F Lydian

[Stick_Player]

Originally Posted by terryjj1

I actually understood what you wrote....one q: D-7..i understand the 7th note is flat...so it would actually be D F A Cb for the chord..?

You need to learn what the jazz/pop shorthand means.

1) Any note name followed by a 7 indicates that the interval from that given note to the seventh scale tone is an interval of a Minor Seven (ten half-steps). This applies whether the chord is Major or Minor.

C7: C to Bb is an interval of a Minor Seven (ten half-steps). A Major Triad with a Minor Seventh.

Cm7: C to Bb is an interval of a Minor Seven (ten half-steps). A Minor Triad with a Minor Seventh.

DO NOT think you can simply "flat or sharp" a note name. This is ALL about intervals.

[CrewsControl]

Originally Posted by Stick_Player

DO NOT think you can simply "flat or sharp" a note name. This is ALL about intervals.

I think this is why it's confusing when first learning modes, to learn them by note names. But it's also helpful since a beginner like me and the OP likely already knows the C major scale, so modes can be related to something the student already knows.

But you must discard the booster stage to reach orbit.

eta: and I just realized this is the DB side of TB, so I am glad I didn't post anything about EB and frets and stuff.

[carldogs]

I appreciate your having noticed and acknowledged my superior intelligence and pan-dimensionality, but in fact nobody said that they grasped any of this "quickly." Indeed, at the very beginning of the video Scott points out that he struggled with this for many years -- stuck in the same loop that you're stuck in. His breakthrough came by switching to the alternative perspective that he then goes on to explain (and that I tried to summarize in my post).

This is definitely one of those things that can seem hopelessly confusing for a long time, and then wham! -- you have an epiphany and it suddenly all makes sense. Hang in there!

+1 to not finding this easy to grasp, it wasn't something I could understand and then practice, it was really through working on modes each day in both ways, and learning scales not only from the root position but from the lowest note they could be played from, either E or F on 4 str, that the paterns became familiar along with getting to know the fret board, at some point it made sense and started to fit together. I think there are some great posts and links on this thread to help someone struggling with the concept of modes.

[terryjj1]

ok..thanks for all your input(s)..I realize I have more work to do and will do it....basically it's all about intervals..spaces between notes...they don't change..just their values as one progresses through the various scales and modes....I'm sticking with all the 12 major scales for now..writing them all out in the 7 different modes and playing them as i go along...one day I might even be able to explain it to some newbie...

thanks ALL..



TJ

[Lobster11]

While trying to think of a better way to explain all this, an idea occurred to me that seems like it might be really helpful for at least some people. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it, but I'm equally sure I've never seen/heard it explained this way.

The idea is to think about the intervals defining scales and modes in a circular rather than linear way. A clock face makes a convenient analog because it's divided into the same number of hours as we have notes. Draw a clock face, but instead of (or in addition to) labeling the hours with the numbers 1-12, label them with notes, starting with C at the top (12 o'clock) and going clockwise: i.e., C#/Db is at 1:00, D is at 2:00, etc. An hour represents a half-step or semitone; two hours represents a step or whole-tone.

Now, to find the notes in the C-major scale (or key of C), start at the top and go clockwise according to the defining interval pattern for a major scale: i.e., whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. The second note (D) will be at 2:00, the third note (E) at 4:00, the fourth note (F) at 5:00, the fifth note (G) at 7:00, the sixth note (A) at 9:00, and the seventh note (B) at 11:00 -- leaving a half-step back to C. Since we're in the key of C, it turns out that the excluded notes all happen to be the sharp/flat ones, leaving us with CDEFGAB. Cross out or erase the labels for the notes we're excluding, or highlight the ones we're keeping, or something.

Now, the exercise we just did identified the Ionian mode of C: We started at C (12:00) and followed the pattern of intervals defining that mode (WWHWWWH) to find the notes CDEFGAB. For Dorian mode, find the notes by simply starting at D (2:00) and going all the way around back to D. The notes will of course be DEFGABC, but the intervals defining them will be different than before: now they follow the pattern WHWWWHW. Follow the same process for each of the other modes by starting at ending at E (4:00) for Phrygian, F (5:00) for Lydian, and so forth.

