Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on June 29, 2010 at 10:47pm

A note about the previous article on Modes for Guitar ...

As to the article, the thing that "unlocked" modes for me in doing all this research was the concept of looking at them as ways to connect the diatonic chords, instead of as scales, which is how they are often taught & creates a lot of confusion. Further, almost all mode articles talk about the scale, tab, notes in the scale - distinguishing one mode to another - but they almost NEVER talk about how to actually apply them to a full song or chord progression or how to know how to determine which one to use over the progression. Sometimes mode articles will talk about this mode fits over this particular chord or extension, but it's extremely rare to find articles talking about their application to full songs or chord progressions. So I was looking for answers, scouring the internet & asking everybody I know, and that's when all of the sudden I saw that while they are built on the root of their parent major scale & must include all those notes, that what's really going on is that they are tying all the diatonic chords of that parent scale together - so I just started playing diatonic chords up the scale & tying together notes from the nearest diatonic chords. And WALLA! Huge breakthrough. I know those diatonic chords! I use them ALL the time! We all do.

Frankly, I've never seen any article on-line or in any guitar book that explains it from this angle. But it's easy to grasp & understand and uses the one thing we all know & regularly play to do it - chords.

I've edited this thing about 100 times so far after writing it to refine it and make sure all the information is correct. I've played through all the suggested progressions to make sure they actually work for the suggested mode & they do. I've tried to use real world & simple examples & given song examples for students to listen to if they want to hear the sound or flavor of a particular mode, and some very helpful tips on how to identify which progressions will support the application of each mode. I tried to keep it as simple as possible. That's hard to do with modes, so I started with my diatonic chord method of learning and working through the modes (create your own modal scales using the diatonic chords, instead of just relying on scale chart pictures in a book), then with modal chord progressions for each mode so that they can immediately begin to apply their study, and then a more detailed discussion of each mode - the first paragraph is simpler and written to give some clear examples of where & why each mode works & some song examples, and then a little more advanced theory on each mode for those that want to know that too.

I think it's a really, really useful article and a very novel way of teaching and thinking about modes.

Permalink Reply by Michael Schaefer on July 1, 2010 at 9:56am

This is a really great article. Thanks for sharing it here Beth.

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on July 1, 2010 at 4:48pm

Thanks Michael - I've been updating it to provide even clearer explanations & lists of more songs that fit each mode - so you can have a clearer understanding of how each mode works & sounds ... Will be posting the revised version sometime soon, so check back for that in a week or two ... Beth :),

Permalink Reply by Michael Schaefer on July 2, 2010 at 9:36am

Sounds great. Can't wait to see the updates.

Beth Isbell said:

Thanks Michael - I've been updating it to provide even clearer explanations & lists of more songs that fit each mode - so you can have a clearer understanding of how each mode works & sounds ... Will be posting the revised version sometime soon, so check back for that in a week or two ... Beth :),

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on July 9, 2010 at 4:49pm

OK, I finally had time to update this article to include a bunch of examples of popular songs which use each mode so you can hear and recognize the unique sound of each mode, and to provide an even clearer explanation of how & why each mode creates its own unique sound, how to apply modes to individual chords and how to know which modes to use, and some examples of how & when to mix modes over a song or progression. The updated version should give you everything you need to know about modes.

Peace,
Beth

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on July 10, 2010 at 11:50am

Modes in Blues? Actually knowing how & when to apply modes will give you options in your lead playing that are very useful in spicing up your blues playing. A lot of minor blues lend themselves to use of Dorian mode (raising the 6th degree of the natural minor scale to incorporate the major 3rd of the IV chord - if the IV chord is major) or the standard Aeolian mode (i.e. the natural minor scale), giving you several extra notes to put into your runs & licks. Also, a cool trick on major blues is to turn play mixolydian mode over each Dom7 chord in the progression ... for example in a standard 1 4 5 major blues in A, using A7, D7, & E7, you could play A mixolydian over the A chord (built from a D major scale), D mixolydian over the D7 chord (built from a G major scale), and E mixolydian over the E7 chord (built from an A major scale). Which you can also think of as merely including the b7 note of each chord - which btw are also notes right out of the minor pentatonic box 1 - in your soloing & lick ideas. You can even mix these ideas with your standard minor or major pentatonic licks to start to incorporate the blending of major & minor sounds into your blues lead playing! The article discusses some simple ways to easily remember how to do these things & when to actually apply them.

Peace,
Beth

Permalink Reply by Rico on September 14, 2010 at 1:30pm

A music teacher once told me modes were invented to confuse guitar players, heh.

Yes, it is very important to look at what we commonly call "modes" in relation to chord tones, but also to become familiar with how they sound to your ear and feel to your musical soul. After all, it is what your playing sounds like to the listener that matters in the end, not what your fingers are doing.

