Understanding Modal Chord Progressions

we're World War II World War II World War II World War if it's gone guys Brian from zombie guitar here today's lesson is about a modal chord progressions alright so for get out of that I just wanted to uh say it's been a pretty long time since I've made a YouTube video that's because both my amps kind of crap they automate so they were in the shop for the last two months or so but in the meantime what I've been doing is I've been adding a ton of content to my lead guitar improv course so what I'm asking is basically if you like my videos that I make and you want to support me all I ask is that you just simply check out the demo video for my lead guitar improv course so at least you know what it is see what I have to offer cost you nothing to watch it if you're interested in it maybe you won't want to purchase it if not cost you nothing to at least check it out so that'd be a great way to support what I'm doing I really appreciate that but with that said let's go on to the lesson so modal chord progressions this lesson is going to be divided into two parts number one would explain what they are explain the theory behind them and then they don't want to give a couple examples of popular songs that use modal chord progressions okay so let's get started okay so what is a modal chord progression so the easiest way to think of this is there's twelve keys in music alright there's twelve possible keys that you can play in each one of those twelve Keys has a total of seven diatonic chords okay now over those seven diatonic chords you can take any one of those seven chords and make that your tonal center in other words you can make that be your one chord okay or your home court however you want to refer to it as and you make that your tonal Center and depending on which chord of those seven chords you make your home cord determines what type of modal progression of this okay so the easiest way to visualize this is taking a look at the circle of fifths okay the circle of fifths groups six of the seven diatonic chords in groupings of six like so so I've made lots of other videos that talk about this concept so let's just take the key of C major for example in the key of C major six of your seven diatonic chords are grouped like so anytime you have a grouping of six like this the chord that is in the top in the outer circle in the center position is the one chord okay which associates with the Ionian mode okay any time you are in the outer circle and the counterclockwise position that would be the four chord which associates with the Lydian mode outer circle clockwise position that is the five chord associates with the mixolydian mode inner circle center position associates with the sixth chord Aeolian mode inner circle counterclockwise position that's the two chord that associates with the Dorian mode inner circle clockwise position that is the three chord that associates with the Phrygian mode okay so that holds true for any grouping of six okay you can do that for the key of C major the key of G major the key of D your key of a major no matter what the grouping of six will always those chords will always fall into that position all right so we're just going to look at each of these chords so depending on which of these chords you decide to make your your tonal center or your focal point determines what type of modal chord progression you will be playing alright so the most common of the two are Ionian and Aeolian Ionian is just a fancy way of saying a major key a only and it's just a fancy way of saying that natural minor key okay so if you decide to make the coordinate isn't in the outer circle center position your tonal center you make that be a 1 chord the chord that you start the progression on and progression on then you are playing Ionian that modal chord progression and you can therefore use the Ionian mode to solo over the entire progression all right so let's just make up a random - a progression a random Ionian cool progression and something like [Music] because I stored that my locker there so I can just played the C major scale and over top of all of the chords and this is just a sea I don't need it local chord progression like I said go [Music] okay so I just used the C major scale and the one scale worked over all of the chords because the whole thing was just C Ionian alright so the next most popular one is the most common one would be a a only inchoate progression okay so now we're going to make the a minor be our new one chord okay this a minor is going to be our starting court or ending chord the tonal center making the whole feel of the progression sounding different than that of the Ionian okay so let's hear all that sounds [Music] okay so still I'm just using chords within this grouping of six I'm not I'm not using any out of key chords alright in this grouping of six so you can go ahead and you can solo over that progression using the a minor scale and it gives you a different sound different feel okay [Music] okay so I had a different sound a different feel okay okay so that's just major and minor or I don't need an alien that's really nothing really new you don't really consider that to be mobile alright that's that's not really what this lesson is about okay I just wanted to point that out that they are actually modes but doesn't just the most commonly used modes now general rule of thumb is the more chords that are used within a particular key the less likely it is to be modal okay the more likely it is to either just be a major key or a minor key but the less likely it is to be Dorian Phrygian Lydian or mixolydian alright so generally modal chord progressions work best with just one two or maybe three chords alright any more than three chords chances are it's going to have the tendency to sound either just like a major key or a minor key alright it's going to be very hard to make one of the other chords become your tummo Center alright now the way that these things generally work is you want to look for what is known as a characteristic chord combination all right so each of the other modes has a characteristic chord combination so let's start off with the Dorian mode so on the Dorian mode is associated with the inner circle counterclockwise position alright any time you have that chord right there you want to make that your tonal center you could do that but if you want to make a progression out of it or something more often than not it's going to be in combination with so we're going to call the D minor he's now going to be our new one chord okay the D minor is that's our one chord and when