: Sometimes I read here that such-and-such a tune is modal, but I've
: never seen a tune remain in a mode for more than a few measures.

Look at my examples then. The longest is about 100 bars, I think -
I made a specific point of choosing long tunes to anticipate exactly
your misconception. I could easily have chosen much longer ones,
like pibrochs that last nearly half an hour. (Or Indian ragas, which
can go an hour and half without a modulation).

Okay, if what you're interested in is the Beatles then you'd be right.
What sort of tunes *do* you have in mind? Name a few?

The present-day mode system was designed to fit folk music, not the
old church chants. It's been developed for practical purposes, not to
shoehorn traditional music into some ancient classification for the
hell of it.

Just saying a tune is "modal" is meaningless, you need to say *which*
mode it's in.