What are the modes? (Modal Harmony and YOU!)

2:22 What's good, everybody?Scoobert Doobert here.We are going to be talking about one of the most difficult,one of the most entilizing, one of the most importantmusical subjects on the face of this beautiful earth.It is the modes, M-O-D-E-A mode.They're scary because they have big names and big historyand they're very misunderstood.I'm gonna be talking about thesefrom a very pop music perspective.

2:54 So I'm talking like hip hop, funk, blues, pop, top 40,rock, like that lens.I'm not talking jazz, I'm not talking classical.There's a whole kind of different thing over therethat's very cool that I've studied.But the reason why I've studied is for the pop stuff,because I like pop better and I'm better at it, you know?So whatever.That's where I'm gonna be talking at you about that.

3:23 And I've got my guitar here because I like playing guitarand hopefully I don't noodle too much.I probably will a little bit.But the reason is because I need to illustratethese concepts to you because they're very esoteric.Be good.Because they're just weird and they've got big names.So the first one is the major scale.I've talked about this before.But first of all, what is a scale?A scale is a collection of notes.

3:50 What is a mode?A mode is deciding where you stop and startwithin those collection of notes.It's deciding what note is going to be your emphasis,the home base, your root.Which one is dominant?And in this case, it's that one.It's a G, it's my G.That note is normal.It's your default.It's the thing that we've come to expect as normal.It's not actually normal in terms of like the world,like outside of us.

4:40 It's normal in terms of cultural norms.That's the big normal.That's the major.Just like you have Ursa Major, the big dipper.You got Ursa Minor, the little dipper.Our minor scale.The crazy thing about that is that they're the same exact notes.Kind of cool, right?You can take literally the same notes and decide which oneis going to be the one that I'm going to hammer homeand I'm like, this guy.Listen to that guy.

5:23 And it changes the entire emotional responseof that same set of notes.That's a mode.Those are just the two most known major and minor.And if only they all had those simple of names, they do not.Guess what, major and minor, they only got their namesas major and minor because everyone was so sickof saying their real names, Ionian and Aeolian.Imagine calling that to somebody like, hey, throw downsome Aeolian.

5:55 Oh, yeah, the blues has got so much Aeolian, you know?Like, come on, it's a minor scale.But that's what we're stuck with.And why are we stuck with it?It comes from forever ago.It's old, that's why.Because of the church, that's where it all comes from.It's like Western music in the church.They had a system called the modes.And it determined where they stopped and startedtheir Gregorian chants.

6:28 So if you ever heard a bunch of monks,oh, you know, like doing that,they're all in unison together singing the same notein a big group, in a big church with a bunch of reverb.And they are deciding where they stop and end based on these modes.So they have the major scale,but then they can also just like do the major scale,but instead of going, ooh, it seemed better going down.

6:55 Ooh, I've got a little cold, so forgive me.My singing, ooh, it doesn't normally stop.I'm just kidding.It'd be funny if everybody got a coldand that's how they started to sing was like,weird Oval a monk.Anyway, I digress.But basically like that's the idea.You just take the same notes.You shift them over.You begin and end in different places.Boom, mode.They just got fancy names because it comes from the church.

7:25 It's old.Got Ionian, you got the Dorian, you got your Phrygian,you got your Lydian, you got your Mixolydian,gotta mix it up with the Mixolydian.Then you got your Aeolian, your Locrian,and then guess what?You're back to your Ionian.You'll take notes, just kidding.You don't have to know that stuff.If you're a musician, you probably should,but nobody's gonna call it out that way.

7:46 Really, what you want to like think about is like,well, how do they make you feel?How do you use that?How do you do anything with it?So let me give you a little exampleof using the same notes, but shifting up,just like I did for the crappy Gregorian chant.I'm gonna do like a little improvisation, you know?Little free music for you, up in Dorian, okay?This is like, this is, I'm gonna try and really lean

8:19 into like what Dorian sounds like, all of that.Okay, whatever, you know, it's not the coolest thingI've ever played, but I'm trying to give you examples, right?What I'm trying to do is show youthat this little smagic note, that one got nice spice to it.It's really good.It's really funky, too, if you were doing it's sick.It's cool, that little spice comes from my Gregorian chant.You know, like, that's cool, right?

