How to combine modes??

[jancivil]

your definition of 'functional chords' isn't very important to me.

I make a distinction between two kinds of ideas: one is harmonic music (which may modulate), with a drive to the tonic; the other is modal music, Oye Como Va, which sticks to the tonic. the idea of the latter is, the tonic is such a cool place to hang out, you don't need to travel. you needn't drive back home, you didn't go to anybody else's house. OTOH, 'functional', drive to the tonic. Tension demanding resolution. I don't think my definition is unusual.

Oye Como Va: i, IV. That's it. That's all it does as far as chords. The bass goes up to D, goes D, C, back to A. The tune and the rhythm is what's interesting.

Minor tonic, Major IV gives you dorian to play with. You can solo in dorian and it's suited perfectly by that change. I call it a chord change rather than a progression, even. I don't need you to talk the same as I do. But there is a reason for the language I use. You know what you mean and I know what you mean. But you are blurring a distinction I think is something to consider.

[jancivil]

also, 'major scale = Ionian mode'; the former has connotations for anybody in the west. you can use the Ionian mode and it be another thing altogether than "Do, a deer, a female deer; Re, a drop of golden sun..." or Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and it can turn out to be more subtle. It's interesting in itself. Your level of interest notwithstanding.

[Sascha Franck]

But you are blurring a distinction I think is something to consider.

I am not blurring anything.
I have a very clear concept of how modes work and when they are applicable to "functional" progressions.

Unfortunately, in most teaching books a blurred picture is presented. Just as an example: You will often find a standard II-V-I progression in major (such as Dm7, G7, Cmaj7) analysed modally - so it's dorian for the Dm7, mixolydian for the G7 and ionian for the Cmaj7. Really, I do have at least two books (one of them very wellknown in Germany) doing it exactly that way. Now (and especially given that the books are talking about jazz, so chord changes could be rather quick), this is what I call a complete waste. Everybody listening to that progression will think of it as a plain progression in C major - and one that is even "driving home" (to the tonic). So all you need to do is to play C major and probably adjust the target notes a little on each chord (but you need to do that in any case, regardless whether you call something functional or modal).

Anyway, I guess we're not looking at the thing from the same perspective.

- Sascha

[tapper mike]

My Teacher studied under Don Mock and Howard Roberts in the early days of GIT
He also went to Berklee.

There is a functional education that often isn't present in "Dummy" Books or "Intro to Jazz' Quite a few "classically trained" never get jazz/rock because they refuse to accept that the songs foundation is in the progression.
If someone walks around with an attitude of "Chords mean nothing, they are just window dressing" Then they will never understand popular music or the importance of melodies being derived from chord changes.


Functional modality is when one uses melodies to support the harmonic structure. The goal is to create a melody that justifies the harmony not the other way round. Thus one uses the modality of the harmonic structure to create the melodic line.

It's extremely evident in even jazz standards such as "All Of Me"
First chord CMaj melody CGE CDC Next chord E7 melody B G# E. The movement from C to B as the chord move from Cmaj7 to E7 connects chord tones via the shortest path. The G# is not an accident as it is part of the E7 chord not part of the C major scale.

So Yes I agree with your assertions Sasha. And I think there is a lot of junk both in print and on the web both old and new which in the process of dummying down or trying to support antiquated 17th century theory that is not relavent to popular music form over the last 130 years. We have clutter that people who don't have experience in the field making baseless assumptions of what they know nothing about because they are unwilling or unable to put their original conceptions about keys and harmony aside to embrace a different perspective.

[Sascha Franck]

And I think there is a lot of junk both in print and on the web both old and new which in the process of dummying down or trying to support antiquated 17th century theory that is not relavent to popular music form over the last 130 years. We have clutter that people who don't have experience in the field making baseless assumptions of what they know nothing about and therefore won't accept what is staring them right in the face.

I would agree on that (classical theory simply doesn't capture quite some things well that are common in "popular" music), but, know what? I often find myself thinking that whatever book authors simply make things more complicated because they probably want to release just another book. Or maybe the basic content wouldn't justify a book at all (all that scale/chord theory really isn't sooo hard not to be captured on around 10-20 pages), so you need to blow things up.

Of course, things can become quite difficult once you want to use other musical "languages". Eastern music and the likes. Anything not using equal temperment. Etc.
But as long as we're dealing with whatever we may call typical western-oriented music (which basically covers almost all popular music styles), I find the usual chord/scale relationships rather easy to understand. And they certainly don't need hundreds of books (and even more pages...) to be explained.

Fwiw, once it comes to compositional issues, things may look entirely different.

- Sascha

[tapper mike]

Well That's the thing about finding a good teacher as opposed to a book. Most authors don't have publishing rights for popular songs so instead you get what I call "psuedo" examples. When one is writing his own examples it's easier to justify ideas because they automatically "fit"

When I was studying under my teacher aside from some generalized concepts like working out halfwhole scales We'd always work on existing material. Either we'd have the sheet in front of us and the audio example or we'd work on transcribing from the song "performed by" and then work out not just the notes but their relevance in context. Then he'd have me work out the concept applying what I learned in both a jamming and a writing experience.