It seems to me that this circle/clock analogy makes it particularly easy to see how, on the one hand, each mode is defined by a unique pattern of half- and whole-step intervals, but on the other hand all of these unique patterns are just a part of the same overall pattern -- the differences being simply a matter of where in the circle you start. I think this concept is a lot harder to get one's head around when we just write out the patterns or notes in a linear way.

Another nice feature of this analogy is that it makes it super-easy to apply to any key. First, go back to the version of the clock face in which all 12 "hours" are labeled -- i.e., restore the sharp/flat notes that you erased or crossed out for the key of C -- and then simply rotate the entire clock face to correspond to the key of interest. If you want to find the notes and modes in the key of Db, for example, rotate the clock face one hour counterclockwise -- as if you were changing time zones -- so that C#/Db is at the top. To find the notes of the Db major scale or the key of Db, follow the WWHWWWH pattern. It is not a coincidence that the notes of the scale will be in the same clock positions as before -- i.e., at 2:00, 4:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00, and 11:00 -- but of course these positions will correspond to different notes now: viz., Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C (I hope I got that right). And now you can find all the modes in the key of Db by starting in different places as before.

There are probably other ways to abuse the clock metaphor that might also be helpful in other ways. One that occurs to me offhand is that you could think about the time analogy in terms of minutes instead of hours -- with a semitone being 5 minutes instead of an hour -- in which case the minute hand would be used as above for thinking about the notes, and the hour hand would represent octaves as you go around repeatedly. Perhaps this would be useful in highlighting the fact that the same sequence of notes and interval patterns repeat themselves, which in turn might be useful (with some adaptation) for thinking about things like 9ths and 11ths and such. (I'm not so sure about this, but I have to say that I do like the idea of different keys representing different time zones!)

So what do you think? Is it just me, or do others find this a useful way to think about it? And has anybody seen/heard it explained this way before?

[terryjj1]

I have a better idea of what's going on now than when i was trying to figure it out using the jazz theory book...maybe it's because the jazz theory book isn't in crayon but fron everyones contribution in this thread, I can go back to the book with more insight....

[shwashwa]

another really easy way to see the differences is to play all the modes from the same root, not from the same key center, in other words, dont play c major, f lydian, g mixolydian etc, they can all look the same having the same notes and all. a huge lightbulb moment for me was when i learned c ionian, c dorian, c phrygian, c lydian etc. there are the differences in shapes layed out right in front of your eyes, and you can compare them all to the key of C, because it sounds like that is a key you are familiar with. in other words, see which and how many notes are different. for example, lydian has only one different note, mixo has one different note, dorian has 2 etc. playing them all from the same root might help you alot

[DoubleMIDI]

I found Lobster11's idea several years ago in a book, but with a third dimension.
The whole thing is a standing spiral (constant diameter, as the tungsten spiral in an old light bulb or the spring in most ball-point pens), 12 notes around 360° (30° for each halftone, so looks like an analog clock numbering scheme), octaves are in the same direction from the center but higher or lower.

I also made a mathematically inspired approach to find (all kind of) scales myself.
For this I'm using a circle with the intervals between scale notes. Then the circle could be rotated to get the modes.

You can write both, notes and intervals or intervals only.
Then you get a scale structure like C-2-D-2-E-1-F-2-G-2-A-2-B-1-(first C again) or simply 2212221 best thought as notated in a circle.

Viewing it differently you get a group of 2 whole steps and a group of 3 whole steps separated by a single halftone step. It does not change the structure if you exchange the two and three groups (you can start from a different "mode" and get the same), but you can change the number of whole tone steps in the groups, i.e. one and four.
Then you will get all the modes of melodic minor (2122221).
If you cut one 2 and redistribute the resulting 1s you get wholetone-halftone (21212121) and it's second mode is halftone-wholetone.
You can limit or open your choice of intervals, i.e. allow one three halftone interval but not two halftone intervals successively. Then you get harmonic minor (2122131) and something that Adelhard Roidinger consequently calls harmonic major (2212131). (These scales could also be found with differing names in George Russells Lydian Chromatic concept).
You can even go further and allow two 3 intervals in the scale and get modes of gypsy scales.
Or you can avoid 1 intervals and get wholetone and pentatonic scales.
It could even be proofed mathematically that for a certain limitation you get all scales possible.
The only quesion is which lining up of intervals you still call a scale and which one is not a scale. So to get the most extreme is the chromatic scale a scale or only the basic material to form a scale.
But this is more a philosophical thing.

