Music School Taught Me The Modes Wrong

[00:00:00]So 15 16 years ago when I was in music school when we got to the section where we started to learn about the major modes on guitar it did not click. I didn't understand it at all. And it actually took me several years after getting out of music school to finally start to wrap my head around the major modes and how to actually use them to make music. So in today's video I'm going to break down all seven major modes and show you how I like to think about them, how I learned them in a way that helped me actually make music with the major modes. This is such an important topic to me that I actually dedicated a whole section of my video course, Fretboard Fundamentals Ultimate, to the major modes, but we'll talk more about that later. For now, let's grab a guitar, get tuned up, and talk about what the modes actually are and how to use them.

[00:00:40]The major modes are not just a set of scales or a set of chords. They're actually different colors. Each one of the seven major modes has a specific feeling. It elicits a certain emotional response from the player and from the listener. Now, a quick overview. If you've never heard of the major modes or never learned them before, there are seven major modes that align with the seven notes of the major scale. So, in today's video, we're just going to stay in the key of C. The C major scale is going to be sort of the foundation that we're building all of the rest of these ideas off of. So, C major, pretty basic stuff. Now, each one of those notes in that major scale has a chord that goes with it. And this is what we call the harmonized major scale. So, I can play the C major scale in every one of its degrees, and there's a specific chord that goes with that scale. And because there's a chord that goes with it, there's also a scale that goes with it. I know I'm moving fast here, but it'll all make sense in a second. Now, each mode has a specific name. Ionian, Dorian, Friian, Lydian, Mixelyian, Aolon, and Lorian. And each one of these scales, each one of these modes has a specific feeling. Let me start by showing you an example. So this is just a simple C major pad. It's actually just a power chord, a root and a fifth. And I'm going to start by playing a C major scale.

[00:02:04]Now that's C major, but that's also our first mode. That's called Ionian. And the Ionian mode, just the major scale. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. No sharps, no flats. And that is a mode. That's a sound. That's a feeling. That's a color. So, let me try and play it in a way where it's not uh so scalar sounding.

[00:02:31]So, the way I hear Ionian is like it's a bright sound. It's sort of relaxed. It it feels at home. It feels like your your home base, your foundation. There's nothing in it that's causing any kind of tension. It's just a nice sound, a nice feeling. But now, let's take a look at the next mode, which is Dorian. And dorian is a minor scale. It's a minor mode. So, it's going to sound different.

[00:02:52]But listen to how different it sounds compared to Ionia.

[00:03:09]So, yeah, it's a minor scale. It's a minor sound, but it's not too sad or too brooding. It's got kind of a soulful feel, sort of a hopeful feel. And that's because of the intervals that make up this mode. Dorian is just root 2, flat 3r, fourth, fifth, natural 6th, flat 7th, and root again. And to me, there's sort of two notes that jump out here that are giving it the dark but hopeful feel. We have the minor third, which is obviously giving us that minor sound, but then the natural sixth, that a natural in here is giving the sound a little bit of a lift. It's giving it a little brighter color.

[00:03:49]And you can really hear the sound of the mode when you isolate just those intervals. So if I go root flat 7 flat 3rd natural 6. So that's really the sound of Dorian. Now let's go to the next mode which is friian.

[00:04:16]This is a very different sound. It's much darker. It's brooding. It's mysterious. It has sort of a Spanish almost flamco flavor. If you've heard that band Glass Beams uh from Australia, they they rely a lot on the friian scale. And where this feeling, where this color is coming from is the flat 2 and the flat 6.

[00:04:36]Now, this is a minor scale like the Dorian scale, but we're adding that flat 2 and that flat 6 in there. And that's what's really pulling us in a different direction. So fragian is root flat 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7 root.

[00:04:52]And it's that sound right there.

[00:04:58]That's that's the whole sort of cornerstone of that friian thing. Now next up is one of my favorite major modes, my favorite colors, and that's Lydian.

[00:05:10]Now Lydian is just the major scale. It's just Ionian, but we've only changed one note, which is this fourth. So we've gone from a perfect fourth to a raised or augmented fourth, a sharp four. So Lydian is 1 2 3 sharp four. 5 6 7 1.

[00:05:32]Just that one note completely changes the character of this scale from Ionian which again feels bright but safe. The foundation your home base to Lydian feels cinematic. It feels lifting. It feels mysterious a little but it's beautiful.

[00:05:53]Now next up is mixelyian. And mixelyian is a dominant mode which means it has a major third but a flatted seventh like a dominant chord does.

[00:06:04]And if you played any kind of blues or rock or learned any bluesish solos you're probably already playing mixelyian whether you realize it or not.

[00:06:15]And again like Lydian we've only changed one note from Ionian from major. We've changed from a major 7th to a flat 7th.

[00:06:24]But that one note difference, that one interval change completely changes the feeling and the sound of this mode, we get sort of that funk rock blues sort of thing. This and that is our mixelyian sound right there. The major third against the flat 7th.

[00:06:51]Next up we have aolon which is also sometimes called natural minor. Like dorian this is a minor scale but slightly different.

[00:07:02]Dorian and aolon are almost exactly the same with one difference. Where Dorian has the major 6, Aolon is dropping that down to a flatted six. And that again is where all of the difference in the color and the feel of this mode comes from is that flat 6, this A flat here.

[00:07:26]I like to think of aolon as just straight up like sad. It is the minor sound. It is the saddest of all modes because we don't have that major 6 sort of lifting us back up, giving us that hopeful feeling. It's just all sad. Ton of fun to play.

