This is why you don't Understand Modes (part 1)

[Music] hey what's going on guys brian kelly here from zombie guitar in today's video i'm going to talk about modes and i want to talk about the number one thing that causes so many guitar players to be confused about modes or to not understand modes the reason i say guitar players is because in the guitar community the topic of modes is this huge obsession i'm sure you're aware of this if you are part of any music theory groups or any guitar forms or anything like that modes is this obsession and it's a guitar player thing this obsession it's just you don't see piano players obsessing over modes you don't see saxophone players obsessing over modes guitar players we're just obsessed with modes i keep saying it over and over i'm just one person i'm not going to be able to stop the obsession the obsession has been going on for years the obsession is going to continue for many years to come it's like a tidal wave that just is sweeping over the whole internet this tidal wave of just misinformation i'm going to just do my best to try and stop it but you know one person's not gonna be able to stop a tidal wave so uh there is an obsession with modes and it i think it really just comes down to this one thing so what's that one thing that one thing is that modes are based on a chord so if you take a key signature pick a key signature take the key signature of c major for example you look at your seven chords in any given key signature you have seven chords three of the chords are major three of the chords are minor one of the chords is going to be a diminished chord so you have seven chords whichever one of those chords you dictate to be the tonal center within the key signature that's what dictates the mode that's what modes are alright that's why i say you gotta understand your fundamentals before diving into modes you need to understand what a key signature is you need to understand why these chords are part of a key signature you need to understand you just need to understand what it means to be in key you need to understand what it means to be diatonic to a key that's the fundamental stuff don't worry about modes until you understand the fundamental stuff that's what i'm always trying to say so modes are based on a chord so you have seven chords in the key signature each of the seven chords equates to one of the modes that's what a mode is so one big misconception surrounding the topic of modes is a lot of guitar players will think well if i'm playing here i'm playing this mode and if i jump up to here and i play this pattern then i'm playing this other mode and if i jump up to here and play this pattern i'm playing this other mode so if i connect these different mode patterns together then i'll be able to solo over the entire fretboard which was my goal in the first place and that's not what modes are that's completely wrong modes are not patterns on the fretboard i'm going to demonstrate to you why that is the case in this video i'm going to just use one simple scale pattern and i'm going to show you that you can play all of the modes using just one simple scale pattern so modes are not patterns on the fretboard that's a big misconception the other it's not really a misconception this is closer to what modes actually are but it's still missing the big point people will say all right well if i take my c major scale which is the notes c d e f g a b back on c again so if i play the c major scale from c to c then i'm playing the c ionian mode but if i start on the second note which is the note d and then i play through the c major scale but i start on d end on d then i'm playing the dorian mode and that's a little closer to what modes actually are but that still leaves you with the question all right what's the point what does that matter what does it matter if i start on the note d and on the note d how can i actually take that and apply that to playing in real life well that's you're missing the point that's not really the point what you do the way that you use modes is the notes of the c major scale are all up and down the neck of the guitar you have these c d e f g a b notes everywhere up and down the entire neck of the guitar you can play here you can play here you can play here you play anywhere you can play these notes in any order it doesn't matter what note you start on you can start on the note e you can start on the f you can start on the note d play the notes in any order you want but if you play those notes of the c major scale play them over a d minor chord which is the second chord in the key signature of c major the resulting sound is going to be dorian if you play those seven notes of the c major scale and you play them over an f major chord which is the fourth chord in the key signature of c major the resulting sound is going to be lydian so modes are dictated by the underlying chord that you are playing the notes of the key signature over that's what modes are it's a commonly there that's a big thing that people are not talking about nearly enough they're commonly talking about you know which note you start on it's not about which note you start on it's about which chord you are playing over let me just demonstrate this real quick and then i'm going to even take this a step further and i'm going to get into modal chord progressions let's just start with one chord at a time first so i'm going to use this c major scale pattern right here this is going to span across all six strings spanning more than two octaves [Music] set your c major scale span across all six strings play that over c major chord [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right remember that sound that's the sound of c ionian i'm going to play that same exact scale pattern but i'm going to play it over an a minor chord and i'm going to emphasize the note a within that same scale pattern as well [Music] do [Music] had a different sound that's because i played it over an a minor chord and that was the