you see that in combination with a major four chord in relation to this new chord that we're now calling one chord so it'd be D Mayer and G major okay so the cord on the e-string is a minor chord it were calling that our one chord in relation to this new one chord on the a string you're going to form a major chord that would that be a four chord within the context of this new Moodle type of thinking okay so when you see a minor one chord and a major four chord together and you're still in this grouping of six okay that's where modal whole progression comes so I'm just gonna lay down that [Music] okay I can solar over top of that using the D Dorian mode making the note D my scale route making the D minor chord the overall total Center making this a D Dorian and modal progression okay so [Music] you [Music] okay so it wasn't major it wasn't minor it was Nell Dorian okay our Tamil Center was the D minor chord the scale root was the note D the scale of framework that we used to solo over the entire progression was the D Dorian mode alright the characteristic chord combination was the minor one chord and the major four chord in combination with one another okay so now let's go ahead and try and make a a Phrygian chord progression okay so to make a Phrygian chord progression you want to make your tunnel Center based on the chord that is in the inner circle clockwise position alright so in this case it's the e minor chord and again we're going to look for characters to chord combination characteristic or combination for a Phrygian mode would be a one chord followed by a flat major two chord alright we're calling it a minor chord our one chord now okay so II mine is our new 1/4 new turtle Center and then a major 2 chord a flat major 2 chord is just one half step away okay so still we'll just we're still sticking with only chords within this grouping of six [Music] but that's the combination the characteristic chord combination that you want to look for which will give you a good indication that it's Phrygian okay or a Phrygian modal chord progression so let me lay that down [Music] okay and I can go ahead and soul over top of that with um with the e Phrygian mode okay [Music] you [Music] okay had overall different sounds a minor chord was my tonal center the E minor chord was in my new one chord the characteristic chord combination was the minor one chord in combination with the flat two chord or the flat major two chord and the scalar framework that I used to solo over the entire progression was the e 14 mode okay okay so now we can do the same thing for the you know for the F chord or the G chord making the F chord a tonal Center would be a Lydian mode or progression making the G chord our tonal Center would be a mixolydian modal chord progression alright so let's try it for the F chord okay so the F chord is now going to be our new one chord we're considering this to be a new one chord the characteristic chord combination for the Lydian mode that I want to look for is when you see a major one chord and a major two chord in combination with one another alright so that would be a major one chord followed by a major two chord which is one whole step higher okay okay so you see there's two chords together in combination on your channel Center is the F major chord you can use the F Lydian mode to solo over the entire progression over both chords are excellent you know that sounds [Music] okay so f Lydian mode worked over both courts the F was our new tunnel center the characteristic chord combination was the major one chord and the major two chord in combination with one another okay and remember these are just I'm only making two chord chord progressions you can also have more but as I said the more chords that you throw into the mix the less likely that it's going to be modal the more likely that it's going to be just a major key or a minor key okay so but no matter what it won't generally you want to look for these characteristic chord combinations to really be a good indicator of if it's going to be mobile or not alright so the last one is going to be making the G major chord to be our total Center so we're gonna call the G major chord our one chord and this is going to be a G mixolydian modal progression and the characteristic cord combination that you want to look for is when you see a major one chord and a flat major seven chord a major flat seven chord in combination with one another okay so G would be the major one chord and then a major flat 7 so flat 7 is a whole step lower and it's going to be a major chord okay now I realize that these are the same two chords that we just did for Lydian but now we are making the G chord be our new tonal Center we're calling the G chord one chord and the F chord is just the other chord within the progression but it's not the starting quarter I know that's a little confusing but just bear with me here so okay so we can use the G mixolydian mode to solo over that and it will work over but of course so let's hear all that sounds [Music] the [Music] okay so mixolydian and Lydian I know they get kind of confusing but you just have to understand that you know you're whatever one they're making your tongue center so if you were to make a three-quarter chord progression out of it then it would even be more likely that it would be much more solidified that it's mixolydian as opposed to Lydia okay so that's basically that so that's all you want to do it's whatever one of these six chords you make as your tongue whole Center that's essentially how you come up with a motor chord progression and now with seven chord which isn't included in this come and this grouping of six that's the low korean chord okay the low korean court or the Locrian mode isn't really used much because of the seven diatonic chords in any key three are major three or minor and one is a diminished triad or if you to make a pure making it to a seventh chord it would be a half diminished chord so when you try and make your your one chord be a a diminished triad or a half diminished chord it just really doesn't it really just doesn't work it doesn't have it's very difficult to make it become your tonal center it's not impossible but it's just very it's not used very often alright so that's why we pretty much just focus on the six modes we kind of just don't really use the Locrian mode very much all right so let me give you some song examples that actually use this stuff to maybe help you understand this more okay so lots of songs are written in major keys and lots of songs are written in minor keys so I don't really need to give you examples of songs that