Modal Harmony vid series

[Gamma-UT]

- E Phrygian: This one lets you use not only 1, but 2 different dominants! (B7 and F - F works really well as a dominant because it's basically the tritonic substitution of B). Adding in the D# to get your B7 chord doesn't work against the mode's characteristic note F, so it's no problem here, and you can even use B7b5 to add it on top. Even Bm7b5 leads you back to your root Em chord. So this one is actually practically as stable as the minor and major scales harmonically. I think the reason why it's not used in classical music that much at all is just that it doesn't fit stylistically (and is intrinsically somewhat dissonant).

The thing is, if you're using the idea of tonal dominants in a mode like Phrygian, you're not really doing the Phrygian mode. Traditional Phrygian style avoids tonal dominants like those largely because of the dissonance issues. Traditional church modes in general avoid dissonance, primarily for cultural reasons.

Then again, pretty much every form modal music is bound up with cultural tradition - the tonal revolution shattered that connection in the west. Modes have rules. Some cultures have very much stricter rules about the ordering and usage of intervals than for the western church modes. I think this cultural connection is why some people react so viscerally to the purity of the mode being sullied.

From my perspective, I don't see anything particularly wrong musically with what you're suggesting other than you might simply be doing E minor with an altered scale rather than the E Phrygian Let's Use Dominants Mode. However, the context in which those chords were used would determine how much that is the case. Focusing on building harmony horizontally through voice leading rather than applying chords to a melody is also more likely to maintain the illusion of a mode rather than tonality.

In another order of ideas, I'm starting to think that the best way to refer to the way pop composers use modes as just a collection of pitches, without a full modal system, is to call them what they are when doing that: scales. Which would give us the appellations Dorian scale, Mixolydian scale, Lydian scale and Phrygian scale. And this has the advantage of separating them from the historical modes: Dorian mode, Phrygian mode, Lydian mode and Mixolydian mode. I think it's a justifiable terminology: the Mixolydian scale is, after all, a scale based on the pitches of the Mixolydian mode.

Does this make sense?

When talking about soloing over a chord, this is pretty much what happens. It's a scale derived from a mode – I don't think most people are making stronger claims than this unless they are going for a modal feel over the entire song. But people are going to use shorthand terms to refer to stuff. And so you get it all kicking off in threads like this because they say "I played over this chord in the G Mix mode" and not "I played over this chord using notes from the scale derived from the G Mix mode".

[MadBrain]

[...] From my perspective, I don't see anything particularly wrong musically with what you're suggesting other than you might simply be doing E minor with an altered scale rather than the E Phrygian Let's Use Dominants Mode. However, the context in which those chords were used would determine how much that is the case. Focusing on building harmony horizontally through voice leading rather than applying chords to a melody is also more likely to maintain the illusion of a mode rather than tonality.

[...] When talking about soloing over a chord, this is pretty much what happens. It's a scale derived from a mode – I don't think most people are making stronger claims than this unless they are going for a modal feel over the entire song. But people are going to use shorthand terms to refer to stuff. And so you get it all kicking off in threads like this because they say "I played over this chord in the G Mix mode" and not "I played over this chord using notes from the scale derived from the G Mix mode".

IRL I just want proper terms for how composers compose now. And one thing musicians are doing right now is taking the E F G A B C D note series and frankensteining it into a key, putting triads on each one of the 7 degrees (Em, F, G, Am, Bm7b5, C, Dm) plus an extra chord using mobile scale degrees to get a good dominant like in minor (B7).

It's basically completely tonal, you can apply roman numeral analysis, figure out the chord tension-resolution movements. Musicians add inversions and bass pedals and Jazz chord extensions all over the place, and they also write melodies over it in pentatonic scales just like in major or minor (often using the Japanese In scale - E F A B C/D - example). It's harmonized using the same melody + accompaniment + bass technique as major or minor.

It's not the Gregorian Phrygian mode (which, as you've said, completely died out). It doesn't have a finalis and can end on any note (though it generally ends on E). It has no modal rules or purity and it uses all the dominants it can get its hands on. And you're totally right that it's very close to E minor - but it's also different enough that it's its own thing.

Right now, people call this thing 'E Phrygian' in spite of the confusing overlap with the Gregorian mode because there's literally no other standard term for it.

[zethus909]

starting to think

you can think and think an think some more, but it wont make any notes play. thinking is silent. except on a very tiny order, there is probably a "sound" of thought (like a computer humming), that only very tiny beings with ears could hear.