9:37 Like, funk coming from Gregorian chant,like, what's cooler than that?That's bringing in a little the Dorian.So if you've studied architecture,you can look into the Doric columnsthat comes from the same base.So you have Ionian as in like Athens, Greek,and you have the Dorian as in the Doric peopleand I'm pretty sure that was like Sparta.Like, great, the first Sparta.These things come from ancient, from antiquity.

10:04 That's not necessarily to say that the modescome from antiquity, but the people back thenthought that antiquity was really cool, which I still do.But not everybody else.But they basically were just borrowing thatto make themselves feel fancy, too.You know, this is fancy built on fancy.It's not necessarily that they actually found itin the Doric area of Greece.It's like, no, like, they just thought that was cool.

10:28 Oh, it got a second scale degree.We're gonna call that Doric.But basically, what I'm trying to sayis that you can have the same set of notes.There it is again, and just move them aroundin the same way that we went minor.That reshuffling is a cool termthat if you know some Einstein, can be called relativity.You are shifting the listener's perspectivefrom one place to another without shifting any of the notes.

11:10 You're changing what is strong versus what is weak.You're inverting it.You're flipping that switch.But the beauty is is that the shapes remain.And it really opens up stuffif you were like an instrumentalist.So say you're working on your tar.You learn a shape.You learn a scale.And by learning one scale, you just learned seven scales.You just have to understand how to apply them.That's a beautiful thing.

11:39 That's relativity.That's relative major and minoror the relative modes or the modes.That's really what we're talking aboutis shifting the listener's perspective from saying,this G note is my home versus my E note is my homewith all of the same notes.If the G note is your home, it feels like major.If the E note is your home, it feels like minor.If the A note is your home, it feels like

12:03 the Dorian funky Dorian, that's cool.But it's all the same notes.That's a pretty cool thingthat I can manipulate the way that the same notes feelbased on what I'm emphasizing.And that's why I think that running scales is goodand kind of lame.Like it's good to know whatever, good, should do it.Especially if you wanna play speed metal or something.But in reality, most of what you're gonna be doing

12:34 is dancing between modes.Dancing between points of emphasis and reacting to chords.So if I'm playing this, I'm probably gonna be doingmy major stuff and then maybe I go up to this A minorand I can do more Dorian kind of stuff.Kind of cool, right?That's a little different than just going.That's me staying in G major the whole time.Or you know, basically like treating the chordsas you know, just kind of whatever.

13:24 I'm not really reacting to them.It's cool to do both.Don't give me wrong.I like both of those things.But it's kind of like a very different vibe if you go.Or like that or something, you know, like you're playingwith like a ooh, I get an opportunity to shift the focuseven just a little bit from this chord is hometo that chord is home.And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad,

13:54 but it's just a it's a tool in your toolkit.It's a bit of spice in your kit.It is a deepening of your bag.And from there, you can do the next cool thing,the real meat of all of this.Cause it's fine to be able to just like shift over.That's whatever, you know, it's fine.I got hung up there for a long time in like high school.I just do that kind of stuff over and over and again.And then I just didn't quite get it.

14:25 It's like why is there so much hype on modes?Like yeah, it's fun.If another chord comes up, I can dip into that modea little bit more hammer in those spicy tones.But I didn't quite get it until I discovered the parallel.So we're talking about relative in the next segmentafter this little commercial break.We'll talk about the parallel, the good stuff.See you on the other side.

