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Thread: help understanding (dorian) key

  1. #26
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Quote Originally Posted by ombudsman View Post
    Well, you can if you like. Some people practice cycling through all the modes of a scale. You can incorporate thinking of the sound of the notes relative to the tonic, or not, or alternate between them, as you do this. It's an effective way to learn the fingerboard very well and to internalize the structure of a scale (any scale, but particularly major/ionian).

    It would be hard to learn the modes of major without at least starting out thinking of the notes relative to major, or in a diatonic key (which is another way of saying the same thing). Over time the modes become familiar as scales. People retain information in their own ways, but I think it would be hard for me to learn 6 scales in all keys (assuming I already knew major) while ignoring the fact that they have those close relationship due to them being permutations of the same set of notes. If there is anything special about modes, it's that relationship.
    I get that but... (don't you just hate that kind of beginning)

    The thing is that when playing and ornamenting within a mode, say a minor key, say Am, knowing the Am scale and its fourth note and fifth note and what not, seems to me much more relevant than knowing that all the Am scale are just the C maj scale played A to A. It just doesn't help me at the moment. So learning the modes by learning the succession of intervals gives me the information I am going to use when I am playing in that mode, i.e. the most helpful information.

    But the greater context is certainly important, I would agree, and in composition or in figuring out why this or that works, it is important. Just seems to be that its not as useful a starting place, because that's not what I need to know when I first need to understand modes.

    But my music theory is hardly comprehensive, or very deep. I just naturally am skeptical about instances where it seems I have to know everything in order to know anything. Got to be a front door somewhere, and all I am positing is that the interval approach is a more useful front door.

    Maybe I should say, more useful for me.

    Interesting stuff.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    I get that but... (don't you just hate that kind of beginning)

    The thing is that when playing and ornamenting within a mode, say a minor key, say Am, knowing the Am scale and its fourth note and fifth note and what not, seems to me much more relevant than knowing that all the Am scale are just the C maj scale played A to A. It just doesn't help me at the moment.
    We're in total agreement about that.

    What I'm saying you can do with working on modes in relation to the ionian that they can be generated from goes way beyond thinking of them simply as subsets of ionian with different starting places, which is a reductive copout that is quite opposite in intent from what I am talking about. I'm saying don't just learn them as scales (which you should certainly do first) - use them as tools to understand tonalities and diatonic harmony, since each one of them can also be used as a tonality.



    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    Just seems to be that its not as useful a starting place, because that's not what I need to know when I first need to understand modes.

    But my music theory is hardly comprehensive, or very deep. I just naturally am skeptical about instances where it seems I have to know everything in order to know anything. Got to be a front door somewhere, and all I am positing is that the interval approach is a more useful front door.
    I understand. You're relating to your perspective. Getting to know them as scale forms and internalizing their sounds is the right place to start. I was speaking in a more general sense as to how they can be used.

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    Registered User Ky Slim's Avatar
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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Quote Originally Posted by RickPick View Post
    You mean I can't believe everything I read on the WWW? .
    Well Dorian IS created from the intervals WHWWWHW .... ..


    This is a great reference on scales and uses:
    http://www.jazzbooks.com/mm5/downloa...e-syllabus.pdf
    Last edited by Ky Slim; Aug-26-2014 at 3:07pm. Reason: link

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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Thanks, Paleosporin, for taking the time to explain something of the relationship between "key" and "mode." I quickly realized that my terminology in the original post was wrong, but you help me avoid future gaffs. I'm happily playing away on Tuttle's Reel now with few cares about it being in D dorian any longer, now that I've determined that some of the tablature I'd found on the WWW was simply incorrect. But you post makes me curious about how chords are differently composed in the various modes withing the same key? If one plays simple tunes in D Major, the typical accompanying chords would be D, G, and A (or A7). So are there set chords that typically go with a melody in, say, D dorian? and another set that would go with a tune in D mixolidian? How does one figure these out?
    Finally, I like your description of Bartok's music -- "modally ambiguous"!

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    String-Bending Heretic mandocrucian's Avatar
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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key


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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Quote Originally Posted by RickPick View Post
    Thanks, Paleosporin, for taking the time to explain something of the relationship between "key" and "mode." I quickly realized that my terminology in the original post was wrong, but you help me avoid future gaffs. I'm happily playing away on Tuttle's Reel now with few cares about it being in D dorian any longer, now that I've determined that some of the tablature I'd found on the WWW was simply incorrect.
    I've found that a good resource for transcriptions is the ABC website. At least you get options and can see how other people interpret the tune. Here's a setting of Tuttle's: http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=of...reels.ABC/0062

    And this website can spit a tab out from ABC notation if you need to read from tab: http://www.mandolintab.net/abcconverter.php

    Tab is a crutch, though. Standard notation is ultimately much, much faster and tells you a lot more about the music.

    But you post makes me curious about how chords are differently composed in the various modes withing the same key? If one plays simple tunes in D Major, the typical accompanying chords would be D, G, and A (or A7). So are there set chords that typically go with a melody in, say, D dorian? and another set that would go with a tune in D mixolidian? How does one figure these out?
    Chords are derived from a mode in the following manner. First, write your scale out. Let's use D major: D E F# G A B C#. We are going to build a chord off of every single note in that scale. The way that we are going to do this is by picking a letter, then skipping a letter, and continuing in that fashion until we have enough notes for a chord. So, we'll start with D. Skip E, pick F#. Skip G, pick A. Put those together, and you get D F# A, which is the tonic triad in D major. We can do the same thing from E: skip F#, pick G. Skip A, pick B. The second chord of D major is Em. We can continue this way. I am going to use Roman numerals to indicate the 'number' of each chord in relation to the tonic.

