Scales Vs Modes: What's the Difference?

hey hey hey YouTube what's up today's livestream is going to be scales versus modes what's the difference I get asked this question all the time there's comments in the comments section for example on my Lydian video that I just did and there's always this this question of what is the difference between a scale and a mode so I want to talk about that today I see there's it's funny because there's a lot of music professors Theory professors that comment in the comments section and many of them I'm not saying all of them but many of them because of their using classical theory to define to define these concepts are really stuck in a very what I consider antiquated way of analyzing music which is there's nothing wrong with that but to be so rigid about something I think the most important thing is is bad I think the most important thing is to actually know how to use these ideas how do you use modes really as how do you use scales the simple definition that I have is a scale a mode is a subset of a scale so if you take the scales if you look at the Beato book for example because that's my the reference book that I wrote for my students when I was a college professor because I wanted them to memorize all the formulas to all the modes we have a discount code on today's live stream 35% off anything in my store but if you don't have to be out of book you should get it as a reference guide for these videos the read the discount code is RB 16 okay 35 percent off I don't usually do the 35% off deals I'm doing it when everybody to have this book if they don't oh and check out the new ear training course Billy just reminded me of it go to be out of your training comm it's out now the first half of it there's over a hundred modules in it right now and we're working on the second half so there's ten chapters of it but watch the the intro video it's really informative and you should definitely check it out and one other announcement I'm opening up some more spaces on in the Beato Club I don't talk about the piata Club much on here because there's one level of it that has been filled up for month four I don't know the last year and it's a thing where I will do a reaction video to your songs and I'm gonna be putting them out for the be Auto Club members that are watching now on the 25th of this month so you have a little bit later because I'm gonna be at NAMM and I'm not gonna have all of them done before I leave but I decided to open up some more spots if you want to get a reaction video from me your own personal reaction video on your music you can sign up it's the Platinum membership on there okay let's get back the scales and modes okay um a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by pitch the the term actually comes from the Latin word ladder okay so if you think about a scale major scale right C major scale there's this has a certain order of half steps and whole steps steps whole whole half whole whole whole half is the order of them a mode is a subset of a scale okay so and and there's a behavior that's associated with it meaning each mode has a characteristic set of intervals that give it a distinctive sound my video on Lydian that I had talks about how the sharp four is the sound of Lydian and there was a great clip in there a couple of clips or one clip of Thomas Newman who's one of my favorite film composers talking about living Lydian and he uses the term hopefulness a sense of hopefulness arise or when he plays in the when he plays that chord E flat Lydian B flat a flat B he talks about it being celestial or heavenly when I hear that it sounds like it it sounds like it's celestial or heavenly that sound just that one chord like that so I hold on one second here Billy is everything okay okay great perfect I didn't know if that was too loud or not that chord was that killing people's ears or okay it's right near the computer so the piano is I didn't know if it was going so the the sharp four is the characteristic note of the Lydian mode every single mode has a series of characteristic notes and they typically are not typically they're always where the half steps in the scale are for example in a Lydian scale C Lydian you have there's your sharp forces 1 2 3 sharp 4 5 6 7 back to 1 so the two places that have the half steps are between the sharp 4 and the 5th and the 7 and 8 so that that's where you get that Lydian sound it's beautiful somebody says it doesn't sounds creepy when you played up here the the that's because it's from six feet under which is you know anyway you either watch that show is a great show but typically when you hear Lydian it's in film scores and it's it's used John Williams every film composer uses spread it's the most overused mode and its really associated with film composing but the one of the examples that I gave in the video was from Eric Korngold and is from his violin concerto right off at the top it's it's in D Lydian the violin plays that the new orchestra plays and when you hear it Korngold wrote that in 1945 and he was a famous film composer and a legit composer and the things that those early composers did and film Thomas Newman's dad Alfred is that they did they took things from the late Romantic period these these ideas and created this vocabulary that film composers have been using since then now when I did the John Williams example I from Jurassic Park you hear this sound that C major to D major over C and a lot of people say well that's just a you know dominant chord over the four right so you get C major let's say it's a four chord in the key of G [Music] right but if you think of the scale that goes over that's where your melody notes are derived are from that are from that scale right so that is why that sound is associated with Lydian but I also showed that it is right out of Beethoven in my example from the fifth symphony of Beethoven sounded like it could have been you know from up John Williams movie or something right anyways so a mode is a subset of a scale okay so we have five parent scales that we deal with the music the most common one that everyone uses is the modes of the major scale the most common set of scales the major scale okay but you also have the melodic minor scale