16:23 Welcome back, everybody.Let's talk about parallel.This is where it really comes inand it's actually has been hard.This is part of the reason why I've done this podcastfive times in a row and deleted the first fiveis that I have a really hard time sticking in one boxbecause that's not what music is.And a lot of time that's how music is taught is a boxlike, oh, think about it in this modeor think about it in that mode

16:48 or move over here and think about it in this mode.Really what you should be doingis taking every tool that you haveand overlaying them.The light bulb really clicked.This took me way too longbut when I got into music schooland I started talking about swing.Again, I'm a pop musician.I did swing but it like didn't really get it.Didn't really understand the theoretical concept of it.But really where it all came,

17:17 where it all started to clickis that you can have tripletsand non-triplets over each other at the same time.There's a concept called four over threeor three over four,where you can superimpose rhythms on top of each otherand you can think of them bothand dip in between the two.It's really cool.That's not what this bag is it's about.But the concept really is saying,don't think about it like,

17:42 oh, I'm gonna play over here in one, two, three,one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three,and over here in one, two, three, and a three,and a four, you can do both at the same time.One, two, three, and a one, two, three,one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, three,and a one, two, three, one, two, one, two, you know,like whatever, like that kind of thing.But even more nuance,

17:59 where you can, I could play on guitar,but you'd, I don't know, without the drums,I don't know if you'd like hear it super well.But basically the idea of dipping in betweenwhat is called duple and triple,the twos and the threes,you can go between the two fluidly.You don't have to put on one hat, take it off,put on the next.That's when the modes started to click for me.You don't have to take off one modal hat

18:22 and put on the next modal hat.And if you want to listen to my podcaston my favorite scale, the octatonic.I highly recommend checking that out after this episodebecause that is the scale that ties all of this togetherin a way that I think is the most digestibleand the easiest way to deepen your bag,to grab all of these flavor notes.But let's talk about relative and to do that,I'm going to jam a little bit.

18:51 But let me, before I do actually,let me break down what I'm actually going to go forand I'm going to be trying to do.You're going to try to illustrate the waysto take these flavor notes and combine them.So you're not, instead, taking the same set of notesand moving the beginning and the ending,you're, instead, keeping the same beginningand the ending and adding the flavor notes to them.

19:13 So the easiest one to explain is the differencebetween major and minor using G as your starting point.You can be any note, but I just like the G scale,whatever, assume me.Here's the G scale.Yeah, again, that thing you can make it minor now.It's like, oh, very different vibe.Here's the difference between, and yeah,you can do that for all the scales.You can instead root everything on Gand start shifting notes as in,

20:03 you can also do like, going from major to Mixolydian.So I'm going to start just jamming on some stuffand I'm going to show you how I do thatand how I think of it while I'm improvising a little bit.I'll have the mic live.I'm just count, call out like, ooh, that was this,this was that.And I'll try and lean into it a little bit morethan I normally would.I'm not going to be focusing on making an amazingimprovisation.

20:31 I'm going to instead like be trying to show youthese flavor notes in action so you can understandthe value of practicing these scales,but then also the utility of actually deploying themand looking at them for what they are.Because fundamentally, these scalesare slight modifications to the major scale.So to turn a major scale into a minor scale,you go take that note and make a little lowerinstead of that is the key.

21:09 That makes things minor.You take the major 30, turn it into a minor third.But I don't need to get into that.But if you're going to practice this on your own,what I would really click is when I was talking aboutthe triplet stuff, that made me instead chart outall of the modes and analyze them based on scalesthat I already knew, the major in the minor scaleand what were the augmentations or diminutions?Diminutions?

21:33 What were the pluses or minuses on each note?Do you go from major scale and bring it down a half stepor do you go up a half step, for example, in a Lydian?Probably heard that a lot of movie scores,kind of nonsense music, but the sense is thateach of these things have a little flavor, Lydian,feels a little brighter, a little more green.Anyway, I'm gonna throw some stuff out.

