The Modes Ranked by Brightness

we're often taught to think about tonality to think about key as either major or minor major being happy and minor being sad but this is a very limiting way of thinking about tonality and it doesn't really represent how tonality actually works in practice for example where did the modes fit in with that other modes major or minor they happy or sad is mixolydian for example happy or is it sad well some people might tell you it's a major mode because it has a major third and this is true but this doesn't mean that mixolydian should be described as happy the major scale and the mixolydian scale have different qualities they sounding different so we can't use the same word to describe both of them we can't say they're both happy really we're asking the wrong question what we should be asking is is mixolydian brighter or darker their major brightness is an alternative and more sophisticated way of describing tonality rather than thinking of tonalities as emotions as happy or sad we can think of them more as a spectrum of light where different tonalities are relatively brighter or darker than each other so what I'm going to do today is I'm going to go through the modes of the major scale and some other scales and plot them on here based on how bright they are so you can see what's brighter than major what's dark in the major and what's brighter than minor wants darker than minor so let's start here what could be brighter than the major scale if you're used to thinking in terms of happy and sad when it comes to scales rather than bright and dark it might be hard to imagine a scale that's happier than the major scale but it's easy to work out what scales are brighter than the major scale generally speaking to make a scale brighter you just have to sharpen one of its notes so if we want to find a scale that's brighter than the major scale all we have to do is choose one of the degrees of the scale to sharpen so let's sharpen this fourth degree turning this F into an F sharp you and the scale that we've wound up with is Lydian C Lydian so Lydian is brighter than the major scale and bright is certainly a good way to describe the Lydian scale the Lydian scale has a certain uplifting transcendental almost sort of magical feeling to it for example listen to how the Lydian mode has been used in Yoda's theme from Star Wars to create a sense of awe and Wonder [Music] okay so going back to our spectrum we've worked out what's brighter than the major scale but what could be darker than the major scale well you might instantly think of the minor scale and that is true but minor is actually quite significantly darker than major there are scales in between so let's look at those first all we have to do to darken the scale is to do the opposite of what we did to brighten the scale so rather than taking one of the scale degrees and sharpening it this time we'll take one of the notes from the major scale and flatten it instead so if we flattened the 7th degree for example from the major scale we wind up with a different mode we wind up with mixolydian I like to think of mixolydian as majors edgy oh brother pretty much the same scale but with an extra shade of darkness at the end mixolydian has a very similar filter major although one of the distinct differences is that it's less directional the major scale has a strong sense of resolution that's what makes it so functional as the scale because the 7th tone is only a semitone away from the octave it sounds very tense to rest there it wants to resolve up to the octave but because the mixolydian scale has flattened that 7th tone we've weakened that sense of resolution that 7th tone is more happy to just sit there without resolving mixolydian starkest slightly edgier tone makes it a very common choice in rock music you'll probably actually find more songs using the mixolydian scale in rock music then you will using the major scale for example we see what Leonard Bernstein has to say about it do you remember a really terrific song a barbaric number of a few years ago sung by a group known as the kinks it's called you really got me you really got me going you got me so I got some at night yeah you really got me now you got me so I don't know yeah that's all mixolydian so mixolydian is darker than major but we can go darker still all we have to do is flatten another scale degree if we flatten mixolydian third degree for example we get the Dorian mode we're not quite at the minor scale itself yet I've always known as the Aeolian mode but Dorian is a nice halfway house between major and minor it has some of the darkness of minor but with a less foreboding or menacing sound this means that Dorian can create a very cool jazzy sound making it a common choice in funk music to show a more recent example uptown funk is based on what you would call a Dorian vamp [Music] if we were in the minor scale with this G major would be a G minor because the B would be a b-flat but because Dorian has this be natural we get a slightly brighter sound Dorian can also be great at creating a sense of bittersweet sadness of melancholy where it's sad with a slight edge of brightness a great example of this is madworld originally by Tears for Fears [Music] find it hard to tell you [Music] people run in circles it's a very very Matt Wales chorus is actually built from the same two chords the same Dorian vamp as uptown funk was although this time were in the key of F the vocal melody is built by outlining these two chords and each time that the melody hits this distinctive Dorian note this D natural you can hear that the tone of the song is brightening for a moment [Music] I know I'm spending a lot of time here talking about the Dorian mode but the Dorian mode really is a brilliant way to balance between major and minor for example if you have a son that's predominantly in the minor scale and you suddenly want to have a moment of brightness then you can go into the Dorian mode and a great example of this is in the for stream or binary sunsets by John Williams I'll play you the