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on September 19, 2010 at 12:37pm

I suppose Jay that you could just play major pentatonic or minor pentatonic & add a flat 5 note to play blues & actually do quite well without more, if you bend everything to fit ... & that will work, until they throw down a R&B song, or Rock, or Country Rock, or jazz, or even a more complex blues song that goes beyond 1 4 5 (like, for example, the intricate chord progression of Gary Moore's "Still Got the Blues") ... and really, seems to me anyway, that everything is rooted in a firm grasp of the major scale and then making variations to fit chord tones. Even all the fancy minor scales you mention only only slight adjustments to one or two notes in a minor scale (typically the 3, 6 &/or 7) made to emphasize a particular chord in a progression ... and still they are just variations of the minor modes - dorian, phrygian & aeolian, and not particularly often used variations at that, at least in 98% of popular music or blues. Minor pentatonic is just a stripped down version of the natural minor scale, or Aeolian mode. It becomes a "blues" scale if you add a flat 5. Major pentatonic is just a stripped down version of the Major Scale, or Ionian mode. But, instead of a flat 5, you augment the scale with a flat 3 to make it more bluesy. Here's a good chart showing why knowing your major scale modes is important: http://www.guitarscalemastery.com/articles/guitar-scale-tips/what-a... ... as the chart shows, ALL of the scale variations, including the fancy minor scales Jay brings up, are really just slight variations of one of the modes built from the parent major scale. Now I do agree that a chord tone approach is good, and that's why in the very first section of my modes article, I teach how to build the modes using diatonic chord tones from the parent major scale. Once you identify the proper location of the parent major scale that fits your song, then you can alter it to incorporate any "outside" chord tones as needed. I did look at the link you provided Jay & read your article, and I agree that it is very important to be able to hear/identify intervals, and yes, you can often go from an adjacent chromatic note up or down to a chord tone or scale note, but to conclude by saying that "the proper scale to play over the blues a 7th chord is simply the chromatic scale" is highly confusing & just not correct. That's like telling a student, there are 12 notes & you can use any of them, depends on the situation, have fun figuring that out! :)

Jay Mitchell said:

Re: modes, the ones that are derived from the major scale - i.e., the ones being discussed here - are barely scratching the surface. If you're taking that path - as I did for many years - you need to learn the modes of melodic minor, harmonic minor, harmonic major, and the diminished scale, along with their harmonizations. Then there are the harmonized "scales" from Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, a book I highly recommend.
If you want to play blues, however, you won't find what you need in any conventional mode or scale. That's because you need both minor and a major thirds and perfect and flatted fifths in order to play blues ideas, and none of the conventional modes provide all the necessary tones. More important, even if you construct a scale that contains the required tones and then try to use that to improvise, you're very unlikely to play anything that sounds like blues. When and where you play the notes are critically important, and knowing the scale/mode won't help you there. On the other hand, an approach that is based on chord tones can provide you with the tools to construct melodies that sound like blues.
I took down the chord tone tutorial I had in this forum, revised it a bit, and placed it on my personal website here (select the text below and copy it into your browser address bar):

http://jay-mitchell.com/Playing%20Tutorials/The%20Use%20of%20Chord%20Tones%20in%20Playing%20Blues.html .

If you apply yourself to learning the concepts I explain there - which requires that you practice the ideas - you may be surprised at how quickly you improve your ability to play blues.

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on September 19, 2010 at 1:03pm

Rico, I think you are right - it's not the scale that produces the unique sound or flavor of a mode, it is the combination of the sound of that scale played over a particular chord progression that emphasizes the root chord of that mode - like playing a G Dorian modal scale (built in the parent key of F Major) over a Gm chord or progression (built on the diatonic chords of F Major) in which that Gm chord is the "tonal center" of the progression. If you just play a G Dorian scale over an F major chord, for example, well you just get F major/ionian. Go figure. :),

Rico said:

A music teacher once told me modes were invented to confuse guitar players, heh.
Yes, it is very important to look at what we commonly call "modes" in relation to chord tones, but also to become familiar with how they sound to your ear and feel to your musical soul. After all, it is what your playing sounds like to the listener that matters in the end, not what your fingers are doing.

Permalink Reply by Beth Isbell on September 19, 2010 at 1:09pm

Hey y'all, I did want to let you know that my modes article has been picked up & published by the popular national guitar theory site GuitarNoise.com ... this link will take you to a page listing all of their articles on scales & modes, including my article, which they have broken down into smaller parts (I think they've published the first three parts so far with more to come) ...

http://www.guitarnoise.com/topic/scales-and-modes/

Permalink Reply by Michael Schaefer on September 19, 2010 at 4:29pm

Ease up Jay.

Jay Mitchell said:

You claim to have read my tutorial. Have you spent any time practicing the concepts?

I stand by my position, which matches that of the great players who have studied modern music, including current faculty members at Berklee.

Here's a video of one of those faculty members - Tomo Fujita - teaching exactly the same concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovHX0xfCmp4

Beth, we've both heard each other play. I would happily recommend to anyone who might be contemplating which of us to see for lessons to hear us both play before deciding.

It's one thing to talk about music theory, quite another to put it to use in your playing. I can execute the concepts I'm talking about, as well as the ones you promote, and I speak from that ability when I say which is more useful in playing blues.

Permalink Reply by Michael Schaefer on September 20, 2010 at 6:59am

Congrats Beth.

Beth Isbell said:

Hey y'all, I did want to let you know that my modes article has been picked up & published by the popular national guitar theory site GuitarNoise.com ... this link will take you to a page listing all of their articles on scales & modes, including my article, which they have broken down into smaller parts (I think they've published the first three parts so far with more to come) ...

http://www.guitarnoise.com/topic/scales-and-modes/

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