22:16 You can hear it, see how you feel, that's what matters.None of these names matter.None of what they do theoretically really matters.All the matters is giving a bagso that you can draw from different emotions,different vibes, and add flavor and variety to your playingand access the things that you want to accessas you're playing, rather than followingthe set of prescriptions.

22:41 Instead, you are freed from the major scaleby using the major scale.Do you get that?Okay, before I get in, I got a hammer home that point.Modes are just different combinations of the major scale.Right, you got the major scale, you move around.You can layer those things on top of the major scale.So you have G, major, you have G minor.Now you have two different versions of G, major and minor.

23:09 You can do that for all of the seven scale degrees.You have G Dorian, you have G Mixolydian, like cool.You've got all these different spices,all these different options,and you're not going that far from home.That's where the magic is.There are very exotic scales,and they're not to throw shade on them.That's so cool.But we're talking pop music.People want two things with pop music.They want what they expect,

23:39 and they want to be surprised.You have to do both.That's why pop music is hard.You cannot only surprise, then it's not pop.You cannot only deliver what is expected,because then it's crap.If you can do both, then you are doing something.You're making good pop.That's a thing.That's what the Beatles did.That is what we are all chasing.Is doing something that is rooted,that is grounded, that is expected,

24:12 but also surprising to the right degree.Take me on a journey, but don't scare me.That's where the mode, that's what the modes can do.That's the magic of all this stuff.It's like, hey, you're used to a major scale, right?Everybody's used to a major scale.What if I shuffle it up a little bit?Ooh, that's a little spicy.What if I shuffle it up,and then I use a different relative thing?Oh, that's pretty cool.

24:37 What if I do a different parallel thing?So instead of a G major and then an E minor,I do a G major and a G minor.Ooh, now we're talking that is now two steps awayfrom what I expect, using all of the tools that I expect.That's magic.That's beautiful.Let's see if my improvisation is.Let's go.All right, let's start with a little drum beat.And then I'm gonna add in a drone.One of the things I like about drones,

25:03 just a static note,is that it gives me something to jump off of.It's a foundation.This is, you know, Indian music thing that's like,hey, now you've got a lot of flexibility,but I know where home base is.And it's G.Because we're doing a lot of stuff with parallels,I'm not actually changing the perspective.It's always G.G is always the root note.We'll start with major.G, let's go minor.

25:58 But that actually, that's borrowing from the major scale.You feel that on accident?I'm doing a little modal borrowing.So instead of just being stuck in G minor,you hear the major?Major?Minor?So let's try it again.Here it's kind of cool, right?Oh, they've got a little spice now.It's going in between the major and the minor,the Ionian and the Aeolian.Let's add in one more spice.I'm gonna go a little Dorian, right?

27:09 Because that was what we were doing before.Dorian's really cool,because I got a little of this.That everything else is minor, right?Normal.Little, not normal.All right, this is the first thing that I actually learnedwhen I was doing this for the first time, right?I figured out a little riff.I was so proud of doing a modal exchange,modal interchange, a borrowing thingof going from minor.To Dorian.

28:08 To minor again, you know, basically everything.This isn't a lot of songs though.Helter Skelter, right?That's what that is.Minor, Dorian, minor again.I'm not saying the Paul McCartney said that.You don't have to know the names of these things,but he used it, doesn't hurt to know it.All right, let's do some more.Let's add in Phrygian.Phrygian is a really cool one because you get this.Ooh, brutal.

29:07 Just New Orleans, but like, you know what I mean?That's a cool one, right?Weird.You might have heard that kind of stuff before,like, I don't know.Whatever.That's a little bit of the Phrygian side.We got Dorian, we got Phrygian.Let's do Lydian.Lydian's got that cool sharp four,like I was talking about, like, movie scores.Do you see how, like,if you were just writing a guitar riff,

29:51 you can now be simple, like, I'm playing four notes,but adding this one.Ooh, that's like, wow.All right, that's, that's aggressively spicy,because it's a, it's a tritone.Let's do Mixolydian.Mixolydian's cool because it's gotjust a little hint of minor.This is a cool one because it feels like the blues.It's there.It's got the major third,but also a flat seven.Here we go.I don't know, I love that one.