[Gamma-UT]

IRL I just want proper terms for how composers compose now.
...
Right now, people call this thing 'E Phrygian' in spite of the confusing overlap with the Gregorian mode because there's literally no other standard term for it.

There was a lot of argument about the use of the word 'mode' that dates back to the ninth century because of confusion as to what the term actually encompasses. One suggestion at the time was tropus, that I think makes more sense as it conveys the same sort of idea as a literary trope – it's a set of rules for constructing music for a certain type of music. It's not going to happen but it probably makes more sense than trying to strip today's word 'mode' of its many meanings.

[JumpingJackFlash]

- E Phrygian: This one lets you use not only 1, but 2 different dominants! (B7 and F - F works really well as a dominant because it's basically the tritonic substitution of B). Adding in the D# to get your B7 chord doesn't work against the mode's characteristic note F, so it's no problem here, and you can even use B7b5 to add it on top. Even Bm7b5 leads you back to your root Em chord. So this one is actually practically as stable as the minor and major scales harmonically. I think the reason why it's not used in classical music that much at all is just that it doesn't fit stylistically (and is intrinsically somewhat dissonant).

In terms of the ecclesiastical modes, B7 would not have been possible in Phrygian. F# would have destroyed the characteristic interval of the mode, and D# didn't exist in the medieval system (Zarlino added it in the mid sixteenth century). D# against F-natural would have been considered very ugly in any case (augmented sixth).

Of course, if you're only interested in modern stuff, that might not matter to you.

[JumpingJackFlash]

theory looks at what "is", then it attempts to explain. and it must ALWAYS, unanimously be understood to be an explanation, and NEVER an instruction. once it becomes an instruction, all "doing" is fundamentally compromised

You have repeatedly emphasised that theory is descriptive and not prescriptive. And to a large extent this is true. But it is a bit more complicated that that in real life.

As I've said, the modes started as a way of categorising chants. There is no doubt here that the theory came after the fact. However, if that's all modality ever was, it never would have caught on and become such a bit deal for centuries afterwards.

What starts out as descriptive is very often adopted by young composers who then start to employ the theories in their practice. They expand upon it, the theories evolve and are adopted into subsequent practice. There is a clear relationship between the two that cannot be denied. Frans Wiering referred to this as a "double discourse". They don't always agree of course, but there is definitely a link between theory and practice; it would be naive to dismiss this.

[jancivil]

theory looks at what "is", then it attempts to explain. and it must ALWAYS, unanimously be understood to be an explanation, and NEVER an instruction. once it becomes an instruction, all "doing" is fundamentally compromised.

"it must ALWAYS..." This is your dogma. Here we find a dichotomy behind it: it's either an explanation or an instruction.

An instruction. You should examine that as a term, this opinion appears to be quite unexamined. Examples: if what we are charged to do is write like JS Bach, there are instructions. In a part-writing course... my experience was, the examination was to write 3 or all 4 parts given a figured bass and maybe the melody and there were numerous proscriptions, the usual for the style, in the alotted time and it should sound great. There are creative ways and dull ways to meet this test. Absolutely following the instructions does not through itself sap all creative juices. There might be quite a lot of space remaining. How do you feature JS Bach proceeded, with no map or principles, absolutely free?

You wouldn't be prepared to discuss it, you haven't done the work. You're a neophyte preaching.

If one is an Indian classical musician and one day after decades of dedication is ready to compose a raga, there is an accumulation of knowledge under her acquired in preparation. Still it often turns out that Ali Akbar Khan is doing eg., Marwa, Shri, et cetera. There are things which have to happen for this object to be true. We might call this 'instructions'.

The reality of this is that you're compromised when you don't, the style factors and known procedures of both of these, the style factors of bop, are present or you aren't doing this thing. Examples of two versions of Marwa (with lots of instructions behind it) reveal just how much space there is to create one's own whole WORLD.

So you have performed a reduction on this and decided that "instructions" is a bad thing. You are proceeding dogmatically out of nothing more than your own misconceptions. Now we see "instructions" which "ALWAYS" mean our efforts will be "fundamentally compromised".
How would you know? You must have this notion of people with a book in their hand, or more likely you picture someone with their browser open struggling with "theory" via some website or youtube as they try to put something down in the piano roll. IE: you have a malformed notion of it limited to your own experience which we have to figure is pretty shallow.

