Olly wrote:Does anyone use the modes for their compositions?
I understand the principle of modes, I can understand the different sound you get from each mode but I struggle to understand how I can effectively use them myself in my own playing.
What do you understand about modes and how do they work for you?
There are so many ways of seeing modes, and most people have it wrong.
First of all, in one form, the less diatonic a song progression is, the more modal it is. The more diatonic a song is, the less modal.
Then there is the idea of making chords modal, which comes from an understanding of that chord/scale relationship and what makes them different. However most people do not have understanding of this past the triad level. So you have Lydian being C and D or the IV and V in G. But even then, you'll notice that modal music does not retain a sense of "stability" The moment you play a D, which is the V of G, you've written a progression that want's to "pull" to G, and if you play a G as part of the melody...bam, you just got hijacked into G major.
So, a fundamental way to change that is to understand chords past the triad level, thus instead of C, a Cmaj7#11 (Since I understand chords past the triad level) is a more suitable and definitive example of a Lydian chord, and it cannot be anything BUT Lydian. The means to acquire this knowledge is, beyond the scope of this post, and takes several levels of fundamental foundation development.
There are other ways as well, such as treat each chord change as a Mode unto itself, so for example, you could have a C Dm G Em, and over each chord change, create a modal sound that changes pitch collections promptly at every chord change.
There are also Pitch Axis approaches, as well as using modal interchanges. There's no one way that modes can be used, however the theoretical basis of these approaches can be quite deep.
In our online guitar school, they are among the last things that we teach, primarily because of the foundation needed to understand.
Thus if I were to explain that the #11 is non-diatonc, but in essence preventing a min 2 dissonance and in fact is the same as the raised 4th, most would know what I am talking about, if they have a solid foundation in theory. However, those who don't have this, would also not be able to explain what chord this series of notes created:
F Ab C Eb G#
And the understanding of chords and scales at the very least on the triad level, are very important, when it comes to using modes. Most people who claim to understand and "know" modes, do not.
As for examples of different ways of modal playing and application, So What by Miles Davis is in Dorian, Flying in A blue Dream is Lydian, etc. There are a few examples of modal playing. Most guitarists see modes as scales, because thats something thats shown in magazine after magazine, and it's simply not true. The solo for example, may be Dorian over one chord, but when that chord changes, its back to major or minor.
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