Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Stewart
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 03:41 PM

Here's my $0.02 worth.

For what it's worth.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Crowhugger
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 04:04 PM

Whew, that's a painful one Jack. I had to turn it off after not long at all, but then I had to listen again to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. That's quite the musical tension! Still shuddering...

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 07:20 PM

Stewart, there's a lot wrong with the history on your page. That seven-mode system mode postdates Gregory by about a thousand years (and longer for the Locrian mode, which was a 19th century invention). I don't know where you got that account of Arabic modes but it's way off beam.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard from Liverpool
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 07:32 PM

I know that it's usually stated that "aeolian is the same as our minor scale", but I think this can lead to misunderstanding. Yes, a 'natural' minor scale would start on the tonic and then rise tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone tone. However, when people play minor scales, they often play them as 'harmonic minor' scales, sharpening the seventh degree, or as 'melodic minor' scales, sharpening both the sixth and the seventh degree on the way up, then playing as you would in the aeolian mode on the way down. As a consequence, a lot of music written in a 'minor' key is not aeolian at all, but includes sharpened notes, particularly on the leading note (seventh degree).

My main point is simply that although the aeolian mode is the same as natural minor, what people imagine as minor, and what people have written in minor, is quite often not aeolian. So "aeolian = minor" is generally misleading.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 04:31 AM

I'm not getting your point, Dick, about the D major rather than the D minor - if by D mixolydian you mean the mixolydian that uses the notes that are two semitones above the mixolydian that uses all the white notes on the piano, then the key is D major (or its relative minor, B minor) neither of which has a D minor chord in it. It's nothing to do with modes, just the key.

If you mean however the mixolydian that runs from D to D then it's not in that key at all but in G major (or E minor) - neither of which (again) has a D minor chord.

Or am I missing something?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 05:22 AM

Richard, you have got ypurself into a terminological snarlup.

Dick's point makes perfect sense to me. Tune is in Dmix (one sharp). Guitarist hears the tonal centre as being D, hears a C natural, thinks that means D minor and wellies into a Dmin chord. Wonders why the singer or fiddler looks pissed off.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 05:34 AM

Yes, I know of the difference between those two mixolydians. One is in D, one is in G.

One sharp: G major or E minor. No C natural in the D minor chord, it's A, D, F.

I still don't see what that has to do with modes.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 07:26 PM

Richard, sorry, but with that level of understanding you are a liability as an accompanist.

D mixolydian is not G major. It does not centre on G and when accompanying a Dmix tune you will never resolve to a G chord at the finish.

Please go away and read something. This is absolutely basic stuff that you aren't getting.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 07:39 PM

Actually, he's right. It is a G major scale, just starting on D. If that's how he works it out then that's fine for him.

Also, guitarists in sessions who don't use their ears are not helpful. The only excuse allowed for wrong key playing is mishearing the shout. The solution is either to use Alpha, Delta etc, or a little box where you press a pedal and it pops up the key.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Tootler
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 07:06 PM

I agree with Jack. Dick makes perfect sense.

Richard, you seem to be mixing up discussion about a scale with discussion about a chord.

The point Dick is making is that the accompanist hears a tune centred on D with a major key feel so is expecting D major with a C# leading note.

However, he notices that all the C's are actually C natural so makes the false assumption the tune is actually D minor so starts playing Dmin chords rather than Dmaj. The result is discord as he will be playing Fnat on his guitar against F# in the tune and fiddles, flutes etc. will go bonkers and quite likely tell him where to get off if he doesn't desist.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 06:23 AM

over the last two evenings,I have played at 2 sessions, the thursday night session was a delight not one accompanist other than a very good bodhran player, there was no speeding up during tunes, all the playing   was steady the standard was very high.
last night by contrast I along with 2 other competent fiddlers was trying to have to hold the session together not only against guitarists who were occasionally clueless, but also speeders up, I consider myself no more than a competent / good player , but it was hard work with people [a few of whom] were not listening carefully to rhythm and melody.
mixolydian tunes should be accompanied by major chords or power dyads , dorian tunes minor chords or power dyads, sometimes of course tunes change from one mode to another during the tune the best thing is not to join in unless you know the tune or have heard the tune or if you do join in,do it very quietly.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:25 AM

an example of a mixolydian tune is banish misfortune,it uses mainly d major and cmajor chords and has f #in it.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 05:37 PM

If the guitarist listed the sharps he'd know what key he was in. One sharp - G major (or E minor, listen for the difference) but not starting of finishing on a G major chord. Given that - and if I'd done that I'd have been on the correct chord - it does make me wonder whether insistence on describing some subsets of notes in a particular key as "modal" is deliberate or learned obscurantism.

As for "the shout" what happened to the old fashioned hand signals: one finger up, one sharp. One finger down, one flat. Two fingers up, two sharps. Two fingers down, two flats, and do on?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 06:34 PM

Okay, this is Banish Misfortune as I know it (and it seems an exact match for Dick's description):

X:1
T:Banish Misfortune
M:6/8
L:1/8
Q:3/8=110
K:DMix
e|fed cAG|A2d cAG|F2F DED|F2F GFG|
  A3  cAG|AGA cde|fed cAG|Adc d2:|
e|f2d dcd|f2g agf|e2c cBc|e2f gfe|
  f2g agf|e2f gfe|fed cAG|Adc d2:|
e|f2g e2f|d2e c2d|ABA GAG|FGE FED|
  c3  cAG|AGA cde|fed cAG|Adc d2:|

Each part begins and ends in D. As I read it, the only other chords you really need are C major and A minor. (Dick would like power chords in a few places - I'll leave him to say where he'd put them).