This preaching is arrogant, you demonstrate for a dozen pages that you lack the experience to be forming such inviolable principles. Your ways will only prove to be harmful. What it displays is a fear out of which you're going to stymie your own curiosity and starve your own creativity. There are whole worlds available to you when you accumulate knowledge. I've seen the difference between people steeped in a school and people that decided to remain absolutely free. You'll refuse this rich experience out of some words you like to say, which you believe in more and more.

It's time to stop telling people how it is. Everybody you're talking at (this isn't a conversation) at this point are your musical elders, I hate to have to say. Shut up and begin to listen.

[jancivil]

- E Phrygian: This one lets you use not only 1, but 2 different dominants! (B7 and F - F works really well as a dominant because it's basically the tritonic substitution of B). Adding in the D# to get your B7 chord doesn't work against the mode's characteristic note F.

The thing is, if you're using the idea of tonal dominants in a mode like Phrygian, you're not really doing the Phrygian mode. Traditional Phrygian style avoids tonal dominants like those largely because of the dissonance issues. Traditional church modes in general avoid dissonance, primarily for cultural reasons.

Then again, pretty much every form modal music is bound up with cultural tradition - the tonal revolution shattered that connection in the west. Modes have rules. Some cultures have very much stricter rules about the ordering and usage of intervals than for the western church modes. I think this cultural connection is why some people react so viscerally to the purity of the mode being sullied.

Ok, I'm no historian and no musicologist, so I can't say how much there was a connection in the west. It seemed to me that the Church was always after a certain sound and they will have been disturbed by the music in Arab culture, a lot. I mean by the proscriptions of avoidance of certain intervals. It could all stem from their religious piety and notions of "good is not dissonant" purely, I don't know. Beyond that my guesses could lead to replies headed towards HPC.

But definitely, the pentatonic Japanese scale may be a turn-on for a jazzer, but one should hold one's self in abeyance some. You know, when Miles did Concierto de Aranjuez, he talked in the liner notes about avoiding any bop type excursion in that climate, you wind up "sounding like a hip cornball". He chose that thing for its duende and he didn't want to f**k that up.

So, these tensions, this very dominant-tonic paradigm, will really tend to take you out of this world which was so cool that you'd want to take advantage of it. I would not say that D# in E Phrygian is no problem. You want V, dominant, and that's totally problematic. So you can call the use of E F G A B C D, per se, "Phrygian" no matter how much you mark it with other stuff, that's your prerogative obviously but I don't like to see it 'preached'.

[jancivil]

IRL I just want proper terms for how composers compose now.
...
Right now, people call this thing 'E Phrygian' in spite of the confusing overlap with the Gregorian mode because there's literally no other standard term for it.

Does it matter really?
I'm only interested in creating music of this time. Now, the connection with tradition may occasionally push thru to the surface but I don't have any job that makes me have to write 'classical music' and don't expect to. Just saying in case of certain conceptions, as though I'm a conservative, let alone academic. I said this to you before, if it's centered in E through its own aroma (which certainly means to me that it does not need B7b5 for to establish home), I don't have any interest to nit-pick to tell you what it is. But in the forum I don't like it taught, because actually sticking to a mode (or a Japanese pentatonic) can be so incredibly rich; let's give it proper due.

Culinary analogy: you don't need to put ketchup and mayo on everything. The properly prepared native dish may well be superior to treating it like it's same as cold cuts with mayo on both sides the bread.

[jancivil]

[stringtapper]

IRL I just want proper terms for how composers compose now.
...
Right now, people call this thing 'E Phrygian' in spite of the confusing overlap with the Gregorian mode because there's literally no other standard term for it.

There was a lot of argument about the use of the word 'mode' that dates back to the ninth century because of confusion as to what the term actually encompasses. One suggestion at the time was tropus, that I think makes more sense as it conveys the same sort of idea as a literary trope – it's a set of rules for constructing music for a certain type of music. It's not going to happen but it probably makes more sense than trying to strip today's word 'mode' of its many meanings.

To me this is the crux of the issue with the term "modal harmony." I don't actually fault the OP for using it. Why? Because the damage was done long before he started this thread.

I don't know who exactly is to blame, whether it's Miles Davis or George Russell, but the problem seems to have arisen when the term "modal" was applied to the kind of music Miles was making in the late 50s. The theoretical basis for calling it that was only the fact that people found that certain "modes" of the major scale sounded good over certain chords.

