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Who here plays in MODES ??

do you play in modes

  • yes

    Votes: 157 54.3%
  • no

    Votes: 44 15.2%
  • maybe not sure

    Votes: 46 15.9%
  • sometimes

    Votes: 64 22.1%

  • Total voters
    289
Yeah you're right. I looked too fast lol.

Too easily done - I know as I do it all the time. But in an odd way it highlights the fundamental 'gotcha' with how modes are percieved. If one is always thinking or visualising in relative terms by reference to that same parent scale and key note, to my mind that is not thinking in a modal way.

The sound of feel of a mode stems from the absolute intervallic structure with respect to the 'final' as home, not to the tonic of the relative major key. In much the same way as the minor key. Nobody thinks C major when playing in A minor, do they?

That is not to say the other way of thinking is wrong - it just serves a totally different, but equally valid and seemingly more common purpose.
 
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They're fun. They're expressive. It's a valid way to think.
Modes = moods.

Ionian - straight on, positive, right down the middle, the center
Dorian - minor but with major aspirations (the major 6)
Phrygian - minor with EXTRA spiciness (the b9)
Lydian - major, but with that sassy twist (#11) (you could learn a lot from Lydian*)
Mixolydian - so danged dominant, so forward-leaning & with that great tritone built in. Wow, man.
Aeolian - the purest minor, melancholy & the looking glass of Ionian
Locrian - so sad, so discordant, yet it brings us back to...
Do!

*see George Russell.
 
If you can play the Major scale in all positions you are playing in modes. Modes as thing unto themselves matter mostly in Modal music, where you need to know what positions are not just Major, but the particular mode or modes the piece is written in. In the same way if you play altered scales in all positions you are playing through the modes of that scale. All a mode is is a particular scale played/ended on a note (the same note first and last), other than the starting note of the original scale.
 
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