ok, so heres my plight : Recently i've been learning and reading up on modes, and i understand how they are derived and i can play them all over the fret board (relatively well..)

However, i cant seem to establish the feel of the different modes very well .. everything i'd play would sound ionian.

So where do i go from here?

Oh yah.. 1 more thing, lets say theres a chord progression in G major, i could solo over that in G ionian , A dorian , B phygian , C lydian , and this is refered to as Relative modes , correcto?

BUT, i've read somewhere about Parallel modes or something, tho the source didnt make it very clear as to what that meant. From inference, i was made to think that in a G chord progression, i could solo in various other modal scales that arent derived from the major scale?

or maybe i'm just confused....
so could anyone help me out here ?(in english please!!!!)

thanks..

Everything Dies

It will depend upon what type of "G" progression or "G" chord you're playing. For example: If you play a Gmaj7#11 (G-F#-B-C#), use the F# phrygian mode. This will actually put you in the key of D ionian - but don't think D, concentrate on the the F#. In fact, you can also just play F# minor pentatonic (box pattern at the 2nd fret) for this chord. All the notes in this pentatonic scale basically outline an F# phrygian mode. Play over this progression: Gmaj7#11 - F#m. Or, Gmaj7#11 - A7 - Bm7 - Em-F#m(2 beats each on the last two chords, 4 beats for all the others). This second prog kind of has a "Gypsy Kings" sound to it. This is just barely scratching the surface of "modal" playing - I hope it helps a little.

ok understood sir. So i'm playing the f# phygian mode, because most of the chords in the prog, correspond to some notes in F# phygian ?

However, could i play modes that have notes NOT corresponding exactly to the chord progression ?

thanks for the help man.

Everything Dies

Yes. You can play notes that don't correspond to the key signature but then you've ceased to play "modally". Which is great, but that's another thing altogether. Example: play a G power chord (G-D-G, sometimes called G5) and try the G phrygian mode over that. The Ab and Eb will have a dissonant "rub" over this chord. Listen to John McLaughlin if you want to start hearing modally "outside" playing. Playing modally "out" will also get you to some very interesting "exotic" and "ethnic" approaches to playing over chord changes. Again ... a HUGE topic.

that sounds really fun man, i'm wondering how i've never ever gotten down to studying these things until now..
thanks alot!

Everything Dies

I think establishing the sound of different modes, will depend on the song. If it's stays in one key, Like Gmaj. Then G ionian A dorian B phyrgian C lydian etc.. will all sound the same. Its the tonal center of the song that dictates that. One thing you can do to spice up your playing, besides moving wierd shapes within the scale patter, is sliping from note outside the scale into one thats of the scale. Like Ab into G or whatever. The other thing is using a different maj. sounding mode in a major key like Lydian and same for minor and dominant keys. They all have alot of modes and scales you can use. It just depends on what the song is dictating. Power chord have a lot of options for what you can play over them because they are so ambiguous. (not minor or maj)

Back to your question. Try playing every mode you know in one key. Ex, C ionian, C dorian, etc.. Also, someone aluded to this elsewear. Some scales with less than 7 notes(pentatonics) will have all the notes of a particular mode, minus some. That initself will conjur up different sounds. Like in Gmaj, play E pent, A pent, B pent. There are also some cool asian pent scales which fit nicely.

One last thing. Remeber what makes each mode different is the note being called the root. Therefore, all modes are in every position on the guitar. So when a song is in Gmaj, and you "think" your playing A dorian, your really still just playing G ionian.

Also try learning some altered modes like the modes of the jazz minor, lydian aug, super locrian, lydian dominant, aeolian b5, Dorian b2, etc... It'll help broaden your perspective and your ear. Ultimately whatever sounds the best. Different keys/songs will be more or less forgiving on "outside" notes. In general Major is the least forgiving key, Minor is in the middle and Dominant is the most.

Hopefully there is some sense somewhere in there.
Sing using your guitar.

hey "intergalacticjuice"
did u get the things u are talking about from a book or books? if u did can u tell me what i can pick up so i can know what u know. thanks for anything, it will help.
Thanks
God bless
Neal

Without getting too crazy, there are essentially two ways to think about modes (which is really just an old word for “scale”, BTW): the traditional ecclesiastical (medieval church) method for chorals etc, and the contemporary “jazz” method. I’ll try to explain how it came about without it getting out of hand. So I don’t go on forever, I will generalize greatly, in other words there are many exceptions to what I am writing, its just an overview…

