Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Artful Codger
Date: 21 Jul 11 - 11:01 PM

Aren't Lochrian tunes Scottish? Or did you mean Locrian? ;-}

And once again, the silly "white key" explanation--that really explains nothing about the character of modes--rears its ugly head. If that's the best you can offer to "clarify" modes, please say nothing and instead let people read the more intelligent, complete explanations that have already been posted here--and at Jack's site.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: English Jon
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 06:28 PM

So....anyone who can prove that a Lochrian melody isn't just a Mixolydian tune centred around the 3rd wins this years prize for something or other.

(/ducks)

Cheers,
J

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 06:13 PM

I didn't realize it had a known composer. So, I looked at Work's other two best known songs, "Marching through Georgia" and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp".

The verse part of MtG is straightforwardly tonal (moving briefly to the dominant). The chorus (much more memorable) is hexatonic, but a different kind of hexatonic - the seventh is missing, so it's major/mixolydian.

TTT is hexatonic again, lydian/major, all the way through. The fourth only occurs as a dispensable passing note.

Work wrote tunes that caught on. He was instinctively using the techniques of traditional music to do it.

("Grandfather's Clock" is heptatonic, but like the other three it's in a plagal mode - Work seems to have had a thing about that).

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Little Robyn
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 05:21 PM

Actually, if you do a little research on the cat. there is an earlier entry from Bob Bolton - dated: 11 Aug 04.

"It's wryly amusing to read what was said in some of the old notes! I especially like:

"... CLICK GO THE SHEARS ... Perhaps the most famous of the Australian bush songs, the tune is derived from an old English song, "Ring the Bell, Watchman". "

I wonder how some of the orignal cast members would have reacted to knowing that Click Go The Shears was a direct parody of an American song - Ring the Bell, Watchman ... written by Henry Clay Work to celebrate the ending of the American Civil War!"

As far as we can figure, it's a simple major tune, normally played with basic 3-4 chords, regardless of where it finishes.
He also wrote My Grandfather's clock, Marching through Georgia, Father dear Father come home with me now, and lots of other lesser known songs including the melody for Charlie and the MTA or The ship that never returned.
They all seem to be in good old major keys (and it proves you can write melancholy songs in a major key).

Robyn

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 04:23 AM

Okay, here's what I was driving at with "Click Go the Shears".

It's in the lydian/major hexatonic mode (the fourth only occurs as an inessential passing note, if you sing it at all). There are a LOT of tunes in that mode in folk song from the British Isles. But there's more to it than that. Most of the notes in the scale only occur on falling phrases; this is common in Indian ragas (like Desh) but not so common in songs from Western Europe. The scale used for rising phrases is very minimal indeed. Basically the tune progresses by quick scrambles upwards and then a slower fall through narrower intervals over quite a wide range. This melodic shape is found all over the world, but it's more typical of technologically primitive societies like aboriginal Australia. The tune is also rather unusual in resolving to a tonal centre near the top of its range instead of an octave lower as you might expect.

I've only heard it in NZ - I'll take your word for it that the song is Australian, but the tune is presumably English.

Musically useful modal systems take account of gaps, scale asymmetries and melodic shape.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 04:01 AM

I'm not sure "don't want to understand the music they're playing" automatically means "not very good guitarists".

Bobert - I'll have to give EBEBBE a try. One of my favourites is DADDAD (the "g" string tuned way down to D, in unison with the regular "D" string"). Gives a nice haunting sound with a slide. Similarly I really like triple C on the banjo (gCGCC). I'm in a similar position to you regarding theoretical knowledge but both tunings can give an eerie mountain sound.

Cheers,

Pete.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Little Robyn
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 03:30 AM

The "Click go the shears" that I know is Australian and is in a straight major key!!!!
Robyn

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: John P
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 10:58 PM

A slight amplification of Little Robyn's list:

C to c = Ionian
from G to g = Mixolydian
from D to d = Dorian
from A to a = Aolian

Ionian is your everyday major scale.
Aeolian is minor.
Mixolydian is "Old Joe Clark" and "She Moved Through the Fair".
Dorian is "Scarborough Fair" and "What Do We Do With a Drunken Sailor?".