What does your description of it as being either in G major or E minor tell you to do?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 09:15 PM

It tells me that D and C and A minor are available chords - but that D minor is not.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 09:37 PM

Historically, modes were used primarily as polyphonic forms and were essentially pre-harmonic. Sure, you could take a vertical slice out of the notes a chapel full of monks were chanting and put a chord name to it, but actual, harmonic frameworks as such didn't come into music in a really important way until a couple of centuries later.

If you abandon the whole idea of modes, you lose a lot of tradition, which seems a bit odd for someone who is interested traditional music.

Putting guitar chords to modal songs is a modern addition, and although it can work very nicely IF tastefully done, I think it needs to be done with a very light hand.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 06:50 PM

Historically, the first use of modes we know about WAS harmonic, in the harp music of ancient Sumeria.

Modal systems have been used to describe a lot of different kinds of music. They aren't limited to doing simple classifications in the monophonic diatonic idiom of mediaeval chant - the theory was more complex before that and has been expanded enormously since.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 04:29 AM

Listening - briefly - to that Comhaltas clip reminded me of something Paul Jennings wrote once about being at a party where someone decides to play a few tunes on the piano. The melody is fine, but unfortunately the pianist only knows one chord, which he plays repeatedly throughout, "giving every tune a mournful Hebridean feel".

The first time I read that I laughed so much I had to put the book down - you can just hear it. (And I think I've just heard it again.)

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 04:30 PM

The harp music of ancient Sumeria.

Jack, I'm sorry, but unless you have some connection with the occult, we have no way of knowing that. You're talking 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. The musical instruments that have survived from that era consist mostly of lyres, very primitive harps, and various kinds of pipes and flutes. Since no method of notation has survived, any theories about the kind of music they played and what its harmonic structure was (if any) is pure speculation, based on listening to the music of peoples we assume to be their modern descendants and then extrapolating from there. We don't KNOW the structures of the scales (modes) the ancient Sumerians used, nor do we know whether or not their melodies were harmonized—and if so, in what manner.

Jack, I don't know what you musical training and background is, but mine comes from three years at the University of Washington School of music and another two years at the Cornish School of the Arts, a music conservatory. Early music (including speculations on how music itself got started in the first place), including modes, was covered quite thoroughly. And since I'm acquainted with such things as the experiments of Pythagoras with the monochord on up to early European music (among other things, having spent some time singing with a medieval men's group where we were very precise about the autenticity of what we were doing), I am thoroughly acquainted with such things as modes and gapped scales.

And what rings in my mind now is the admonition from more than one music professor:   "Don't try to make it more complicated than it already is!"

I think the folks on this thread are primarily interested in knowing what's going on when they encounter modal and gapped scales in folk music and ballads, what to do with them, and, if so moved, how to accompany them on the guitar or other modern harmonic instruments.

Let's not make it overly-complex.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 05:05 PM

We have quite a few texts on tuning the harp from Sumeria. The notation doesn't transcribe any full compositions, but it clearly describes a heptatonic system of modes with dyadic harmonies.

Try the New Grove for a few pointers. This has been decoded in the decades since you were in college and won't even be hinted at in texts you read back then.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 05:37 PM

Reasonable set of references here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Mesopotamia

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 11:33 AM

More detail about the Mesopotamian mode system here:

Ancient Near Eastern Music Archaeology (pdf)

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 12:22 PM

A real easy thing to keep in mind is that Ionian mode is the major scale and the Aeolian mode is the minor. So the minor scale is the 6th degree of its corresponding major. Both scales will use the exact same notes. For example, if one mode has a B-flat, the other also uses the B-flat. In fact, all the modes of a single scale use the identical notes. There's ways to use them to get jazzy or bluesy effects and so on. I'm not much of an expert on that. But a good music teacher going one-on-one with you would be a big help.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:14 PM

Don't try to make it more complicated than it already is!

There's an opposite risk, which I think you're falling into.

Describing a piece as "modal" doesn't mean it's in an idiom from the Middle Ages, and it doesn't mean your arrangement of it has to be pseudo-mediaeval. That way lies Walkaboutsverse-think.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 02:40 PM

Thanks for the references, Jack. The second one looks like it will be pretty interesting to go through.

But on these threads, I think "Don't try to make it more complicated than it already is!" is a good principle to stick to.

Modes are alternative arrangements of steps and half-steps within scales. It's not a case of "were," it's a matter of "are." Many modern composers are making use of modes, and they're not necessarily trying to sound medieval. Far from it. Nor am I advocating trying to make, say, guitar accompaniments for a folk song or ballad that's in one of the modes sound "medieval," although if one knows what one is doing, this can often be done with good effect.

But the question was, "Musical Modes … Anyone Understand?" The answer is "Yes." And they're not that difficult to understand if you look at them as simply alternative arrangements of steps and half-steps in the scale. And if you want to accompany a song that happens to be in a particular mode, without "clanking," you need to adjust your chords to include only notes contained in the scale.

This is not as difficult as it may sound. Case in point:   in Joan Baez's recording of "John Riley," the melody is Dorian mode. This is the same as the natural minor (A B C D E F G A) with the exception that instead of a half-step between E and F, it is a whole step (E to F#). The primary chords one would use to accompany a song in natural minor a Am, Dm, and Em. The Dm chord contains D, F natural, and A. But the Dorian mode does not contain an F natural, it contains an F# instead. So—instead of a Dm, you play a D major, which is made up of D, F#, and A.

Simple as that!

This does not mean that your guitar accompaniment is going to sound like you're playing it on a medieval citole.   If you want it to, you're going to have to work a little harder than merely selecting chords to fit the mode.

Don Firth