Who knows their modes.

[Sean]

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GNdAeRfSq/

 

I really liked this post I found. The keyboard layout and static root/tonic approach makes so much sense.

[Mikey D]

On 23/02/2025 at 12:28, Sean said:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GNdAeRfSq/

 

I really liked this post I found. The keyboard layout and static root/tonic approach makes so much sense.

Yes. I also mentioned in my posts but I like taking it from brighter to darker. So it goes through majors to minors then augmented. This allows the ear to hear the relative changes between them too a bit easier.

[SumOne]

Each to their own, but I like the simple side of the theory that the modes are just 'major, but starting on the 2nd, 3rd 'etc.  the Greek naming and way it is often presented (like earlier in this thread!) just confuse it for me.

 

Perhaps I don't know enough anout it and am exposing my ignorance here - but as far as I can tell, learn the major scale shapes across all strings, up and down, starting on different fingers etc. really learn it by heart (I remember some SBL lesson saying this and it stuck with me - suprisingly few bass players can flawlesley play a major scale on one string, or using open strings, or jumping from the E string to D string etc) . And then you have it really, just instead of where you were starting on the '1' of a major scale start/finish on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. and get used to doing the 'shapes' from those starting points.

 

1. I 
2. Don't
3. Play
4. Loud 
5. Music
6. After
7. Lunch

The limitation to this is I only know how to play the modes when playing the shapes on the Bass, it'd take a lot of thought for me to translate that to other instruments or written notation.

 

 

[Terry M.]

1 hour ago, SumOne said:

Each to their own, but I like the simple side of the theory that the modes are just 'major, but starting on the 2nd, 3rd 'etc.  the Greek naming and way it is often presented (like earlier in this thread!) just confuse it for me.

It wouldn't hurt to learn the Greek names of the modes and shapes at some point. If you're playing for example in C Major but the bandleader wants you to play the intro as two bars of F Lydian and then two more in D Dorian before vamping on B Locrian and shouts that out to you,your fingers will automatically know where to go and what notes are available within those modes. 

[SumOne]

1 hour ago, Terry M. said:

It wouldn't hurt to learn the Greek names of the modes and shapes at some point. If you're playing for example in C Major but the bandleader wants you to play the intro as two bars of F Lydian and then two more in D Dorian before vamping on B Locrian and shouts that out to you,your fingers will automatically know where to go and what notes are available within those modes. 

Yes, I have learnt them - but for me so far that has been pointless and I think it's potentially a bit of a barrier for some people, from the outside it looks like it adds technical  complexity. People gets scared off when basically modes are relatively simple 'play the major scale notes but starting on the 2nd' etc.

 

I don't know about others, but I've been in quite a few bands and not once had anyone said anything remotely like 'play the intro as two bars of F Lydian and then two more in D Dorian before vamping on B Locrian'. ...... perhaps that is the done thing for certain types of music though.

[Belka]

1 hour ago, Terry M. said:

It wouldn't hurt to learn the Greek names of the modes and shapes at some point. If you're playing for example in C Major but the bandleader wants you to play the intro as two bars of F Lydian and then two more in D Dorian before vamping on B Locrian and shouts that out to you,your fingers will automatically know where to go and what notes are available within those modes. 

I think that the above scenario is extremely unlikely, unless your band leader is a mode obsessed lead guitarist.

 

IME the real value of modes is not applying them as degrees of a major scale, but knowing how to apply them over certain chords. Lydian for example, can be used over maj7 chords functioning as the I chord, not just the IV. You also shouldn't worry about using all the notes in the mode, but know where to apply the key degrees, in this case the raised 4th, to provide the colour.

 

Locrian would hardly ever be found in modern music in a major key - it's far more likely to be used as the II chord in a minor(major) key in Jazz, where it would be thought of as min7b5 rather than Locrian anyway.

 

What I'm trying to say is that until you have an understanding of the function of a chord (I, IImin, V, etc,), what its chord tones are and how it can be extended, 'knowing' the modes won't really give much benefit to your playing

[Terry M.]

33 minutes ago, Belka said:

I think that the above scenario is extremely unlikely, unless your band leader is a mode obsessed lead guitarist.

 

IME the real value of modes is not applying them as degrees of a major scale, but knowing how to apply them over certain chords. Lydian for example, can be used over maj7 chords functioning as the I chord, not just the IV. You also shouldn't worry about using all the notes in the mode, but know where to apply the key degrees, in this case the raised 4th, to provide the colour.

 

Locrian would hardly ever be found in modern music in a major key - it's far more likely to be used as the II chord in a minor(major) key in Jazz, where it would be thought of as min7b5 rather than Locrian anyway.

 

What I'm trying to say is that until you have an understanding of the function of a chord (I, IImin, V, etc,), what its chord tones are and how it can be extended, 'knowing' the modes won't really give much benefit to your playing

I am currently working with a lead guitarist who uses modes,he's not "obsessed" with them however. I picked random modes just to illustrate my point so substitute Locrian with any of the others. Knowing modes has helped me in scenarios where I'm asked to improvise over changes and it's helped to steer me towards notes that nearly always sound contextually correct. Only sharing my limited practical experience of them.

[Terry M.]

1 hour ago, SumOne said:

I don't know about others, but I've been in quite a few bands and not once had anyone said anything remotely like 'play the intro as two bars of F Lydian and then two more in D Dorian before vamping on B Locrian'. ...... perhaps that is the done thing for certain types of music though.

Yes depending on the band leader and the genre it can happen. As mentioned previously I used random modes just as an example of what can happen. The band leader knew I understood what he was communicating so that might have been it.

