MODES ARE WAY EASIER THAN YOU THINK. Here's why.

so take any major scale and just start it from the fourth note how about a flat [Music] [Laughter] if you're anything like me at some point you've probably wondered to yourself what on earth are the greek modes why do i care about them and how do i use them this was something that was confusing to me when i was first learning about them and the way that they were explained to me by a few different teachers along the way it left me kind of even more confused until i finally figured out how to think about modes and why they matter so first things first let's start with just looking at a scale in general one of the very first things that you'll learn as you're learning any instrument is you're gonna learn the major scale if you play the piano probably the first thing you ever learned in terms of scales was the c major scale but it's worth noting what even is a major scale and what what makes it a major scale it does not matter what type of scale what crazy name you can come up with every single scale that you have ever played and ever will play on any instrument can be described very simply as a series of steps a series of intervals most commonly it's a series of whole steps and half steps just in a certain order so for example if we look at the c major scale and we start on c well we can see that the c major scale is made up of a a whole step a whole step a half step there's nothing in between another whole step whole step whole step and then finally we have a half step there's nothing in between right hole hole half whole whole whole half here's the cool thing about scales doesn't matter what key you're in every single scale is the same so if we start on f sharp we can say the same thing we start on f sharp and we say whole whole half whole whole whole half super easy to remember super easy to apply to any key it doesn't matter if you're familiar with that key or if you know how to play scales in that key you can always pick out the major scale if you know the formula and the formula is whole whole half whole whole whole half that's it now that's the major scale but the trick here is that every single scale has a formula every single scale can be explained in the exact same way it's just a different combination of whole steps and half steps and even sometimes you might get into steps beyond whole steps and half steps like the harmonic minor scale which contains a minor third so the harmonic minor scale sounds like this well we have a weird jump towards the end of that scale and we can again describe it just in a matter of steps we start on c so our first step that we're going to make is a whole step then we have a half step a whole step a whole step half step minor third half step so what we're illustrating here is that no matter what you're talking about in regards to scales every single scale whether it's major minor or any other wacky thing you can possibly think of they can all be described as a series of whole steps half steps or whatever other interval it may be the thing that confused me when i first learned about modes is that they were described to me in relation to the major scale so for example when i first learned about modes somebody said this so here's how it works you have seven greek modes of the major scale and they are which is just the normal major scale that's ionian you have [Music] dorian phrygian lydian mixolydian aeolian locrian and that brings you back to ion well that's cool but what does that actually tell us that just says well if i play the notes of the c major scale but i start on the third and go up to the third of the c major scale like okay i guess that's phrygian but i didn't really understand why i didn't really understand what that meant here's the other way to think about it and when you combine both of these you go oh i get why it was explained that way in the first place but then i also further understand what that actually means so in addition to thinking about all scales as a combination of whole steps half steps and occasionally some other intervals like a minor third we can also look at it as it's either a major scale or it's a major scale with some alterations here's what i mean when we talked about the harmonic minor scale we said that it was starting on c we said it was whole step half step whole step whole step half step minor third half step that is what you might call the intervallic formula for that harmonic minor scale but there's another way to think about it and that is how did we change the c major scale to get to that because we know c majors very simply right no alterations just whatever the notes that would naturally exist in the c major scale that's just that's what they are there's we it's unchanged we've made no changes to that scale what changes do we have to make to that scale in order to create the harmonic minor scale well let's take a look the root or in this case c that is just normal that doesn't change the second that doesn't change either so d is just normal however when we get to the third of the scale what would normally be e is now e flat so we have a flat third so so far we know that c harmonic minor is one two flat three what about our four well that's the same as it is in the normal c major scale so that's unchanged five also is the same as the c major scale so again unchanged six well six in the c major scale is not a flat it's a so what have we done to that a we've made it flat flat six so so far we know it's one two flat three four five flat six what about our seven what is it normally in the c major scale five six seven it's normally b well guess what in the c harmonic minor scale it's also b so that is unchanged so what we've just determined is that the c harmonic minor scale is one two flat three four five flat six seven and that takes us back to c so we've now established two different ways to think about scales you can think about the intervallic formula the combination of whole steps half steps and occasionally maybe minor thirds or we can think about it in terms of what changes did we make to