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Showing results for tags 'modes'.
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I don't pet little monkeys after lunch ... and I strongly suggest that you shouldn't either. Something about those bananas they eat (or maybe it's the little foo-foo drinks that usually accompany them) really pisses them off. Plus, it reminds me much too much of Music Theory class, where that line was actually a mnemonic device that I rather-desperately used to remember this: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian. (Damm, it must have worked ... professor, be ye proud.) I remembered those words exactly long enough to pass the course, then forgot about them for the next twenty years ... until I finally learned what they were really talking about, and why it could actually be very useful to me (or, to you) as a songwriter and composer. I promise that I won't mention those words again. (Class is over... you graduated, maybe, and eventually paid-off your student loans, maybe. Welcome to the rest of your life.) Now, let's do them. Let's do Modes, and those pseudo-latin names that were worth 25 points on the final. Turns out, it's easy. Grab your handy piano keyboard and play one of those one-handed songs that you find on the first three pages of the first music books. Say, Merrily We Roll Along. Park your hands on the all-white keys beginning with Middle C, and, without playing any chords, play the melody. Slightly emphasize the "C" and the "G" as you play. (So, how does it feel to be seven years old again? Two more years until you grew enough to reach the pedals ...?) Now for some bona fide magic. Here goes ... Shift your hands two places to the left, and, still on the all-white keys and still without playing any chords, play Merrily again. (Where you were playing "C," now play "A," and just do the all-white-keys as you did before.) E-D-C-D-E-E-E now becomes C-B-A-B-C-C-C and so on. Now, listen. No, I mean it. Play it again. Now, listen... until you stop focusing on what you're doing and can hear what you are doing. OMG! (Okay, okay: "WTF?!") It sounds minor! And, in fact, it is. Okay, more magic. Two places to the right. Play Merrily again, all white keys, centered on E in place of C. Different again! We're on a roll, here. Let's do magic seven times. Just keep doing that until you've tried all seven starting white-keys. And what you'll immediately see is that all of them sound different ... sometimes very much so ... even though every one of them used only the white keys. But ... why? Here's the "simple explanation" I promised you: "now, look at the black keys." You know that there are 12 keys in the total scale, and that each adjacent key, white or black, is one so-called "half step" from its neighbor. This means that five of those white keys are a "whole step (= 2 half-steps)" apart, because there's a black-key in between, but that keys #3 (E-to-F) and #7 (B-to-C) are only a half-step away from their upper neighbor since there is no black-key in-between. Therefore, if you played the C-major scale (all white keys starting with "C"), even though the keys that you played were "all white, and obviously 'next to each other,'" in fact they were not. In fact, you played a mixture of whole and half steps, with the half-steps in positions 3 and 7. So, what happened when you shifted your hands? You shifted (actually, rotated) the placement of the half-steps in that underlying sequence! When you shifted your hands two places down (or, six places up ...) to "A," then the half-steps – which previously were at positions 3 and 7 – now occupied various different places on the scale that you were then playing, although they remained a (rotated) fifth apart. Let me say it again: When you played "Mer-ri-ly" as (shifted right ...) C-B-A instead of E-D-C, a half-step got in the way. These three notes that formerly had been a whole-step apart, weren't a whole-step apart anymore, because there's only a half-step between C and B (whereas there had not been, between E and D). Furthermore, the outer neighbors C and A are also a half-step closer than E and C had been. Yeah, even though we are still playing "all white keys," truly everything has changed. And that, Virginia, is what "modes" are. It is both generally and categorically true that: notes that are "next to one another" in your melody, are not necessarily "next to one another" in actual tone. However, within any and every "scale," there is a regular pattern to their spacing. And so, what you're actually doing, with each mode, is re-arranging that pattern ... while ... (importantly!) ... doing it in a consistent way. Every re-arrangement is a rotation. (okay, up for air now ... breathe breathe breathe ... 'cuz I'm gonna toss one more thing at ya) There's another way to achieve this "rotation." Yes, you can also do the exact same thing another way! You can keep your hands exactly where they started. Always "E-D-C-D-E-E ... etc"), and continue to slightly-emphasize C and G, but now, do it in different keys. Now you are not continuing to play "all white keys." You're respecting the sharps-and-flats of whatever key you're in. But... you are continuing to emphasize to your ear that "the root of what I'm playing is [not "the home of the key that I am now in", but ...] the note 'C' (sharped or flattened as the key-signature prescribes)," and that "the fifth is 'G' (ditto)." The center of your melody hasn't shifted to G! No, it's still at C, and so, if you look closely at what you're doing, you'll see that, thanks to the sharps and flats, the sequence of whole and half-steps has shifted beneath your fingers as before, even though your hands haven't moved. (Don't let me lose you here: "the pattern of sharps and flats" that corresponds to (say) "the key of 'G'" just happens to be exactly the right ones to produce the same arrangement of whole-and-half-steps that you plainly saw in "all-white keys starting-and-ending with 'C'," when you decide to start your octave with 'G', instead. All key-signatures are like that, and this is why. If you want to start at such-and-such note, and preserve that same w-w-h-w-w-w-h pattern of steps, the key-signature for that note tells you which notes must be sharpened or flattened. (So far so good? Cool. Now, make the intuitive leap: "ergo, how do you shift the pattern without physically shifting your hands?" Right you are! You pick a different key-signature, thereby shifting the pattern, then you don't shift your hands! Q.E.D.) (whew!! Okay, class is over now.) There's actually a fairly-endless fountain of possible creativity here, because "'the scale' of your tune" can actually be anything you like, as long as the set of notes is consistent. (Does it have to be w-w-h-w-w-w-h? No. Does it have to be twelve (or seven, or five) tones? No!) You might have seen that when you played a very oriental-sounding (pentatonic ...) melody using only the black keys of the keyboard. "The scale of your tune" is whatever you want it to be. It will become the most-elemental framework against which every other aspect of the song is hung. Every note in your "scale" will be separated from its neighbor by some "interval," and there will be some pattern to those intervals, just as there is with "all white keys" or, for that matter, "all black ones." There's a naturally-occurring system of tensions inherent in every one of those intervals (and even the notes, which in fact are not equally-spaced), which you can take advantage of in your music. Just remember to be sparing, and thereafter consistent. The ear can only take so much. Establish from the outset what "the 'normal' for your music" is going to be, whatever it is. ("Modes," as described, work because they are still "rotations" of that prevailing "normal," hence an acceptable variation.) It's possible to stray so far-away from the main stream here that you just confuse-the-hell out of your listener, but it's also possible to serve him something he's never heard before, using "just the same twelve white-and-black notes." (Or-r-r-r-r....)
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So I started learning about the theory about modes in guitar and I started learning the shapes to play. (is that how you say it in guitar talk?) Anyway, I just wondered, should I start learning from the proper order of the modes? (Ionian then Dorian then Phrygian and so on...) or can I just learn them in any order?
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So ive been playing for a lil while, like 4 years, however im all self taught (not by choice). So i was curios how most of you guys approach scales and key changes. i know my way around music theory, at least the basics so dont feel the need to dumb stuff down. anyways, when i play i dont shift the scale up or down. i just play the scale in the same key up and down the neck. so i know all the modes, just cant call on any specific one at any given time. soo i guess what im wondering is just how you guys put the two to use. do you guys mostly focus on a mode then shift it to a different key, or just apeshit on a scale shred in one key up n down the neck (how ive been playing ). dont get me wrong i like running up a scale, but want more out of my playing. so just how do you guys approach, and blend these together while playing? thx quick lil side Q while your here. when you play do you look at the fret board or dots on the side of neck? thx X2