aeolian sound that you heard let me try playing it over a g major chord that's the fifth chord in the key signature of c major [Music] that's the mixolydian sound you just heard i'll do one more i'll play over the e minor chord that's the third chord in the key signature of c major that's going to give the phrygian sound [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that is the phrygian sound so i just demonstrated four modes of the key signature of c major using that same scale pattern i played it over a different chord and depending on which of the chords i i played which of the seven chords within the key signature c major that i played and then i was just kind of timing my phrases so i also ended or started on the note associated with the chord that i was playing so over an e minor chord i tried to time my phrases so that i ended on the note e over g major chord i tried to tie my phrases so that i ended on the note g but it's really about the chord alright so you take this scale pattern you take this this group of seven notes and then you play it over a different chord depending on which chord you played over within the key signature that's what gives you the sound of the mode modes or sounds all right so now we're going to take this a step further i want to talk about modal chord progressions so we've already established that modes are based on which one of the seven chords within the key signature that you dictate to be the tonal center modes aren't about which note you start on within your scale modes definitely are not based on which pattern on the guitar you're playing it's all about the chords alright so we've already established that so you can take this a step further and you can write chord progressions so if you are in the key signature of say c major you have your seven chords you have your seven notes that you can use as your soloing framework to solo over the chord progression that you're writing so instead of making a chord progression in which the c major chord is the tonal center which would which the resulting sound would be ionian because it's based off the first chord in the key signature instead of doing that we can make the a minor chord to be the tonal center so within the key signature of c major the a minor chord is the sixth chord the sixth chord associates with aeolian so if we write a chord progression using just these chords you don't have to use all of them but just pulling from this pool of seven chords not using anything else making a minor to be our tonal center and then soloing over top of it with that pattern that we just used up here again i could use the entire fretboard but just for the sake of sticking with what we've done already i'm just going to stick with just this pattern the resulting sound is going to be alien [Music] foreign [Music] all right so for the second example i'm going to give you a dorian chord progression so i'm still going to make the a minor chord to be the tonal center but i'm going to do it in the key signature of g major so within the key signature of g major you have your seven chords a minor is the second chord in the key signature of g major the second chord is always associated with dorian so i'm going to play a modal chord progression within this new key signature now a minor is still going to be the tonal center but the a minor chord is going to have a bit of a different sound to it it's going to function differently it's going to function as the second chord within the key signature the resulting sound is going to be durian now and then i'm just going to solo over top of it and i'm going to use my g major scale pattern you could also call it the a dorian scale pattern whatever i'm just going to use the same scale pattern that i used up here but i'm just going to move it down here just to show you that you can use the same the same shape [Music] [Music] baby [Music] all right so for this final example i'm going to play a phrygian chord progression so a minor is still going to be the tonal center chord but now we're going to be in the key signature of f major in the key signature of f major a minor is your third chord whenever you take your third chord and you dictate that to be your tonal center then the resulting sound is phrygian so a minor is the third chord in the key signature of f major so i'm going to write a chord progression in this key signature i'm going to hone in on this a minor chord i'm going to noodle over top of it using this same scale pattern but it's going to be placed here now you could call it an f major scale pattern you could call it an a phrygian scale pattern it's just a set of seven notes [Music] so [Music] all right so let me just play all three of those back to back so you can hear one after the other so you can hear aeolian versus dorian versus phrygian check this out [Music] so [Music] [Music] so right so all three of those examples the a minor chord was the tonal center but when the a minor chord was functioning as the sixth chord within the key signature the resulting sound was aeolian when the a minor chord was functioning as the two chord within the key signature the resulting sound was dorian when it was functioning as the three chord within the key signature the resulting sound was phrygian that's what modes are all about modes are all about which one of the seven chords within the key signature is the tonal center you can do it over just one single chord or you can write modal chord progressions it's all about the chords it's not about the scales it is a little bit but that's not the whole picture it's about the chords all right hopefully that made sense hopefully i was able to clear some confusion up for you guys if you have any questions ask in the comments see you next time thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Brian Kelly

Views: 73,715

Keywords: guitar, guitar lessons, music theory, zombie guitar, modes, modal chord progressions

Id: v1rEq_cAsFg

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021