Modes

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Lesson written by Simeon Harris, Textural Guitarist - www.SimeonHarris.co.uk.

You only really need to know these scales to be able to improvise over any set of chord changes...

Major scale
Melodic Minor scale
Harmonic Minor scale
Diminished scale
Whole Tone scale

What tends to be confusing however, is how these scales are "modalised" - the last two are symmetrical scales, so don’t worry about them, but the first three scales have a different name depending on which note you start from - here’s a breakdown of the major scale and the modes within...

Major scale - C D E F G A B - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Modes:

Ionian -	C D E F G A B
Dorian -	D E F G A B C
Phrygian -	E F G A B C D
Lydian -	F G A B C D E
Mixolydian -	G A B C D E F
Aeolian -	A B C D E F G
Locrian -	B C D E F G A

Ok, so all the scales have the same notes in - don’t they just all sound the same then?
Well no - Because it's not the notes themselves which give a scale it's sound - it's the distance between the notes - this is made clearer if we write all the modes out in the same key and put their intervallic formulae next to them...

Ionian -	C D E F G A B	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dorian -	C D Eb F G A Bb	1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7
Phrygian -	C Db Eb F G Ab Bb	1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7
Lydian -	C D E F# G A B	1 2 3 #4 5 6 7
Mixolydian -	C D E F G A Bb	1 2 3 4 5 6 b7
Aeolian -	C D Eb F G Ab Bb	1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7
Locrian -	C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb	1 b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7

So there's two ways of looking at modes and deriving them, the sideways and longways...

If we pick a random mode in a random key, say E Dorian.
We can look at it as being mode two of D major, or we can just know the step pattern for Dorian and plug the notes in...

D major is D E F# G A B C#, so E Dorian is mode two - start on the second note and go from there… E F# G A B C# D - voila - E Dorian!
The other method is to use the step pattern - 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7 - this means we have to know what E major is, because that’s what the step pattern relates to.
E major would have a step pattern of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and the notes are E F# G# A B C# D#, so lets apply the Dorian formula and see what we get.

E Major - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 - E F# G# A B C# D#
E Dorian - 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7 - E F# G A B C# D

The other way to do it, is to know the step pattern, or the distance between the notes.
Dorian is - tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone, semi-tone – and build the scale up from E.

Practice:

Ok, you need to play over vamps to get the sound in your head, and also work out what all the chords are in each mode - remember the modes are interchangeable - C major is A Aeolian which is also D Dorian - they have the same notes, therefore they have the same chords - just starting on a different one.

If a chord sequence has a bunch of chords which are unrelated, then you have to use their "home" mode over each one - e.g. here's a sequence...

C / F / F#maj7 / Dmaj7 / Gm7

So the modes to use would be C major, F# Lydian, D Lydian and G Dorian

But if a sequence has a bunch of chords all in the same key, then you can just use the one mode.

Cmaj7 / G7 / Am7 / Fmaj7 - is all in C major - you could think about it like - C major, G Mixolydian, A Dorian, F Lydian, but all those modes contain the same notes, so why bother?

See the below for a breakdown of chords and their home modes.

Also figure out how to play arpeggios of some chords, because they are great soloing tools - I’ll include the nice ones in the table.

The point is all you need to do is relate any mode back to it’s parent major scale and so all you need to know is the major scale in every key and you can play any mode in any key!