the normal major scale to get us to this scale that we're playing now this is the trick that kind of opened up for me what modes were and how to think about them and how to much more clearly find them in different keys and ultimately to use them like i mentioned before the first way that i learned about them which was kind of confusing was well just think about it as the major scale starting from different points the switch in my brain that really helped me understand what was going on here was when i thought about it not in terms of well the second mode of the major scale or the third mode of the major scale and just oh well that means i play c major from e to e that's great but it doesn't help us that much because you don't fully understand what that means a better way to look at it is if i'm playing from e to e on all the white notes yes that is the third mode of the c major scale but what happens if we think about it as an e scale forget c let's just think about this as though it were an e scale of some kind well now we have to think about well if we take e major what did we change about e major to arrive at this [Music] okay well let's take a look so e major would be e f sharp g sharp a b c sharp d sharp and e those are the notes that naturally exist in the e major scale well clearly you can see we've made some changes from that so what are those changes well e of course that's normal so that's our one well what about our two immediately we find our first alteration it should be f sharp but what have we done to that f sharp we've made it flat which turns it into f natural well that's a flat two let's keep going what about the three it should be g sharp but again we've made that flat as well by turning it into a g natural so we have a flat two so far and then we also have a flat three well what about our four that's normal that that that occurs in e major so that just stays the same natural 4. 5 is also the same as it would be in e major so that's just natural as well well our 6 should be c sharp but again we've made it flat by lowering it a half step to c natural so we have a flat six and finally with the seventh well it should be d sharp but we've made it flat it's d natural so we have a flat seven so now you can see how we can think of this as a formula in the sense of well it's 1 flat 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7 and that brings us to one this mode which previously was confusing because you're thinking of it like while it's c major but but starting on e like uh okay what does that mean i mean it's uh okay i can play all the notes of c major from e to e but i still don't understand what that means now we've converted thinking about it that way into thinking about it as this is just an e scale of some kind and we've just made changes to whatever the e major scale would normally be so we can do that in any key let's try it in uh in how about a flat 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7 and that brings us back to one here's where it gets really interesting because the other way to think about it that we said before is well phrygian is the third mode of the major scale what is a the third of in a major scale that's the third mode of f major watch what happens when we apply that formula flat 2 flat 3 flat 6 and flat 7 to a okay we get a b-flat c d e f g and a let's play that from f those same exact notes it's just f major so what was this confusing sort of like wait a second are we thinking of it as the third mode of the major scale or or does it have a formula doesn't have alterations that we can use to create it in any key the short answer is it's both but what allows us to actually understand it and subsequently use it is to understand how those two ways of thinking about it combine so that those two ways of thinking don't confuse us so very quickly let's do two things that maybe will help illustrate this a little better i'm gonna do what i did at the beginning which was play each mode as though it were a mode of the c major scale and that looks like this the greek mode name for c major is ionian the second mode is dorian the third mode is phrygian [Music] the fourth mode is lydian the fifth mode is mixolydian the sixth mode is aeolian which also happens to be the same as natural minor the seventh mode is locrian [Music] now let's do the same thing we'll play through all seven greek modes but we're gonna do it from c to c and i'm going to overlay the formula for how they're built so ionian of course has no alterations dorian happens to have a flat 3 and a flat 7. phrygian has a flat 2 flat 3 flat 6 and flat 7. lydian has a sharp 4. [Music] has a flat seven aeolian or natural minor has a flat three flat six and flat seven and locrian has a flat 2 flat 3 flat 5 flat 6 and flat 7. so that is the clearest illustration of the two ways we can think about it we can think about them as the second third fourth fifth sixth seventh mode of a single major scale or we can learn the formula for how they are built and what alterations each one contains that changes it from what the c major scale normally would be i really hope this has been helpful if you have any further questions please let me know in the comments below and i'm going to try to answer as many as i can we'll do another video at some point soon going further in depth into the explanation of how these work in relation to chords and why some of them work with certain chords and how if you're playing over a chord progression what ones you might want to choose depending on what chord you're playing at any given time thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you in the next video [Music] foreign

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 545,142

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, jazz, jazz theory, theory, music, music education, music lesson, piano lesson, theory lesson, music theory, music theory lesson, jazz piano lesson, jazz lessons, jazz lesson, jazz piano, piano tutorial, modes, greek modes, greek, scales

Id: a6d7dWwawd8

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020