The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #112616   Message #2384921
Posted By: Jack Campin
09-Jul-08 - 02:21 PM
Thread Name: The Naming of Modes
Subject: RE: The Naming of Modes
Look at the modes tutorial on my site (book-length, uses ABC):

http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Modes.abc

I didn't try to go for a comprehensive list; it isn't as useful for Western European folk musicians as getting a good handle on the 30-odd distinct modes I describe there, and I wanted to have multiple musical examples for everything I included. A systematic trawl through the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music would give you thousands, most of which would be useless without months of training in the tradition they came from.

The Greek names got their meanings completely scrambled in the early Middle Ages, with some additional scrambling in the Renaissance, the nonsensical "Locrian" mode added even later by obsessional systematists, and the whole system rather weirdly reinterpreted in the 19th century by the folklorists. My tutorial lists all these successive versions (though I stop short of including the way they function in jazz terminology, which is different again).

These Greek originals were only a small subset of the variety of modes used in Greek music; they were the "diatonic" modes, there were also "chromatic", "enharmonic" and "intense chromatic" ones.

If there's a mode or angle on modes I've left out there that you have a genuine use for, let me know and I'll put it in.