    D major:
    I = D = D F# A
    ii = Em = E G B
    iii = F#m = F# A C#
    IV = G = G B D
    V = A = A C# E
    vi = Bm = B D F#
    vii° = C#° = C# E G

    Notice that the notes in the chords all come from the same pitch collection, D E F# G A B C#. Also notice that I am using different letter cases for the numerals. Majuscule numerals (I IV V) indicate major triads. Miniscule numerals (ii iii vi) indicate minor triads. The miniscule numeral with the little degree sign (vii°) indicates a diminished triad. All major scales harmonize in the exact same way: I ii iii IV V vi vii°. You'll notice that your "accompanying chords" are all part of that collection: D G A (or A7) translates to I IV V (or V7). You can also use the other chords from the mode. ii can take the place of IV, and vii° can take the place of V. vi can come before IV or ii, and iii comes before vi.

    If you are using a different mode, then the chords are going to be different. Here is D mixolydian, which is only one note different from D major: D E F# G A B C. And here are the chords:

    D mixolydian:
    I = D = D F# A
    ii = Em = E G B
    iii° = F#° = F# A C
    IV = G = G B D
    v = Am = A C E
    vi = Bm = B D F#
    ♭VII = C = C E G

    Different chord qualities, different letter cases. Mixolydian is I ii iii° IV v vi ♭VII. There is one more added feature: notice the last chord, ♭VII. The "♭" indicates that this note is one half-step lower than its counterpart in the major mode. In fact, we use the same indicator when describing the intervallic structure of scales. Always relate it to the major scale.

    D major: D E F# G A B C#, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    D mixolydian: D E F# G A B C, 1 2 3 4 5 6 ♭7
    D dorian: D E F G A B C, 1 2 ♭3 4 5 6 ♭7
    D natural minor: D E F G A B♭ C, 1 2 ♭3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7

    See how that works? Anyway, let's say you wanted to use a similar progression to the I IV V that you were using before. The only problem is that we don't have any C#'s in D mixolydian, so our chord progression needs to reflect C's instead. D G Am (I IV v) is the mixolydian equivalent of D G A (I IV V) in the major mode.

    Finally, I like your description of Bartok's music -- "modally ambiguous"!
    Actually, I don't really consider his style to be very "ambiguous." He is a clear-cut composer, but his pitch language makes extensive use of polymodality (two or more modes at the same time, like the example I gave earlier) and polytonality (two or more keys at the same time, like this tune [click here for score; notice that in each phrase, each violin is using only the first four notes of a different minor scale]), and most people are not accustomed to bimodality/bitonality, so they can't make heads or tails of it when they hear two competing tonal centers or modes. It blew my mind when I realized that the fourth string quartet is very traditionally tonal. He layers tonalities and modalities, but everything always becomes a statement on a single note, interval, or chord, and always with the support of a principal motif: in the Mikrokosmos No.59 piece that I shared, the two voices eventually converge on C (the dominant pitch of both F lydian and F minor); in the violin duet, both parts cadence onto E♭ at the end (the second violin doesn't play it, but its line "melts" into the first violin, so you hear the effect of two voices becoming one).

    Tonal and modal ambiguity in modern music really began with Beethoven. He liked to play around with the relationship between major and minor, and did some adventurous things with tonality. In the late 1900's, we really start to see chromaticism being exploited to create music that is difficult to box into one key or one mode for an extended period of time, but more than anything, the hierarchy of that information is obscured: it is no big thing for a classical piece to go through many different keys and modes, or even to lose sense of strong tonality for a time, but the traditional expectation is that eventually all of that ambiguity gives way to a clear statement in the tonic key. Take somebody like Mahler, and he throws that out the window.



    The trumpet starts with a simple statement in C# minor. At 0:44, we're suddenly in A major. Okay, that's probably the real key and the C# minor bit was just the introduction. But ack! At 1:00, there's a huge cadence in G# minor. When the second theme comes in, it's in C# minor. Classical tradition says that the second theme should be in E major, but whatever. The key is never allowed to settle long enough for any one pitch to be heard as the real "center" of the piece, so all rules go out the window.

    Here's another Romantic work that does a lot of switching around to create ambiguity.



    Brahms' third symphony. Listen to the first twenty seconds of this video and count how many times you hear the mode switching from F major to F minor. It goes between the two 5 or 6 times, something like that. All that in the first twenty seconds of a piece, what is the audience to think? Those Romantics were really into this sort of thing: the duality of man, how extreme emotions tear at our soul and psyche, every moment filled with intense dramatic juxtaposition. It's like chiaroscuro in visual art. The dark things appear darker, the bright things appear brighter.

    Debussy deals in both tonal and modal ambiguity, but in a strictly un-Romantic way.



    For most of the tune, he's using the whole tone scale (C D E F# G B♭) , which is completely symmetrical and therefore has no hierarchy of pitch. Because of that, your ear can't really say that the music is in a key. It's arguable whether mode exists in something like that: I certainly associate a mood with such music, and it is pretty clear what he is doing, so this might be an example of mode existing without key. Listen to the contrast at 2:00, when we finally get a pitch center on E♭. That's an E♭ minor pentatonic scale. He doesn't let us stick with it, though: at 2:24, it's back to the whole tone scale.

  7. #32
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    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Quote Originally Posted by mandocrucian View Post
    Thanks. I've been looking for that. Explaination of modes has been hard (for me) to find in simple terms but you've managed nicely. It's still Greek tho right?

  8. #33

    Default Re: help understanding (dorian) key

    Coreection to my post: that whole tone scale should be C D E F# G# B♭.

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