as I like to call it mel-min I'm just kidding I never make jokes never do it Billy very bad attempt at a joke and then you have harm at men harmonic minor okay you also have the harmonic major scale which some people associate with players like Allan Holdsworth and you have the double harmonic major scale every one of these has modes associated with it Thank You Nate preciate it the some of them have weird names now the modes of the major scale many of you know Ionian Dorian Phrygian Lydian mixolydian aeolian Locrian the most of the melodic minor melodic minor Dorian fled to Lydian augmented mixolydian sharp 11 or sharp 4 and some people call Lydian flat 7 mixolydian flat 6 Locrian natural to alter dominant or super Locrian or diminished whole tone whatever you want to call it there's many names for these things when you get into the harmonic minor those modes are not used as much the ones that are probably familiar are the harmonic minor the Phrygian major but there's a whole series of modes Lydian sharp 9 Ionian augment that are associated with that the harmonic major it's funny if I have a video where I talk about it's called musical palindromes that's that's part of the title and I discuss how scales if you invert the intervals right so if you take a major scale and invert it meaning instead of going a whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step ace and you do the same intervals descending it becomes a different mode ok Dorian upwards and downwards is the same ok but all the other modes have a mirror mode watch a mode I'm not going to tell you give it away but the harmonic minor modes are mirrored with the harmonic major modes it's really fascinating I go and show this in the video check that out musical palindromes so it's one of my favorite videos now many people watch it was early in my channel by the way I'm gonna redo all the modal videos that I did at the beginning of the channel all the modes of the major scale melodic minor harmonic minor harmonic majors of harmonic major when you get to the double harmonic major you get some really weird modes Locrian flat 3d or double flat 3 double flat 7 you know most of the harmonic major scale have like dorian flat 5 Phrygian flat 4 Lydian flat 3 mixolydian flat - yeah you know so there's they're really crazy crazy mode names but if you buy my coffee mugs that I have I just thought of this I never mentioned these on here they have all the formulas of all the modes and I know a bunch of you have bought them and you get the set of get the set of these 5 parent scales and has all the modal formulas meaning what you do to a major scale to do it so when you're drinking your coffee in the morning the modal the the modes you don't know of the harmonic major in the double harmonic major or the harmonic minor you can be drinking your coffee and reviewing them while you're looking at it I usually have one up here to drink out of but anyhow so so each when I say if there's these scales are a subset let's just talk about the major scale yarn here if I write out the notes of c-major okay so this is a way to understand this see the e G a B I'm gonna keep writing the second octave C D G so I just wrote an octave and a half okay from C to C or C to B is is Ionian okay D really deed a deed let's do it this way is easier to understand it D to D is dorian e to e is Phrygian F to F is Lydian G to G is mixolydian a to a is Aeolian b2b is Locrian that's what I mean by a subsets or they're the same notes but it's a different set of intervals and they all have a characteristic sound if I play this sound well as soon as I hear that I say hmm that's a dorian sound and i think of that scale immediately screams durian to me right if I play this I think that's a Olien that's an Aeolian sound right if I play this I say oh that's a Phrygian sound my discounts not working I'm gonna fix that right now hold on might be might be my website you know it'll work just try it again here in a little bit Billy says it works can't have a space in it RB 16 actually I can tell you right now it's all it's works yeah yeah if you know if you're having problems with it just try it try it again here because it made it just it's just Frank try with a different browser okay so so I was talking about Aeolian this right here oh and then I went to Phrygian okay so Phrygian let's talk about that I love bridge it's great great sound every set every one of these chords has its own order of you know they it has its own dominant chord it has its own super tonic chord things like that but that's not important what's important is what notes are important to give you the sound of the mode if I ran out of Phrygian the Phrygian mode 1 flat 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7 you need to memorize these formulas so these are what you do to a major scale to get the Phrygian mode ok the characteristic notes of here is the flat 2 that's in when you hear metal you guys there's metalheads that flat 2 you know all about the flat 2 you know about that sound it's a dark sound it's pulling you down to the tonic then you have the 5 in the flat 6 those are your key notes on this so I'm gonna want to when I think of a Phrygian voicing I'm gonna want to have those notes somewhere or a Phrygian melody those are going to be important notes also the third the flat third because you have to define it being a minor chord it's a minor sound right so so if Ridge Ian if I think of this there's my e-minor if I put the F in there I go like this [Music] that is a Phrygian sound [Music] I love that there is the sound of Phrygian right III have a size of flat to the flat 3 and the flat 6 right if I were to compare it to Locrian because Locrian is the other mode of the major scale that has a flat 2 1 flat 2 whoops flat 3 4 flat 5 flat 6 flat 7 so the difference between Locrian and Phrygian is only that flat fifth right so here is where the half steps happen and here's where the a steps happen in this mode these are the important notes right there also the third is important again because it defines that the chord is diminished that's built off of it okay so those are the characteristic notes those are that's how you can tell a Locrian melody from a Phrygian melody you know you're