Perhaps I should write a book about that and earn some money (or loose it on printing cost)...

I explained that once in an advanced jazz music theory course, but for most of the participants it was too much to turn thinking that way. My co-teacher was really exited about that stuff (he talked about his own things).
I'm rather sure someone of the participants said that the standard stuff is even hard enough to play.
This is true, but if you know how these scales could be constructed (which is rather simple once you understood this) you can always construct them yourself at a later time if you want to go into this stuff. I found the harmonic major stuff most interesting, because I got it out of the systematic approach and it is not commonly known but used by some jazz groups. (Well, not all the time...)

I hope that's enough food for thinking about scale theory now.
And chords are always subsets of scales, of course. But I won't go into that any deeper now...

[Lobster11]

Originally Posted by DoubleMIDI

I found Lobster11's idea several years ago in a book, but with a third dimension.
The whole thing is a standing spiral (constant diameter, as the tungsten spiral in an old light bulb or the spring in most ball-point pens), 12 notes around 360° (30° for each halftone, so looks like an analog clock numbering scheme), octaves are in the same direction from the center but higher or lower.

I also made a mathematically inspired approach to find (all kind of) scales myself.

That "standing spiral" model is pretty cool, and perhaps a somewhat more elegant way of including octaves than my (admittedly lame) attempt to do so with hour hand vs. minute hand. Still, I think I like the clock metaphor better because it is simpler and more familiar and thus (I presume) easier to grasp intuitively. I'd still love to get some feedback from others about this, though -- if only to decide if I should consider starting a new thread to "introduce" it (which I don't want to do if it's already common knowledge or, worse, simply not helpful to anyone).

I'm afraid I don't really understand how your "mathematically inspired approach" really differs from conventional approaches, other than using 1's and 2's rather than H's and W's (or S's and T's). It's all inherently "mathematical" whether you use numbers or not, right? What am I missing? (Of course you've extended the discussion beyond standard diatonic harmony, but that's another kettle of fish entirely -- which, by the way, would be easy to incorporate into the "clock" metaphor.)

[CrewsControl]

Originally Posted by Lobster11

The idea is to think about the intervals defining scales and modes in a circular rather than linear way. A clock face makes a convenient analog because it's divided into the same number of hours as we have notes. Draw a clock face, but instead of (or in addition to) labeling the hours with the numbers 1-12, label them with notes, starting with C at the top (12 o'clock) and going clockwise: i.e., C#/Db is at 1:00, D is at 2:00, etc. An hour represents a half-step or semitone; two hours represents a step or whole-tone.

So what do you think? Is it just me, or do others find this a useful way to think about it? And has anybody seen/heard it explained this way before?

Yes. Wikipedia.

[shwashwa]

i still say that playing them all from the same root is easiest, that way you can see how the half steps and whole steps compare to each other. its kind of like laying a scale on top of a scale and see the similarities and differences, which of course will be in the half step/whole step configuration. on an instrument as symmetric as the bass it is easy to see, in my opinion, much easier than on a piano or even a guitar which has that one string not tuned to a 4th. everything we play will be some combination (or abbreviation) of these half step/whole step patterns. makes sense to get to know them and how they look.

[shwashwa]

Originally Posted by CrewsControl

Yes. Wikipedia.

interesting, id rather visualize it on my bass than on a clock though. that way i can actually use it and apply it directly. or i suppose i could visualize it on the back of a ham sandwich too. i could use that...
(too close to dinner time here)

[Lobster11]

Originally Posted by CrewsControl

Yes. Wikipedia.

Crap.

But thanks.

You know what seems really odd, though: That graphic is spliced into the wikipedia page with, as far as I can tell, no explanation whatsoever. I don't see any reference to it in any of the text either above or below it -- as if its significance is transparently self-evident. (Which it might be, I suppose, but it certainly wasn't obvious to me until this morning!)

You didn't just insert it there ten minutes ago to yank my chain, did you?? C'mon, 'fess up!

[CrewsControl]

No, I didn't stick that in there. I was also a little puzzled by those diagrams, which are called "pitch constellations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_constellation

[cycler]

or you could simply follow the lead of the countless other boys from the 'burbs -

...stick to the blooooze.

[DoubleMIDI]

For those who didn't understand my approach...

