Modes explained for the theoretically challenged

[Dewar54]

Here are a few of my top modal tips: (Proper theory heads will probably dispair at this but it works for me)

Ionian is just major and Aeolian is natural minor so you should already know both of them so that's two of the modes down already. (If you don't learn them before getting on to anything else modal.)

The Locrian mode you will probably never use so don't worry about it so that's three down. (I'm sure clever people have a use for it but I don't)

The next two scales to learn are Dorian and Mixolydian. I think of these as the jazzy minor and jazzy major respectively.

Dorian is great (I use it all the time) it's got all the notes of the minor pentatonic plus 2 extras so you can drop into it in the middle of your pentatonic noodling and it makes you sound all sophisticated and latin jazzy. Anything that starts on a minor 7 chord will usually sound good with the Dorian. Santana is Mr Dorian so you get the idea of what it sounds like.

Mixolydian is just the major scale with the 7th note dropped by one. This means it sounds a bit less twee and it doesn't clash with dominant 7 chords (as in A7). Again if you are doing some major soloing and there is a 7 chord then try a bit of mixolydian.

Phrygian is the eastern mysterious scale (Or you can think of it as the spooky mysterious minor ) Lydian I think of as the Vai scale (or spooky mysterious major) and has that slightly weird other worldly sound. I think they are the most overtly shredy modal sounding scales.

The really cool thing about learning all of your modes shapes is even before you learn how to use them you can use them to learn the major and minor scale all the way up the fretboard. So if you are playing C major you can shift 2 down and start using the dorian shape. This is really cool as you can break out of the box and solo on the whole fretboard which makes you look like a proper musician to other guitarists.

Thanks, I only really know sort two positions of the minor scale with various extensions and extra notes which I would guess are from other modes. I should work on that first before jumping ahead then. That's a real helpful post though monxquixote thanks.

Key centred works something like this:

I assume you know the Ionian scale all over the fretboard.....

Say you have a chord progression that goes: E7 for one bar, Bm7 for one bar and then Amaj7 for two bars. You could safely play A Ionian over this progression. Say the next chord is an A7 for 4 bars.....you could shift your thinking to D Ionian and your lead melodies would sound reasonably safe. This is because the "correct" mode for A7 is A Mixolydian, which is built off the 5th note of the D Ionian scale and D Ionian is like the parent scale from which Mixolydian comes.

If you want to find out what key a progression is in you can do the following:

Look for the Dominant 7 chord. This is usually the V chord so it will resolve to the I, which will be the chord from which the Ionian scale will come from.

If there are two minor chords a whole step apart eg - Aminor to Bminor, then you can usually assume that these are the ii and iii chords in a progression. Just go a whole step down from the ii chord and you'll find out the key centre for the song.

Probably a little too advanced for me but I'll get round to it eventually bingfella cheers.

[SevenSharpNine]

whilst I got this ^ basic idea in about 5 minutes many years ago the meaningful application of it has eluded me to a great extent over the years.

I think people get confused because modes are mainly used in composition. A person can learn Dorian mode, but you can't just play a guitar solo in Dorian mode and have the song suddenly be in Dorian. The song needs to be composed in the Dorian mode. If a song has been composed to be firmly rooted in C Ionian, playing a guitar solo in D Dorian will still sound like you're playing in C Ionian.

[Ouija]

I think people get confused because modes are mainly used in composition. A person can learn Dorian mode, but you can't just play a guitar solo in Dorian mode and have the song suddenly be in Dorian. The song needs to be composed in the Dorian mode. If a song has been composed to be firmly rooted in C Ionian, playing a guitar solo in D Dorian will still sound like you're playing in C Ionian.

+1

Your only changing mode as you go through the overall neck pattern if you change root note. If you treat the same note as root, as seen below, your in the same scale/mode the whole time.



That's A Aeolian (A Minor) through all positions, especially if there's a A Minor chord being played in the background (how scales sound is largely dependent on what they're being played over).

Change the root note (and the chord being played over) and it's a different mode (same overall neck pattern though).

[Sir Axeman]

I think people get confused because modes are mainly used in composition. A person can learn Dorian mode, but you can't just play a guitar solo in Dorian mode and have the song suddenly be in Dorian. The song needs to be composed in the Dorian mode. If a song has been composed to be firmly rooted in C Ionian, playing a guitar solo in D Dorian will still sound like you're playing in C Ionian.

Exactly!! So if you know the basic diatonic scale tone chords just as the scale is displaced to give a different mode so equally must the chord sequence. So in a C major example as mentioned above you'd need to make Dm home base. Hence a very typical almost cliche'd Dorian sequence in this example would be the classic Dm7 G7...but of course you can absolutely extend the chord sequence beyond just two chords...just have to really center everything around Dm7 to give it that twist....then you can sort of still play C Ionian (regular C major scale) and sort of by default be playing D Dorian as the chord sequence is king here and its the underlying harmony that makes whatever you paint on top have the modal feel...thats what I really felt missing from Chappers video...it was good...but missing the most important bits. Ok he teaches you how you can play the modes (in a sort of way) off any 1 chosen scale pattern from the diatonic...but he never taught when/how/why so you actually would understand how to apply them.

And all you out there that are puzzled by the modes...often you forget you already know and use 2 of 'em already - Ionian and Aeolian!! If you can see the difference in how you use those..then its no different really with the rest of 'em!