a lot of Locrian melodies but you will hear them on my channel but if I were to compare Ionian and Lydian for example Ionian is the major scale one two three four five six seven Lydian once again has the sharp four one two three sharp four right five six seven okay between the sharp four and five that there's your characteristic sound and then between seven and eight or seven and one are your half steps okay so when you listen to my piece that I did that is at the end if you got to the end of my video you would have heard that piece and I used a bunch of different Lydian sounds but if I take a C major chord right C major sprint try and I just add that F sharp to it that's already Lydian sound right there I don't even need that up I can just go like this very very stark Lydian sound or I can put that major seventh in there beautiful love that sound [Music] okay so that's what differentiates it from a major scale C major C Lydia now what's interesting about this is that I've been using this vocabulary for 35 years with modes that's why I talked about this is where the idea for the Lydian triads come from when I talk about triads this is all in my book it's also in the ear training course okay so when I hear this I know that that's a Lydian triad one sharp four five Dada okay one sharp four five that's a deal ideon triad it's the you take a D made D Lydian scale take the first note fourth not fifth note it's it's like a suspended sharp for because many times that Lydian triad is used like that work results down to the third as a matter of fact in the queue that I use from the claw from Toy Story I always cry when I think about that when he plays he does set Lydian try it in inversion he has a sharp five on the top and he he resolves it down to the major third so if you think it's like this [Music] and then that's a great great sound [Music] Thank You P I appreciate that so that Lydian triad there when I hear that sound I immediately knew I was funny because I was the first time I said it in the video I mentioned in the comments my kids have watched a movie a hundred times the nice and so you know when your kids they they watch these movies over and over so one time I sit down to watch Toy Story right from the beginning and it just blew me away when it got to that part and when the clock comes down to save them and they hit that huge key flat Lydian Coradin it's an E flat Lydian sound with the fifth and the base and that resolves to D major over a um it's that otherworldly sound because it's good it's almost like that claws coming down from heaven to save them to rescue them I hate I'm sorry if I gave away the the the movie there but but that chord is so beautiful and I asked Dylan we were making fun of this in the in the comments but I said Dylan what chord is that and he of course rolls his eyes because he hates getting asked this stuff but you know he's five years old at the time he goes it's a flat Lydian ascend played on the piano so he walks in the other room and he just goes and it plays that and and I said okay cool I mean I knew that's what it was but it's to be able to recognize these sounds when you hear them know exactly what they are is very important when I'm listening to these soundtracks that I'm using in my videos when I talk about modes when I do Lydian when I do mixolydian Phrygian look you know all these ones I'm gonna use examples from film scores or from classical music or from jazz and I'm gonna show you these things because I can pick them out immediately and you should be able to as well when I said to Billy were talking about Joe Satriani and what's the first thing that came to mind Billy flying in a blue dream it's all liddie and it's multiple Lydian things and he loves Lydian Steve I all these guitar players love Lydian right so thank you and I appreciate that you're not even a musician and you love it that's great I love that but but being able to recognize the characteristics of these modes remember each mode has characteristic intervals that give it its own distinctive sound what's up Brett good to see you Brett I'll be in on the fifth I will definitely be in Boston at Berkeley given that talk so I'll be coming in to the fourth it's email me we'll definitely meet up oh and I'm gonna be at NAMM next week for the NAMM show for those of you that are going and I'm actually gonna be at this conference tomorrow in New Orleans speaking it's a it's jazz educators Network the Gen Conference I'm gonna do a talk in the afternoon like 4:30 or so so I'll be heading to New Orleans tomorrow and if any of you were going to that come on out to it what's up Eliot George Russell would be happy through those of you that don't know George Russell or for those of you that do know George Russell don't ask me to make a video on the Lydian chromatic concept since it's a book and you can't make videos on books you can cut you talked about books but you make books 3 hey Peter happy new year good to see you Rome and thank you so much so this debate of scales and modes I don't care what your music teachers tell you modes are scales too right people use that term you can say the Lydian scale is fine as long as you know what it sounds like that's really the key and you know what it sounds like and how to use it that's the most important thing with music it does you no good just to know the stuff without being able to to take it and apply it to yourself right a lot of these modes get really played out like the Lydian mode and film composing and they're really easy to go to but there are other modes of other scales like from the harmonic major scale or the double harmonic major scale like Lydian sharp 2 sharp 6 which is the second mode from harmonic mage double harmonic major right now these are modes that people don't use ever or not most people don't use those modes of the double harmonic major scale but they're great sounding and they have I do called the darkest scale ever that you should watch it's probably my biggest music Theory video I ever did and I think just because of the thumbnail or something that people clicked on it but it has the very weird piece in it that's about 40 seconds long anyways and then I did a video with gnar a soul that was where we did it was right