music now without any prompt and see if you can hear the moment that it brightens up the moment that we shift into Dorian [Music] did you hear it this time uh put some labels on screen to show you exactly where it happens so like I said before if we go darker than Dorian then we wind up with the minor scale we wind up with the Aeolian mode and this is because if we take the Dorian mode and flatten the sixth degree it becomes the minor scale but what's darker than the minor scale well let's flatten another degree if we flatten the second degree of the minor scale we wind up with this scale called the Phrygian mode Phrygian has a spookier darker sound than our usual minor scale which makes our common choice in metal music [Music] [Music] by having a semitone between the root and the second degree rather than a whole tone Phrygian has a constant sense of tension it's like the Phrygian scale is one big slippery slope heading back down to the root so any melody in a Phrygian is begging to resolve back down we've plotted six out of seven of the major scale modes onto the spectrum so far so let's take a look at the final one if we flattened the fifth degree of the Phrygian scale we wind up with a scale that's even darker than Phrygian la Prien Locrian sound is so dark and so dissonant that it's often described as the unusable mode I've talked about la Creon and its peculiar sound a lot on my channel before so this time our let Leonard Bernstein give his opinion on it then the next mode starting on B is known as the LA Creon mode and this one we can really skip because there's almost no music written in it see the LA Korean mode is strangely unsatisfying it doesn't seem to be conclusive mainly because the tonic chord you get from it is terribly unsettled see what I mean so hello and goodbye to the LA Korean mode there are some examples though of songs that use this mode for example dust to dust by John Kirkpatrick I've actually already done a deeper analysis of how dusty dusty uses the loc Korean mode in one of my previous videos so go back and check that out if you're interested so there you go you can see from just the seven different modes of the major scale that would get a whole spectrum of brightness to choose from but we're not limited of course to just these seven modes we can put any scales on here for example what's darker than the Locrian mode well all we have to do to find out is to flatten another interval compared to the major scale almost all of the intervals of the LA Korean mode are already flattened but what about the 4th degree if we flattened the 4th degree of the LA Korean mode we actually wind up with a mode that's fittingly called super Locrian although the scale is also sometimes referred to by the slightly less interesting name of the altered scale so we've got super la cream that is darker than la creme but what about at the other end of the spectrum can we have a scale that's brighter than Lydian well like before all we have to do is sharpen one of these intervals if we sharpen the fifth interval of Lydian for example we wind up with this scale called Lydian augmented you could keep adding scales to the spectrum for quite a while but for now I think that's a pretty good palette to choose from I find that from the point of view of analyzing and composing music this way of conceptualizing the modes and different scales is a far more effective way of seeing how they interact how they're related to each other even just being aware that there are attend a letís beyond major and minor helps you think outside of the box when you're trying to create new music so I know that this video has been more on the technical side than some of my recent videos but I hope you enjoyed it and if it's something that you found interesting then I would highly recommend this video by Adam Neely on what makes the major scale happy so let me know in the comments what you think of this modal spectrum way of conceptualizing tonalities I'd love to hear what you think about it and a big thank you as always goes to my patrons who on this occasion actually helped me choose this video topic if you would like to be able to vote on future video topics and have access to exclusive content like behind-the-scene vlogs that maybe consider becoming a patreon of this channel for three dollars a month you can be on this fantastic list of people and for $5 a month you can be on this extra special list of people including Andrew Stein's d Asha Andrew Brown and the Deacon Austin Barrett Bob McKinstry Chris Korbel christopher ryan daniel lon Darrel Darren Harvey David M Barrie as Ben Hansen FD Hodel George Taylor Gulf House James ko jae-hak inspire Jove asam Jonah Soderstrom justin vigor Kaitlin Morrison Meg Fellowes melody composes squared Nancy Gillard Nicholas Barnard pupas Oh Peter Dunphy Roger clay T Newport and Tim beaker what is that old Greek mode doing in today's pop music well I'll tell you from about the time of BA until the beginning of our own century roughly 200 years our Western music has been based almost exclusively on only two modes the major and the minor composers have gotten tired of being stuck with major and minor all the time there's been a big revival of those old pre ba modes and that's why Debussy used them so much and other modern composers like in debate and Stravinsky and almost all the young songwriters of today's exciting pop music scene the modes have provided them with a fresh sound a relief from the old overused major and minor we get to think that major and minor modes are all there are but the history music is much longer than a mere 200 years

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 828,140

Keywords: modes, major or minor, tonality, key, music theory, dorian, ionian, mixolydian, lydian, phrygian, locrian, super locrian, mad world, uptown funk, leonard bernstein, dust to dust, metallica, phrygian in metal, symphony for destruction, megadeth, the kinks, explained, brightness, john williams, bruno mars

Id: jNY_ZCUBmcA

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2019