Obviously, no one needs to know the name of the mode or how it is constructed in order to play music, either by ear or by reading. Where some practical knowledge of modes becomes useful is if you're finding the guitar chords for a song, coming up with a harmony, doing any kind of arranging.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:34 PM

The people who most often say "that's modal" are not-very-good guitarists who don't want to make the effort to understand the music they're playing, so they just label it as something exotic.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:32 PM

Well, I know nuthin' about theory but I play a couple of what I call "modals"... What happens in them is you get a an eerie mountain music sound out of 'um...

Double dropped D with both E strings dropped to Ds is cool...

Here's one of my own EBEBBE (starting from the high E to the fat E)... If you tune to this tuning you'll leave yer geetar in it for a month...

B~

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:12 PM

there's another kind. I call it the professorial modal.

Say I've found an unusual and creative piece of early music which uses a strange new set of notes. I exclaim, "Isn't this cool? So creative, not bound by the rules yet!"

There has to be someone in the room who's taken too many music courses. This person lowers the eyelids, looks down the nose, and says in a dismissive voice, "It's modal."

They're usually wrong, but they're good at breaking the mood.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 06:36 PM

If you make it "much easier" like that, you have a bunch of labels which may be easy to apply but which tell you nothing.

Hint: look at "Click Go the Shears", which is about as familiar a Kiwi folksong as you'll get. It isn't in any of the modes you listed. (Someone trained in Indian classical music would immediately figure out what's going on there). Give it the right modal description, and it starts to look pretty puzzling, since other tunes like it are very remote in space or time - where did THAT came from?

A good theory doesn't just categorize things, it creates mysteries.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 06:25 PM

Got it in one, Little Robyn.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Little Robyn
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 06:06 PM

Basic modes for folkies is much easier than that. The ones you need most are -
on the white notes of a piano, from C to c = Ionian
from G to g = Mixolydian
from D to d = Dorian
from A to a = Aolian
Most British/American/Aussie/Kiwi 'folk songs' use those ones, except for areas where there is an Asian or European influence.
The first 2 are most common for songs but if you're playing at a diddly session you'll probably need the other two as well.
Robyn

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 04:53 PM

I was going to get into gapped scales next, Jack, but I'm working under time constraints at the moment. I was shooting for a fairly easy starting point.

Much more to be written, of course, but their still not as complicated and confusing as people generally try to make them

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 04:17 PM

Sharp got the idea of using that mode system from Lucy Broadwood.

The idea of describing folk music that way dates back to Glareanus, 400 years earlier. He thought it didn't fit very well. He was right.

You can't make sense of any European folk idiom without taking account of gapped scales. They've been part of modal theory in Indian music for a few centuries, and Bartok was using them to describe the music he was collecting at the same time as Sharp. They give you much more useful information.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Newport Boy
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 04:02 PM

Just in case any newcomers think Jack is just blowing his own trumpet, can I endorse what he says. I've read his document twice, and I'm working slowly through it a third time and still finding new insights.

And I thought I knew about modes before I started! Thanks, Jack.

Phil

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 03:24 PM

It gets interesting when you take one of the seven "white-note" scales and play that same order of steps and half-steps, starting on another note.

For example, G to G. Then, instead of the G major scale (G A B C D E F# G), you have G A B C D E F natural G.

This alters the chords you need to play if you're going to accompany a song in this mode (which bears the name "Mixolydian," by the way). Instead of the usual G, C, and D7 as your three primary chords, you have to dump the D or D7, because the chord contains an F#, which is NOT in the Mixolydian mode. So what do you play in its place? F major. In fact, the chord change from G to F and back to G is the characteristic sound of songs in the Mixolydian mode.d

The Mixolydian mode is found a lot in folk music from the British Isles, and much of it has migrated into the southern mountain communities of the United States, with the English and Scots-Irish who migrated to the area.

If a song in the Mixolydian mode doesn't fit your voice in the scale starting on G, there's no law or rule of music theory that says you can't change it to, say, D. In that case, the three primary chords would be D, G, and (instead of A or A7) C. No sweat!

Another mode frequently found in folk music is the Dorian mode. This (on the "white note" scales) runs from D to D. D major goes D E F# G A B C# D. But because in Dorian mode starting on D, there is no F# or C#, the notes are both natural, the three primary chords would be Dm, G major and C major. So the Dorian mode has a distinctly minor sound, but the accompanying primary chords are one minor and two majors.

You do run into the other modes, particularly in Anglo-American folk music, but the Dorian and Mixolydian are the most frequently encountered.