at the beginning of her channel she only had 1000 subscribers she was here in town visiting and came over and we worked and wrote this piece together in one day and did this video it's called the modes of the the modes of the darkest scale ever I think that's what was called modes of the darkest scale ever and it has a composition that we did where narrate plays piano and it goes from goes through a piece in each of the modes of the double harmonic major scale all connected one long like three-minute piece or so so you should check that out modes of the darkest scale ever p.m. thank you so much oh it's filled what's up couldn't see that and you even capitalized everything okay so that's what I want to talk about today is the difference tree mode and scale because I get so many comments about this and mainly it's from classical musician classical theory teachers and like I say you know you can't get locked into this rigid way of thinking as far as I'm concerned because jazz players have been using modes for 60 years you know Miles Davis George Russell they've been using him since the 50s and it's not that people didn't use mode back in the Middle Ages because they did but jazz players developed a whole vocabulary around it and you actually use it for improvising and that is really that is really probably the the people they have the most facility with it and it's more important having facility with a mode than it is anything else how do you what what are the characteristic sounds a bit can you recognize it and can you use it in a melodic line if you want to get used to recognizing it check out the B outer ear training thing really just told me you two mentioned that again Thank You Billy okay so leave your questions in the comments I'll get to all of them but I wanted to address this because I don't want there to be any confusion on this I wanted to tell everybody I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna make a video for every mode of the major scale every mode of the melodic minor every mode of the harmonic minor every mode of the harmonic major every mode of the double harmonic major that I would make a scale I'm gonna redo all my videos there because I'm better a better camera and have a better recording interface I know how to make videos now pretty well I mean I'm not not the best at making I mean they visually look ok somebody actually gave me a compliment in the comments section and said Rick your color grading is really good like it's the only comment I read all the comments it's the only comment that anyone writes ever about my filming you know it's like I I've tried yeah i watch videos all the time to try and improve my the visuals on here but i'm going to also do the auxilary scales the Augmented scale which is a great scale symmetrical scale the whole tone scale the diminished scale pentatonic scales so there's major minor pentatonic but there's also melodic minor pentatonic scales which I've made videos about as well but I want to remake all of these right new pieces in them find new examples that Street them a lot of them are hard to find a lot of the ones from the double harmonic major or double harmonic yeah major scale are difficult to find harmonic major you can find some examples Allan Holdsworth used the harmonic major scale a lot and I made a video about Allan Holdsworth and Pat Metheny and talking about this actually what are you laughing at Billy okay anyway so Allan is one of the few people that use those scales and would use the Augmented scale uses some of those symmetrical scales use diminish scale I actually was listening to Alan yesterday and I I've been thinking there's on his secrets record there's a great whole tone lick that he plays and I've been I've been trying to find it for free the last couple years and I and I was listening to the record and it came by and I was oh where it is in it's it's it was in the song oh geez and I'm not gonna be fine oh yeah hold on I have the record right here it's a great great solo let's see here hold on it sits on secrets it's in it'sit's like a minute 20 and the sign is oh it's in spokes that's it spokes great great augmented or a whole tone lick one of my favorites and if anybody can play that on guitar it's very hard to play in guitar thank you Paul appreciate that but check out spokes allan holdsworth secrets record and try and find that whole tone lick it's just a sequence it moves down by whole steps but it is amazing it's really hard I can't figure out the way that he would have played it without sweet picking but Alan does a sweet pick so I cannot I can't think it's done with the synth acts maybe because it's tuned in fifths if anybody has any insight into that Thank You Laura appreciate that wow that's great if anyone has any insight into how Alan is playing that I think it's him playing the solo on this it's a synth it could be Alan Pasqua or you know somebody playing keyboards on it but put the comments section okay that's it for now subscribe to the channel Billy we're gonna say discount code Arby's 16 people haven't been or happen okay I'm gonna make a new discount code right now hold on I'm gonna put it in the comments hold on I'm gonna do it right now for all of you so I can man it says it's active here yeah okay what should I call this RB mode RB mode RB mo de ok 35% off and it says it's on right now RB mode you can get it works great some people have used I see that it's actually work for some people but try RB mode or try out with a different browser you guys are amazing thank you so much for tuning in today I'll see you in a couple days I've got some other got some other videos in the queue ready to come out so thank you so much modes and scales thank you for everybody to contribute a super chat you're the best

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 349,613

Keywords: music theory, scales, Modes, Lydian, Harmonic Minor, Jazz, Piano, Progression, Rick Beato, Harmony, Major, Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Locrian, NAMM2020, Beato Ear Training, The Beato Book, The Beato Club, Intervals, arpeggio, Music, How To Use, allan holdworth, Whiteboard

Id: vZ8QzZ8GGo4

Length: 33min 9sec (1989 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020