use those it's much less common to hear songs written in other modes jam bands such as fish and Grateful Dead and stuff like that they a lot of their jams take place in other modes but that's not so mainstream so let me get some more common commonly used songs all right so the Dorian mode Santana's evil ways it's a cut and dry example of a Dorian modal chord progression it uses just two chords and it is the characteristic chord combination it uses a G minor chord which would be the one chord the end the G Dorian mode and it uses the C major chord okay so minor one chord in combination with a major four chord [Music] I think that's the rhythm I'm not exactly sure if that's the exact rhythm but evil ways listen to it by Santana the leads that he does over the top of it I don't know that I'm off the top of my head but I can assure you that he's using the G Dorian mode quite often in his leads for that particular song because that is a cut and dry example of a G Dorian chord progression okay another example would be um gene says okay who does that I feel what the name of the band is porno for Pyro's or something I remember but um so that would be um G major and a major okay so G major would be your one chord and then a major would be your major two chords over major one chord major two chord with the major one chord being the Tomo Center okay that is a Lydian chord progression okay so [Music] all right that's a song so one that uses a mixolydian chord progression alright is Jessica by the Allman Brothers that's actually what sparked this whole lesson idea was because someone asked me what key Jessica was in and he thought it was in he wasn't sure if it's an A major or D major or G major or what the reason that this is a little confusing to figure out is because it's actually in the it's in the a mixolydian mode alright so this is going to be the one that's going to be kind of the most confusing to maybe understand so the way Jessica starts out as it starts out on an a major chord and it kind of just plays an a major chord and then it holds down the the sus four so it's [Music] okay so right there you're kind of just holding out on just one single cord it's a major chord you could say that it's an A major at this point it's not necessarily Moodle it's not necessarily guaranteed to be an A major you don't really know because you're only on one chord at this point okay so that's all just a major right there but then at one point he goes down and they're playing on the G major chord okay [Music] okay something I kind of forgot to play the leads to this but it was on the name major the whole time and then all of a sudden this G major comes into play okay so all right that's the indication that is it is a mixolydian chord progression okay you have your major one chord and then that major flat seven chord comes into play okay that's the characteristic or combination that's the thing that triggers okay this is mixolydian now alright and this is solidified by the fact that the flat seven the mixolydian mode is the same thing as the major is the same thing as a major scale with the difference being that it has a flat seven scale degree okay if you don't if you want more honest more explanation of that I put up I always put relevant links to other lessons in that you know in the description and stuff so you can always refer back to those but instead of going okay so right here is the flat seven [Music] if it was just regular a major would be okay but it's using this note the flat seven oh okay so that flat seven along with the fact that you have a major one chord and a major flat seven chord okay that's a very I mean that's cut and dry example of a a mixolydian chord progression using the a mixolydian mode over top of it alright then there's one other chord in that song and it's the e major chord and the only thing about that a major chord is that's not necessarily in key but it's just a dominant seven chord and the dominant seven chord always leads you back to the one chord so in relation to the a major the E major okay that's just standard music theory okay so dominant seven chord always leads you back to the one chord alright the whole rest of the song is just a major and G major with the exception of that dominant seven [Music] all right with the exception of that meeting you back to the Concord alright so that is a mixolydian chord progression it's just one other thing I wanted to point out about Jessica and that is the fact that there is one other note that he uses and leaves that is neither major or mixolydian it's actually has a minor third in there as well okay so if you actually sit there and figure this whole solo it out note for note which I did at one point but I don't have it memorized at this point but you'll notice that there is a C natural in there as opposed to a c-sharp okay so if it was purely mixolydian it would just have one two three four five six flat seven okay but there's a flat three in there that he uses as well and the reason that that flat three is in there is because that's actually taken from the Dorian mode it's very common to mix the mixolydian modes and the Dorian modes together because there they are the exact same thing the only difference is the mixolydian has a major third scale degree the Dorian mode has a minor third scale degree that's another one of the lessons that I linked to below how to combine the mixolydian and the Dorian modes together because they're so they're so close to one another and the only difference being that one has a major third and one is a minor third that doesn't change the fact that this song is in the eighth mixolydian mode songs in the a mixolydian mode he just happens to be so long and he wants to do some fancy stuff so instead of throwing in the major third he throws in the minor third and it just gives an interesting sound okay but mixolydian mode other than that so if any of this stuff was that you know a little bit too confusing for you modally any of that stuff rooms that hard to understand take a look at the lessons that I linked you to below in the description there's a lot of stuff that will go a lot more into detail about this all right so check that out if you have any questions feel free to ask and I will be glad to help you out I'm gonna now see you next time thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Brian Kelly

Views: 328,094

Keywords: guitar, modes, guitar lessons, modal progression, chord progression, lydian, mixolydian, phrygian, dorian, ionian, aeolian, locrian

Id: 5r4tDMqzOYA

Length: 26min 23sec (1583 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2018