Starting in the late 13th century as church composers began “discovering” more dissonant harmonic relationships between notes in a series (scales), they noticed that they could create tension by “hovering” on the fifth above, i.e., the dominant resolving toward the tonic. They did this starting at different places of what we would call the major scale (creating modes), thus getting different sonorities as some modes are major, some minor and one half diminished (which was considered pretty unusable because of the b5. they didn’t just pick the dominant, it comes from the physics of the harmonic series which was (is) more obvious with the loads of reverb present in the large stone churches when the voices cranked up. After the move toward major / minor keys there wasn’t that much composed in the modes until the sonorities were rediscovered in the romantic period. Basicly, music at the end of the baroque period (Bach, Handel, etc.) began developing more vertically along harmonic lines and less contrapunctually (Hayden, Mozart, etc). So, composers sought to create greater tension/release by modulating toward dominant keys (up the cycle of 5ths) until the Romantic period (Beethoven / Berlioz) they had pretty much exhausted their possibilities (there was nowhere else to go-they ran out of dominant keys). Romantic composers (Chopin / List, etc) began seeking to create tension by modulating to sub-dominant keys and used added chromatism to create greater tension. This also ran out of steam for the same reasons when the chromatism began to break down the ability to even hear a solid key center.

The answer found by the Impressionists (Debussy, Ravel) was to return to the use of church modes by harmonizing them in 3rds and using the chords that result to create new sounds that washed in unresolved tension. That is pretty much the first real use of the modes that way. While the “tension problem” got taken up by the Schonberg / Stravinsky schools in very different ways, the problem was left for awhile until a bunch of jazz guys got frustrated by being locked into soloing over changes. They were looking for something to break free with and a number of them (Miles Davis, Bill Evans, etc) were heavily into Debussy & Ravel and were copping their chord voicings to use in tunes. That began the phase I think most people think of which is using the modes as “colors”.

In other words, there are two choices: (1) write / improvise tunes over a mode or any altered scale which has been harmonized (what John McLaughlin did in Mahavishnu and elsewhere-remember he was the guitarist on Miles’ “Bitches Brew”!), or (2) use the added colors of the modes like you would any other altered chord tone.

For example if you play a D Lydian mode (1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6, 7 – or a major scale with a #4) over a Dmaj7 chord, you will hear the added tension on the raised 4 seeking resolution to 5. The shredders like Yngwie used this idea to play Phrygian (minor b2) scales among others to get “that sound” over minor chords. That is different from the harmonization of the Phrygian you hear in flamenco music, for example, where they have harmonized the scale itself as the basis for the tune.

The important thing to remember is that it is all about sounds, not theory. The theory just gives the sounds a name or gives you a topic for exploration. It will mean a whole lot more if you are already on a solid foundation ear training wise (you can hear major from minor, recognize intervals and their harmonic function in the key, hear and identify a modulation, etc).

I hope this helps and I am very sorry for it being so long

PS-Just to clarify, scales don’t have to be 7 notes (and isn’t in most parts of the world outside Europe / US). Much of the world uses pentatonic (5 note) scales, hexatonic (6 note) and so forth. There are many pentatonic scales other than “the box”, which BTW was developed as a way of reconciling African melodic material and organization into a hybrid European musical form. That’s also the reason there are dom7 chords on the I-IV-V of a blues progression. It is an example of a harmonized mode.

peace, Richard

hey neal.
Umm, I picked up what I know from various sources and trying to figure out what I could use to solo over jazz standards other than the obvious choice. Any scale book wood be a good place to start. Learn your major(ionian) scale in all seven postions(7 notes=7 positions), and understand that the modes are relative. using the major as a ruler, the 1 is ionian 2 is dorian, 3 is prygian and so on.. therefore everymode is in every position, it's all in the context of what you are soloing over.
Once you got those down, go after the harmonic minor and the jazz minor, and apply the same "modal" concept. Those scales will give you what I like to think of as "altered modes" after that learn some symetrical scales, augmented, whole-tone, diminished. Then forget everything and play! It's a never-ending journey, the relationship between intervals and and scales. They are ultimately part of your color palette along with rhythm anf timbre and whatever.

So when you solo, take a good look what the chords to find the appropriate scales. And as long as you know your major scale, you know every mode. Over Cmaj7#11, play Gmaj, cause that=C lydian, which is a major with a #11/4.

hopefully its not too confusing. Modes are really easy actually. Just learn the major scale, your modes are all in there.

Lenny Breau is greatest guitarist ever.

In order to "get" the modes you need to hear the unique color each one provides. There are a couple of ways that I like to do this. One very easy way is to play through each mode using the same root - C ionian, C dorian, C phrygian etc. My favorite way to do this is to play the mode as a pedal point exercise where I play the root(R), 2, R, 3, R, 4, R ,5, etc. This is tremendously helpful because it adjusts your ears to the intervals contained in each mode. The other thing you need to realize is that the modes are DEPENDANT on CHORDS for their flavor. When you play D dorian over a C major chord its going to sound like C major. Try D Dorian over Dmin7 - now your getting somewhere.