[Little Helios]

My background is in traditional folk music, and modes are the bread and butter of that type of music. Most British folk songs are in the Dorian/Aeolian modes or the Mixolydian mode. I say Dorian/Aeolian because a weird thing I've noticed is that a lot of traditional melodies don't use the sixth degree of the scale which would differentiate between the two, so it's not always obvious. I've often wondered if modes came instinctively to our ancestors, because the vast majority of people who came up with these songs would have had no musical education whatsoever, and were simply playing and singing the notes which felt right to them.

 

I originally learned the modes in terms of playing the white keys on a piano starting on different notes, which makes a lot of sense if you're a piano player (as I used to be!) but not much help at learning to apply the modes in practice or understand how they're constructed. So more recently I have been thinking more in terms of 'a major scale with a flattened 3rd and 7th' etc, and that's been much more helpful.

 

That said, I'm not very technically minded as a musician and thinking about scales too much makes my brain hurt, so I usually work with the modes in a more intuitive way. They each have their own character or emotional mood, which can be very powerful to experience. What works especially well with folk music is to use a drone (root or root and fifth) and then explore how the melody creates a harmony against it. The different modes do this in such a different way it is fascinating to experience their different characters.

 

I love modes, even though I'm still a long way off properly understanding them!

 

[Terry M.]

1 hour ago, Belka said:

Locrian would hardly ever be found in modern music in a major key - it's far more likely to be used as the II chord in a minor(major) key in Jazz, where it would be thought of as min7b5 rather than Locrian anyway.

Turns up often in Christian Contemporary Music. I mainly play in church.

[nekomatic]

On 06/05/2025 at 17:17, Terry M. said:

Turns up often in Christian Contemporary Music. I mainly play in church.

Ironic considering it was (supposedly) banned from early church music for fear of summoning the devil!

[Terry M.]

40 minutes ago, nekomatic said:

Ironic considering it was (supposedly) banned from early church music for fear of summoning the devil!

There's a school of thought existing right now that Contemporary Christian Music itself is evil. That's a rabbit hole I'm avoiding like the plague. I turn up,play bass and collect my cheque. Simple 😊

[Rosie C]

45 minutes ago, Terry M. said:

There's a school of thought existing right now that Contemporary Christian Music itself is evil. That's a rabbit hole I'm avoiding like the plague. I turn up,play bass and collect my cheque. Simple 😊

 

Oh indeed! I once accidentally bought a book, the blurb of which said CCM musicians and especially Christian Rock musicians were all going to hell. I thought it was a satire, but no the author was deadly serious.

[Bagman]

2 hours ago, nekomatic said:

Ironic considering it was (supposedly) banned from early church music for fear of summoning the devil!

No, that's a fairy tale to discredit people who have other fairy tales

 

This is not to say The Church / Organised Religion hasn't attempted or does have a control on music / art 

[Terry M.]

1 hour ago, Rosie C said:

 

Oh indeed! I once accidentally bought a book, the blurb of which said CCM musicians and especially Christian Rock musicians were all going to hell. I thought it was a satire, but no the author was deadly serious.

if you ever saw the videos on it all over Youtube 🙈

[Stub Mandrel]

4 hours ago, Terry M. said:

There's a school of thought existing right now that Contemporary Christian Music itself is evil.

 

Just Stryper...

[SumOne]

Perhaps opposite to what others have said earlier in this thread but in my head at least I've found it simplest to just learn the interval sequence of the major scale - but really learn it off by heart with all finger positions and playing right up/down over multiple octaves, jumping strings etc. 

 

Basically apply that 'Ionian' of the chart to a bass fretboard. Then it is just a case of where you start/finish to play all the modes. It clicked with me that the 'Aeolian' is the minor scale shapes, so instead of 'I need to learn the major and minor scales/shapes' (which I did first) I realised I could have just really learned the major inside-out and but started/finished on the 6th note, and the same applies for all of the others, for a long time I found it confusing to think 'to learn Dorian I need to remmeber to play a major scale with flat 3rd and flat 7th', much simpler to just play the major scale intervals - but start/finish on the 2nd note.

 

Saying that though, I don't think this technique of basically learning as shapes on a fretboard works if changing instruments, or changing bass tuning to drop D etc. 

[Belka]

On 06/05/2025 at 17:17, Terry M. said:

Turns up often in Christian Contemporary Music. I mainly play in church.

Do you mean heavy metal style? That would be minor/diminished tonality with the prominent flat 2 and raised 4/flat 5, not major . The only way I can imagine it used in major tonality is when playing over a first inversion of the V chord, for example B/G if playing in C. Even then emphasising the Flat II/V degrees of the mode wouldn't really be necessary as they wouldn't work as chord tones (technically the flat V would be a chord tone if it's a dominant 7, but again, Dom 7 chords are rarer these days in most popular music), just scale passing tones.

 

To be honest I know very little about contemporary Christian music so I may be missing something here.

Edited 6 hours ago by Belka

[Terry M.]

3 hours ago, Belka said:

Do you mean heavy metal style? That would be minor/diminished tonality with the prominent flat 2 and raised 4/flat 5, not major . The only way I can imagine it used in major tonality is when playing over a first inversion of the V chord, for example B/G if playing in C. Even then emphasising the Flat II/V degrees of the mode wouldn't really be necessary as they wouldn't work as chord tones (technically the flat V would be a chord tone if it's a dominant 7, but again, Dom 7 chords are rarer these days in most popular music), just scale passing tones.

 

To be honest I know very little about contemporary Christian music so I may be missing something here.

No nothing like heavy metal,more jazz,blues r'n'b vibe I would say. We sometimes play established songs in major keys that utilise the 7th scale degree chord and vamp on it using notes from the Locrian mode until we decide to hit the (usually) home chord.