Thus what is known in jazz pedagogy as "chord/scale theory" was born and has propagated the use of the terms "modes" and "modal" being used in relation to this particular concept ever since. As you had cross-pollination of jazz and rock musicians and styles it was inevitable that it would make its way into pop music.

The difference being that the pop interpretation of it is sometimes even closer to the original conception of modal music in that it frequently works by choosing a "mode" that essentially functions as a home key, with all of the chords built off of of the scale degrees of that mode having their own functions within the "world" of that "modal key."

And yes, it's wrong to call that modal in the strictest sense, but people have been doing it so long that to argue about it for the purpose of changing the usage is likely futile.

What isn't futile is discussing it for the purpose of educating people as to why it was wrong for the term to have been used that way in the first place.

It's a lot like the trend of "verbing" in the English language. Anyone who has really studied English grammar probably knows that "transitioning" is not (or at least wasn't originally) a word, and yet the spell check on my iPhone just had no qualms with me typing it. We can talk about how the word "transition" is a noun and even trace the history of it started being misused as a verb and that's a perfectly fine exercise in and of itself. But no amount of discussion is going to change the fact that "transitioning" is in the dictionary now. The damage has been done.

I played a bluegrass gig last night and the leader wanted me to take a solo break off the cuff and he said "It's just G Mixolydian." Of course I know exactly what he meant and I also know that him using the term is a reflection of his limited "pop theory" self-education. But I can't chase down every semi-educated musician on the planet to correct their terminology. For one thing I would lose gigs doing that!

But I do think it's important to clarify and understand what we're dealing with here in this topic. We can bemoan it as more evidence of the dumbing down of culture (and surely it is to an extent), but ultimately we may have to live with it and adapt.

[jancivil]

First, before I forget about it, transition(ing) as a verb is perfectly good english. Transition as a noun describes a state of change. If you change, you have acted. Verbs describe action. So I would not want to be lumped in with pedantic discourse such as that, I mean as though insisting that <Modal can be ruined by chords> is exactly the same kind of exercise.

IE: I don't say, and the first thing I did in this thread was to counter the notion, that any time you do a chord with a mode the hierarchy from tonality/from the dominant-tonic paradigm, is so strong that all <harmony> will prove fatal. Again, if the approach *is* from that paradigm (or it is not mindful that yer doing the same thing from the jazz perspective), you're liable to make the term eg., Phrygian kind of just moot.

[stringtapper]

First, before I forget about it, transition(ing) as a verb is perfectly good english. Transition as a noun describes a state of change. If you change, you have acted. Verbs describe action. So I would not want to be lumped in with pedantic useless discourse such as that. As though insisting that <Modal can be ruined by chords> is exactly the same kind of exercise.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm talking about the misuse of terms becoming commonplace to the point that they become convention. It's really a linguistic issue, rather than a musical one. We can use music theory and history to explain why it was wrong to call it that in the first place, but we would probably need to employ completely different fields of study to explain why that misuse persisted to the point of becoming accepted terminology (i.e. linguistics, anthropology, etc.).

[stringtapper]

And to be clear: I don't view this "modal harmony" subject the same as the other thread below where the person making a chord-spelling tutorial(!) didn't understand why spelling a C#Maj7 chord C#-E#-G#-B# isn't just "a good pedagogical idea," but is the only correct way to spell it.

[jancivil]

First, before I forget about it, transition(ing) as a verb is perfectly good english. Transition as a noun describes a state of change. If you change, you have acted. Verbs describe action. So I would not want to be lumped in with pedantic useless discourse such as that. As though insisting that <Modal can be ruined by chords> is exactly the same kind of exercise.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm talking about the misuse of terms becoming commonplace to the point that they become convention. It's really a linguistic issue, rather than a musical one. We can use music theory and history to explain why it was wrong to call it that in the first place, but we would probably need to employ completely different fields of study to explain why that misuse persisted to the point of becoming accepted terminology (i.e. linguistics, anthropology, etc.).

I agree but I don't like 'transition as a verb is a misuse of the word' just out of it being restricted to being a noun somehow as the analogy. (My edit out of 'useless' is that it's redundant for to modify 'pedantic' with.)
It isn't likely to obliterate meaning for a body. At the point where "E Phrygian in C Major" is true, nobody even blinks, meaning is lost.