#musical modes

[jego-da-drago]

why is Dorian a common oc name :/

at least choose a better mode like Phrygian

[anonymousdandelion]

I haven't seen enough polls for music theory nerds, so... choose a musical mode/scale

Ionian

Dorian

Phrygian

Lydian

Mixolydian

Aeolian

Locrian

Chromatic

Whole tone

You left my favorite off the list 😢 (tell us in the notes — no pun intended!)

Voting ended onFeb 27, 2023

[13thpythagoras]

musical modes explained

Why do some songs have a different mood than others? i.e. why does old school blues sound different than NSync? It’s because they change modes. Modes are musical moods, essentially. 

The scale is basically your house’s location in the neighborhood; the mode is where you put the front door on your house. i.e. if you put the access door in the usual, sensible place, the music sounds like like normal happy stuff, rated G- safe for babies and grandma, and watch out to see if Disney-Pixar already used that lick in Toy Story 9 because they probably did. 

If you put the doors in a less-expected place, like around the hedges and behind the beehive, down the steps and around the corner, it will sound sad, bluesy, rockish, or like anything else in the melodic universe. Aeolian - the perfect minor aka the “blues scale.” 

The pentatonic scale is “human music” found in folk music all over the world. It confirms our 5-finger bias. There is only the pentatonic scale, and can be slid up or down the instrument (which would change where the house is on the block). 

Each mode has its own tonic note or “home note.” Musical phrases start and end with this (or not) to give us a frame of reference (or not).

In other words, the tonic note note is the root of the scale. If I’m in E major, (aka E-major “ionian”) then E is my major tonic note. When you hit your chosen tonic note, the ear perceives it as “home base” but also the ear can be tricked and this post is about how.

Where in the scale the song starts and ends creates a context for the melodic story, or mode. You don’t have to start the song on the scale’s actual ionian tonic note. When the scale is held constant, yet the music begins and ends on something other than the ionian tonic note, you hear different modes / moods. 

There’s a lot of confusing content for this topic online, and this post is my attempt to put an emotional understanding into it. 

Now for examples of how it sounds and which Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction still best-captures the mood: 

ionian: happy and plucky like a mother’s love (guitar cheat-code for this mode: find your tonic note on the lowest string and make the “E-major” shape)

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Dorian- Jazzy, reflective, nostalgic like an empty nester mother who just hung up a group call with her kids who live out of state (make the “D” shape two frets up from your previous E shape):

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Phrygian: haunting but hopeful i.e. spanish guitar / malagueña; a mother planning when she wants to surprise her kids with a visit (D/C-shape hybrid 2 frets up from Dorian)

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Lydian- doing the good work, 2nd-to-most upbeat mode, dancing, and trying not to fall in love; Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams is a classic in Lydian, it’s like toned-down rock and roll, landslide by Fleetwood mac is also Lydian (guitar-cheat-code; find your tonic on the low string and make the C-shape):

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Mixolydian: Rock n Roll basically, max-upbeat. Most Beatles / Grateful Dead / pop-rock party music (A-major-shape on guitar): 

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Aeolian-- pain, but celebration anyway, blues / BB King, Jimi Hendrix i.e. his cover of “All Along the Watchtower” originally written by Bob Dylan (G-shape on 8th fret for “C minor” on guitar in that song; E-flat minor mixolydian for songs like “Voodoo Chile” by Hendrix as well as “Cómo me quieres” by Khruangbin; this is probably the most popular mode that is used and my main comfort zone on guitar; this is the “pure minor scale” which is a term you can look up): 

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Locrian--  all pain, just death and confusion, it’s like a “loc” who is crying; a lost, confused, haunting sound of hopelessness, Bjork’s Army of Me is a great example (called the diminished chord, it sounds like death; on guitar it’s rooted two frets up from aeolian (a mix of the “G shape” of your hand and only halfway up into the E-shape above it on guitar) so hits enough of the major notes to be in the uncanny valley of not hitting them all in the root, it’s like going to an amusement park as a family but once you get there you all have jobs to do and are working it getting trained etc. no fun but some work tho):

[aromanticduck]

Guess who started learning about modes and decided to make a meme.

[iammycharacter]

Sometimes looking into the origins of things is cool and in researching musical modes you discover that the Aeolian dialect of the Greeks is also called the Lesbian Dialect. This is the dialect Sappho spoke in. 

[basslinesandbanter]

Thanks, Sir. 

Source

[pianononsense]

[azureviolins]

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