31:47 All right, if you guys are cool with bearingwith a few more of this G-drone, I'ma keep going.Because really what I want to dois I want to show you all these modes.I think I've hit major, I've hit minor,I've hit Dorian, I've hit Phrygian, I've hit Mixolydian,I've hit Lydian, there's only one left.And it's the one I'm worst at, yo.This is Locrian.Locrian doesn't get used super often,

32:10 but it's using a lot of metal musicbecause it's very sad.It's very diminished.And really what that is is you are on the last scale degree.So basically what I'm going to be playingis a major scale, a half step up from here.Rootle, it's going to be gnarly.Like here, I'll just play the major scale gnarly, right?It's very dissonant.Here we go.Oh, that was wrong.Sorry you got it.It's kind of lame.

32:59 I guess I feel so in a box, right?I wasn't not very good at this one.You're going to turn it off if I keep doing that.But the cool thing with a Locrian isthere's a bunch of stuff to borrow from.So let's combine them all.I'm going to do my own thing,and this is how I usually do my own thing.And this is how I usually do my own thing.And this is how I usually do my own thing.

33:34 And this is how I usually do my own thing.I usually solo is I'm going to be,I'll try and call out the stuff as I'm doing.I've never done this before.I'm going to try and call out the stuff as I'm doing itso you can hear, like, oh, I'm borrowing from this.I'm borrowing from that.Here we go.I'm going to start by doing somewherebetween major and minor.A little bit of that Mixolydian.

33:56 And I'm going to go hammer into that Dorian thing.And then the borrow a little bit of that Lydian.All right, anyway.A little Mixolydian.A little Dorian.Let's work it down like a Helter Skelter.All right, let's mix it all up.This is the last bit.I'm just going to combine it all.I'm going to try and do it in a musical wayover this stupid little mrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.I've got, come on, for the last like 15 minutes!

34:48 And what will close it down on that.So here is just a mix of Gs, all my Gs, too much, haha, I did.

36:33 Hopefully, I mean, you know, like you can only do so much soloing in a non-musical situation,really?Like, yes, there was music going on, but a drum loop plus a drone is probably one of the most brutal thingsto solo too, and very good practice.It's very hard to sound good with that.I hope that you thought it sounded okay.

36:58 But listen, to my music, if you want to hear it in context with like, you know, more thought,that was just an improvisation, you know, just going through.But I hope that you get the picture of, I was trying really hard in the solo,which is very difficult to be thinking of musicals concept to solo too.Whew, that's hard.So give me some grace.

37:24 But basically what I was trying to do in the solo was to try to show you, like, here's a little major,here's a little minor, here's a little in-between, here's a little like moving all aroundand dancing in between these weird notes and these normal notes and these weird notes again.You know, that was my intent, and that was what I was trying to like shoot for as I was playing all those notes

37:42 was trying to create some little mini musical phrases within the context of the modes.Hopefully, at the end of this, you, you know, feel a little bit more confident with what they even are,and like, they're a little less scary.They're basically just taking the major scale and modifying them a little bit within the context of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar.

38:04 You're taking familiar things, you're wrapping them in unfamiliar ways to create this aesthetic aha,this moment of delightful surprise that isn't scary.And hopefully, I did that a little bit in that solo.It'd be a lot more fun if I had musicians playing with me instead of little robots, but such is life.I hope that you took something from this.

38:27 If you enjoyed this podcast, I invite you to please subscribe to it on Spotify and the other podcast apps.And also check out my website at www.scoobertdoobert.pizza.If you want to hear my real music and some of my real guitar solos,someday I want to do like an instrumental album, but that's for a later date.I got to work on my modal chops first.I got to be some more practice.

38:54 Hope you guys enjoyed it, and I'll see you next week.