 2nd.
You can drop the third and add a 9th though ;)


The best part of Music Theory is the semantics :)
Semantics is the consideration of meaning. That isn't the meaning of 'suspended'. Actually in pop music sort of usage eg., 'sus4 chord' doesn't have to mean more than the 4th is there rather than the 3rd. But the reason that word is used is out of voice-leading/part writing convention. The 4th, eg., has been held over from another harmony rather than that voice moving straight away to the 3rd. These suspensions may resolve to the 3rd. NB: a '2-3 suspension' is called '2-3' because the second that results becomes a third when the lower note moves down a step.

'Sus 2' is a more or less useful chord name in the context of a chart in pop sort of musics. Some people call it a '2 chord'. "add a 9th" isn't so good in my estimation because there is another thing, 'add 9' chord vs 'add 2' which tends to give you that bit of the preferred voicing. And here the 3rd is present.
Last edited by jancivil on Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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JumpingJackFlash wrote: In traditional usage, the suspended note is held over (or repeated) from a consonance in the previous chord (known as the "preparation" for the suspension).
Not sure what 'traditional' excludes (or if eg., seventh is a consonance), but per V, a 4 suspended from the seventh of ii is not unusual; also see, per I, 4 suspended from the seventh of V.

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jancivil wrote:Not sure what 'traditional' excludes (or if eg., seventh is a consonance), but per V, a 4 suspended from the seventh of ii is not unusual; also see, per I, 4 suspended from the seventh of V.
Very true, even Bach did this often.

I should have said "harmony note" (or similar) instead of consonance, but what I meant is that you wouldn't normally suspend from an unessential note.

And the "traditional usage" bit was meant to exclude more "popular" styles where suspensions aren't always prepared (and/or resolved). One could argue these things no longer technically constitute "suspensions", but yet they are often still given "sus4" labels etc.
Unfamiliar words can be looked up in my Glossary of musical terms.
Also check out my Introduction to Music Theory.

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I've tried and tried to write EDM using something other than a simple minor scale. Every time I stray away from Aeolian it ends up sounding...."Too classical". Once in awhile I can get in Phyrgian or get mysterious with a Hungarian mode, but I've had no luck getting away from the everyday. I guess I've heard it too much?

If anyone has a EDM tune that is something other than Aeolian, then I'd love to hear it.

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brekehan wrote:I've tried and tried to write EDM using something other than a simple minor scale. Every time I stray away from Aeolian it ends up sounding...."Too classical". Once in awhile I can get in Phyrgian or get mysterious with a Hungarian mode, but I've had no luck getting away from the everyday. I guess I've heard it too much?

If anyone has a EDM tune that is something other than Aeolian, then I'd love to hear it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DNQRtmIMxk

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whats it called when you shift modes in keys or play long rythms of same mode?
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Seems there have been quite a few discussions on modes in this forum. This issue that a few folks are disagreeing on boils down to this:

There is more than one world of what we all are calling "modal music". Musical modes in their original conception and realization in Middle Eastern and Greek thought had nothing whatsoever to do with harmony/chords. This is fact. This modal world still exists, and it's not a relic of the past as evidenced by the living music of many cultures. Please take a look at a modern master in many of these modal traditions: Ross Daly in Crete who hosts the Labyrinth Musical Workshop in Houdetsi: http://www.rossdaly.gr/en
His writings are very educational about the nature of modal music in this sense.

There are also many examples in modern jazz, pop, rock and other forms that have taken the so-called church modes (a Westernized bit of one of the above traditions) and utilized these modes in combination with harmonic structures. This is a completely different conceptualization of what modal music is. It is equally legitimate as a musical practice, of course. But until this is realized, you really are arguing over apples and oranges. :D

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Zane wrote:There are also many examples in modern jazz, pop, rock and other forms that have taken the so-called church modes (a Westernized bit of one of the above traditions) and utilized these modes in combination with harmonic structures. This is a completely different conceptualization of what modal music is. It is equally legitimate as a musical practice, of course. But until this is realized, you really are arguing over apples and oranges. :D
Before "jazz, pop, rock and other forms" picked up modes (or what they call modes, which iis what we have been arguing, and you seem to do not understand), composers like Debussy, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Orff and others picked modes and created modal music in "a completely different conceptualization of what modal music is". But they created still MODAL MUSIC. They have vertical structures in their music, just those are carefully chosen to not destroy the modal character (the intrinsic character of EACH mode, the same way that major and minor have intrinsic character), therefore, they keep them away from the functional harmony.

With some exceptions (Miles Davis created at least a record where he actually played really modal pieces, if I'm not mistaken), "jazz, pop, rock and other forms" don't create modal music, they are just creating plain and simple TONAL music, but pretend to give it a more "conceptualized" (pretentious?) character by calling the scales used "modes". Problem is you cannot be simultaneously in two different worlds, and tonality and modality ARE two different worlds. All the rest is bullsh...

BTW: They don't pick up the church modes, because they even don't know what they are. When I see mentions to Locrian and Ionian, I see they don't.
Fernando (FMR)

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modes contain the exact same notes as standard scales anyway!
So there isn't really any difference in the music anyway.

There is difference; seven modes of seven notes means seven different centers. It does not mean anything-goes pandiatonic. It does not mean that C major music is the same as A Aeolian music or any of it, else the latter term is COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS.
Modal interchange using bVII (chord V of Eb hence chord VII of the Aeolian mode)
Is a clusterfuck of unneeded information where you can simply say "bVII (Bb vis a vis C center)". 'Key of Eb' has no bearing on it, it's just a coincidence. And as given, it was a Bb7, 'V of Eb', and *key of Eb* is definitely not C Aeolian. It's just useless muddying of waters trying to seem edumacated.
Last edited by jancivil on Sat Jul 05, 2014 6:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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