[00:07:46]Now, last but maybe actually least is Lorian. And Lorian is a mode that I'll be honest with you, I never use. And I think most people don't use. Can be used in a really beautiful artistic way. It's just not my favorite sound.

[00:08:09]There's a lot going on in Lori. And the the sort of scale formula here is 1 flat 2 flat 3 4 flat 5 flat 6 flat 7. It's brooding. It's dark. It's very unstable sounding because we have the flat 2 and the flat 6 in there which is giving us that dark mysterious kind of thing. But having the flatted fifth, this note right here, that F sharp in there really throws this thing off kilter. It makes it feel like unsettling and it sounds extra jarring against this pad that I've got rolling because there's a perfect fifth in this pad.

[00:08:52]Now, I think this way of learning the modes is really important and in fact so important that I dedicated an entire section of my video course, Fretboard Fundamentals Ultimate, to learning the modes this way. This is how I wish I would have been taught the major modes back in music school all those years ago. In the modes section of the course, we take this same concept that we're talking about here in the video, but we go deeper into actually using the major modes in a more musical way. The course includes a set of bespoke backing tracks that I wrote and produced specifically for that video course. And we use it in the modes section as well as the rest of the course to take the concepts that we're talking about and actually apply them to music in real time. But there's way more in fretboard fundamentals than just the modes. We start at the very beginning of music theory and harmony and how it applies to the fretboard. And over the course of 35 video lessons, we take you through essentially what I believe is everything you need to know and nothing you don't. So that you can actually understand a lot of these concepts and apply them to the fretboard. No matter what style of music you play or how long you've been playing, there's something in this course for everyone who are complete beginners to players who have been playing for decades. I designed this course to kind of be the one-stop shop guitar music theory course. It's what I wish I could have taken when I was 14 years old, sitting in my bedroom learning how to play. Now, each lesson is meticulously notated with both PDFs and guitar profiles. The whole idea with this course is to get you from learning the theory to actually applying it to music as quickly as possible. As a thank you for watching this video and sticking around through the ad, I've got a special discount linked down below. You can get the entire course and everything that comes with it for that discount.

[00:10:27]It's only available through this video and this link. Thank you for sitting through this ad. Let's get back to the lesson.

[00:10:34]Okay, so now hopefully you sort of understand the sound and the color of all seven major modes. And I want to be honest here and tell you that there isn't a shortcut to this. If you clicked on this video expecting like the quick easy hack to learning the modes, I don't think there is one. And I think this is part of why people get so mixed up when they learn their modes because there's sort of two approaches to teaching or learning the modes, at least in my experience. One is called the relative approach, like the relativistic approach, and one is the scalar or the scale approach or the interval approach, whatever you want to call it. So let me show you what I mean here. So we already know that Cion is just a major scale, right?

[00:11:11]And we know that C Dorian is a minor scale. We know the scale degrees, the intervals that make up C Dorian.

[00:11:20]That's the scalar approach or the interval approach where you know each mode and you know the scale degrees or the intervals that make up that mode and you know how to apply them to the fretboard and you know specifically what intervals or or colors of that scale make up the sound or color of that mode.

[00:11:37]Like we talked about with Dorian, it's the flat third and the flat 7 against the major 6. That's the Dorian sound.

[00:11:46]I think this is the proper way to learn modes. It takes longer. It's more work.

[00:11:50]It's a little more difficult. But not only do you have a much better understanding of the modes and how they're built, it also helps you understand the fretboard a lot more. You can find your intervals on the neck and start to identify and connect those intervals with the color tones. You're training your ear to hear these color tones as well, which is always a good thing versus the sort of relative approach, which would say that if I want to play C Dorian, I have to relate it back to a different major scale. So I have to know that Dorian is the second degree of the major modes. So if I want to play C Dorian, then I need to think about what is Dorian the second mode of the second degree of? Well, it's B flat major. So therefore, if I want to play C Dorian, I would just play a B flat major scale on top, which does work. They're the same notes. It's not wrong by any stretch of the imagination. And if this is how you were taught and understand modes, and if it works for you, then great. It confused the absolute hell out of me. This is what made it so confusing for me for so long and why I just didn't understand and as a result would just avoid any kind of modal playing cuz I just didn't want to have to do all that math in my head while I was trying to play music. Instead, I think you go with the simpler, albeit maybe longer distance approach if you want to think about it that way, which is just learn your scales, learn your modes, learn your intervals, and your note names on the neck. It's more work, but I promise you it will pay off dividends in the future. So now the next step would be to actually get to the point where you're using the modes in a musical way. And there's a few approaches to this. Uh one is to listen to music. This could be modal jazz. Think Miles Davis kind of blue, the the sort of modal jazz era, or even some of your favorite rock or or blues. My point is to actually learn songs and then take this knowledge, take this theory that you've gained about the major modes and use that to kind of reverse engineer things. Why does something have a dark, brooding but hopeful sound? Well, maybe it's in Dorian. Why does it sound mysterious uh and almost Spanish or flamingco or almost middle eastern? Maybe it's in friian. Does it sound disjointed and unstable and and sort of uneasy? Well, it might be in Lorian. It's going to take a while. It's going to take practice, but all good things take work.

[00:13:55]And I think this is the simplest and best approach to learning your modes.

[00:14:00]But if you want to go deeper on the major modes as well as a whole host of other subjects when it comes to music theory and using them on guitar, check out Fretboard Fundamentals Ultimate.

[00:14:08]Like I said, right now you can get the entire course and everything that it comes with for a special discount only in this video. Link is in the description box down below, as well as links to my other video courses if you want to bundle some together. All that information is linked in the description box. My name is Rich. Thank you so much for watching and I will catch you on the next video.