1. I used numbers instead of interval names to be able to use 3 haftone steps and make it more internationally understandable. There is nothing differing in Lobster11's approach until this point. The spiral could be projected to two-dimensional space and will become the circle. This is a mathematical transformation reducing a 3-dimensional space to a 2-dimensional one.

2. I only use the interval structure between adjacent scale notes in a circle. Then I pick a divider (here the 1 halftone interval, because I decided for myself that two adjacent halftone steps won't make a scale; there are some well-founded exceptions, have a look at gypsy scales) as a group delimiter (common view for a computer scientist and/or coding mathematician) to get groups. Then I try to find any groupings that are not modes of a already found one (not complicated with only two or three groups). All inside a self given limit. This way I get any scale structure in the given limits. It's a kind of combinatoric thing. A full time mathematician might do it better if he understands music theory well. The problem is to set the boundary conditions for a scale. What is a scale for us and what would we not call a scale (if the notes of a scale are the basic material for all chords for this scale) is the problem. So our sights might differ, at least when we start thinking about it and hopefully we might agree to find a common view if we discuss it with a deeper insight.

I just wanted to show, that there is not only ionian to locrian scales. You just need a minor tune and need other stuff than this.
Anyway, I might write about this in a book with more explanations and examples and sell it. It wouldn't be more bad than most books sold these days, just a bit more mind challenging than a lot of other stuff.

In the Wikipedia examples you can see the star structure turning counter-clockwise from ionian to locrian mode. It is just a different way of showing that the basic structure for these scales are the same. But there are other basic structures which make other scales.

My approach is using mathematic thinking to get all the scales that exist. And also to use musical knowledge to throw out a lot of note sets out that even rather strange contemporary 12-tone-based musicians wouldn't call a scale. (Otherwise a purely combinatoric approach would be rather simple mathematically, but this is not musically convincing.) Mahematics is not only Algebra and Analysis, but always finding the system behind the thing. That's the reason why I called it mathematically inspired. Not that Lobster11's is not, mine is just going a bit further in that direction.

Anyway, everybody finding things like this himself did a good job and this will help finding more structures in music. I didn't wanted to say this is really old stuff, since it is not commonly known from this perspective. Even if it's not new it might help some of us, who haven't known this kind of view before. Others might not be able to get anything out of this perspective, so they may use a different one or act intuitively (which unfortunately is more of a good luck approach for stuff already known by ear, I think).

As I said, it might get a bit too far for a lot of musicians ("Do I really need to know this?" - "Yes, but you will need some time until you understand you do! Maybe a lot of time..."). Maybe the coin will drop later...

There is still more than scales as a material for chords, i.e. like the horizontal organization of scale material like in indian ragas. This might even be important for modal playing, even if it's not the strict indian form of horizontal scale organization. Even modal jazz is more harmonic with inside-outside playing than indian music, so the harmonic side may be more important in these cases.

[Lobster11]

Originally Posted by cycler

or you could simply follow the lead of the countless other boys from the 'burbs -

...stick to the blooooze.

Love it! Screw all this diatonic harmony stuff, and just play minor pentatonic scales over three seventh chords....

[TroyK]

terryjj1 (Original Poster) where do you live? One lesson with someone practical would lift this veil for you. If you fill out your profile, I'll bet someone here would offer.

[jandscotten]

Just want to thank all of you! My correspondent teacher had given me all these modes to learn and practise....which I had slowly began to despair about....but you have lifted the veil, now what he said makes perfect sense. Sometimes we need to hear descriptions from the front and the rear of the elephant to know it's in fact an elephant.

[Gerald Spaits]

Originally Posted by shwashwa

i still say that playing them all from the same root is easiest, that way you can see how the half steps and whole steps compare to each other. its kind of like laying a scale on top of a scale and see the similarities and differences, which of course will be in the half step/whole step configuration. on an instrument as symmetric as the bass it is easy to see, in my opinion, much easier than on a piano or even a guitar which has that one string not tuned to a 4th. everything we play will be some combination (or abbreviation) of these half step/whole step patterns. makes sense to get to know them and how they look.

This is the right idea, playing the modes starting on the same root.
Try this: play modes from Bright to Dark, Start with the same root. Lydian,Ionian(maj)Mixolydian,Dorian,Aeolian,Phrygi an,Locrian.
You change one note at a time.
The question should be what do you do with these modes. You need to relate them back to a chord change.