HISTORICAL NOTE:

The early ballad collectors were primarily interested in the ballads as poetry rather than as songs (note the titles of many early collections, such as Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry). Cecil J. Sharp was a well-grounded musician, and he was one of the first to collect the tunes as well as the text. Earlier collectors who did collect tunes would hear a source singer sing a note that was outside of a "normal" major or minor scale, assume that because this was an unschooled singer, he or she was singing a wrong note—so they wrote down what they thought the correct note should be. Sharp didn't make this assumption. He wrote down exactly what he heard. And when he analyzed the tunes later on, he made the discovery that the singers were NOT singing "wrong notes," the songs they were singing were modal!

That was a very big "AHA!" and one of the things that makes Sharp a very important collector both in England and in America.

Contrary to popular belief, modes are not that strange and mysterious, nor are they as complicated as most people try to make them.

Explore! Enjoy!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:39 PM

You might think "what the hell is the point of any of that?" after reading those comments.

Guess what? You'd be right. Modal systems do have a point, but that 7-mode system doesn't.

As far as I know this document of mine is by far the most comprehensive description you'll find on the web of how modes work in folk music. You'd have to dig in some pretty serious ethnomusicological literature to get more.

http://tinyurl.com/scottishmodes

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard from Liverpool
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:33 PM

I was very lucky because as a child I sang a lot of gregorian chant in the different modes, and it's definitely helped to understand the system, because I had a hands on experience from a certain age.

I'll have a bash at explaining it as I would do if I was sat down at a piano, which isn't necessarily the best way to explain in text, but it's the easiest way I know.

A major scale (and major is effectively Mode I, the Ionian mode) is a certain progression of notes - you start on a given note (say C, or D, or whatever) and you go up in a set order: up a Tone, up a tone, up a semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. All major scales are that same progression. So if you're playing within a major key, that basically means that there's a pool of 7 notes that you're drawing from, and all of those notes have a certain relationship with one another. So if I write a tune in a major key it has a particular feel.

Ok, now let's imagine that the notes I'm using AREN'T within a major scale, so don't come out of that set series of starting note, up a tone, up a tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone.

Let's say that the scale starts on a given note and then goes up tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone.
If you listen to that, you can hear that you've got a run of notes with a slightly different feel to the run of notes you'd expect from a major scale. If you're picking notes only from within this series of notes, then you're working in Mode II, the Dorian mode.

Or you start on a given note and then go on a run of tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone. If you work only with the notes in that series, you're in the Mode IV, the Lydian mode.

It's all about the different permuations of sound you can create between different notes. If you're only working in major or minor, you're missing out on whole different kinds of sound.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:27 PM

The basic is very simple.

Look at a piano.

All the white notes are in the key of C.

Play them from C to C, that's one mode.

Play them from D to D, that's another.

Play from E to E, another.

From F to F another

From G to G another

A to A another

B to B another.



Begin to see why I'm a sceptic?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: maeve
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:26 PM

Martin's link is excellent in that it also shows at the top of the top of the page.

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: maeve
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:24 PM

Saul, here's a preliminary list of threads dealing with modal information; lots of good material there while you await replies to your question. I just used the Filter box on the home page to search for "modes" as found in the entire time span. One could specify a shorter time span. I edited the initial list, including only those directly applicable to your query.
        
Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?         

More About Modes         

modes tutorial update         

The Naming of Modes         

Modes for Mudcatters: A Synthesis Primer         

Modes vs Scales         

a mnemonic for the modes         

Who Named the Modes?         

Tune Req: Instrumental Bluegrass - minor modes?         

Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND         

Help: Dulcimer books arranged by modes         

Tech Talk: Modes and Scales Again         

Modes?

Subject: RE: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:16 PM

Lots of earlier threads on this. For probably the best -
Click here

Regards

Subject: Musical Modes...Anyone Understand?
From: saulgoldie
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 02:14 PM

Does anyone here understand the concept of musical modes? Does much of "our kind of music" involve this sort of thing? Do I need to "know" it?

Pasted from Wikipedia:

* * * * * * * * * * * *

4 Modern

    * 4.1 Modern modal scales on the natural notes
          o 4.1.1 Ionian (I)
          o 4.1.2 Dorian (II)
          o 4.1.3 Phrygian (III)
          o 4.1.4 Lydian (IV)
          o 4.1.5 Mixolydian (V)
          o 4.1.6 Aeolian (VI)
          o 4.1.7 Locrian (VII)

* * * * * * * * * * * *