Unlocking ALL the Modes [Music Theory - Songwriting - Composition]

[Music] I've seen your face [Music] discovering modes has been a complete Game Changer in the way I write music but what's the point of a mode if I could choose any chord or any note then why not just stick to Chromatic all the notes all the time why not well I find that when I write in a mode I get access to a specific mood it Sparks my imagination and focuses my creativity in a very unique way and discovering new modes and new scales is like a painter discovering colors he didn't even know existed so how many modes and scales are there talking about seven note scales here seven is sort of magical for reasons that are a bit beyond the scope of this video it has something to do with the fact that seven is relatively prime to 12. in this video Let's assume 7 is the magic number I'm going to tell you the story of how I figured out how many modes and scales there are so at first I learned the major scale the c major scale to be specific all the white notes on the piano so now I'm at one scale soon thereafter I learned about the minor scale specifically the a minor scale all the white notes on the piano I mean I didn't see much point to it since it was the same notes as C major but I still considered it a scale so now we're at two and around the same time my musician friends were telling me about modes like Dorian phrygian lydian mixolydian locrian aeolian and it sounded quite mysterious and magical like there was a world of exploration to be had inside those modes it sounded so enticing but I just didn't get it essentially they said if you start the c major scale on D you get D Dorian if you start on E you get e phrygian and I was like okay okay it just sounds like I'm still in the c major scale I'm just doing some kind of interesting exercises with a defined pattern of notes but I'm still in C just sounds like the c major scale started on D and started on E so I just didn't get it so I was still at two scales and for the same reason I didn't quite get the minor scale I didn't get the modes but I still considered the minor scale a scale probably by sheer cultural pressure then came the day I discovered the harmonic minor scale with that nice augmented second between the sixth and seventh note foreign that one sounded fresh and new and that major five to minor one Cadence oh I would love that sound and I wrote so many songs using it so I was now at three modes and scales and a bit after I learned of the melodic minor scale which was an alteration of the harmonic minor to smooth out that augmented second but since I did love the sound of that augmented second I sort of found a melodic minor useless I still considered it a scale I would include it in my scale runs on the guitar and the vocals but didn't see quite the point of it but I was now at four scales and it stayed like that for years possibly more than a decade and then all of a sudden I unlocked all the modes with one small difference in the way I would look at them instead of looking at the modes in a relative way like C major compared to D Dorian I would compare them in parallel C major compared to C Dorian oh now it sounds different now I get it I mean it's as simple as that just compare them in the same key with the same tonic and they're going to sound different [Music] and now from C ionian major to see Dorian [Music] s [Music] [Music] a whole new universe of possibilities opened up I understood the modes now so I was now up to nine scales because major and minor were modes in themselves so I'm adding five new modes and scales to my account so four plus five equals nine here's something in linear [Music] feeling feeling lost now [Music] now [Music] and now here's something in aeolian [Music] this is peace I'm preaching but I'm lost I am reaching in the frost and now that I had the key to unlocking the modes I figured that the harmonic minor scale has its own modes depending on where you started so I'm adding seven new modes and scales to my account well six actually because the harmonic minor was already there so now we're up to 15. here's something in the sixth mode of the harmonic minor scale in lydian Sharp 2. [Music] now here's something in phrygian dominant really really cool mode of the harmonic minor scale that is so colorful and enticing foreign [Music] [Music] and the same thing goes for the melodic minor scale it has its own seven modes and they're absolutely gorgeous I mean I don't know why I was completely ignoring the scale but it's amazing we're now up to 21 as in three scales with seven modes each here's something in mixolydian Flat 6 the fifth mode of the melodic minor scale one of my absolute favorite modes overall [Music] please I wish [Music] you were and here's something in Dorian flat 2 or phrygian natural six depending on how you look at it the second mode of the melodic minor scale [Music] embrace [Music] [Music] and at this point I was watching tons of videos and reading tons of articles on the internet about modes and scales and I stumbled upon a video by Rick piatto from three years ago I think it was scale versus modes and two other scales in their seven modes came up in that video the harmonic major scale [Music] here's something in the bass mode harmonic major [Music] and there's something in the third mode phrygian flat four a really interesting mode since it has both a major and a minor tonic chord [Music] s [Music] foreign [Music] major scale [Music] sounded really exotic and cool here's something in the fourth mode Hungarian minor I believe we're now up to 35 moans and scales as in five scales with seven modes each and I didn't question Rick I was sort of content with that number 35 it stayed in my head for quite a while until one day I stumbled upon this foreign [Music] a sharp four and a flat six [Music] I was like oh cool it must be one of the modes of one of those five scales and seven modes that we know already one of the 35 but no it wasn't it was its own scale with its own seven modes so we're now up to 42 modes and scales and then there was another one Neapolitan minor so we're now up to 49 and another one Neapolitan major 56. so now eight scales with seven modes each alright so I was like wait wait wait wait wait I'm not going to figure this out by just Googling and collecting all the modes and scales like I'm collecting stamps I'm gonna figure this out with math it can't be that complicated there's just 12 notes and we want to figure out how many seven notes scales there are if we assume that we're in 12 tone equal temperament as in all the keys are equivalent without loss of generality we could assume that the tonic is C so now our computation is only about finding six other nodes among the 11 remaining notes wait a minute that's just combinations without repetitions of six elements among 11 where order does not matter there's a simple formula for that now if we plug in our numbers 6 and 11 we get 462 66 scales with seven modes each whoa but wait a minute wait a minute that means that there's this scale here which is all the chromatic notes from C to F sharp and then jumping to the other C [Music] doesn't feel all that useful it doesn't seem very scale like to me so we have to put a limitation on this computation how about this one you can build a unique Triad as in a major minor diminished or augmented trial on every scale degree I didn't really have a formula for that so I wrote a program that would sift through all the possibilities and bust out the ones that met this criteria the result 77 11 scales with seven modes each well that's more than the 56 that I had stumbled upon alright nice so we have an answer 77 it's a nice number but wait the double harmonic scale does not have a unique Triad on its Fifth and seventh degree and it's still very usable so we have to relax this limitation a little bit how about this the biggest gap between two notes is an augmented second the same Gap that you find in the harmonic minor harmonic major harmonic lydian double harmonic I mean harmonic usually means that there is an augmented second in the scale so let's make that the biggest Gap so I run my program with this limitation and I get 266. 38 scales with 7 modes each that's a lot and we get such monstrosities as this one called gakrian so if we start from the c major scale and we sharp that too we sharp that three we sharp that four we sharp that five and we're not done we double sharp that three and we double sharp that four now we're in gakrian [Music] scale so now here's a piece of music in C ionian s [Music] is gone please please [Music] and now if we sharp that too double sharp that three double sharp that four sharp that five we're in gakrian here's what this piece of music sounds like [Music] causing your face [Music] [Music] charity I would probably never have written that piece of music in a million years had I not limited myself to this specific set of seven notes but what if we double sharp that too that gives us a pic Korean [Music] silence [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign which is still cool sounds very usable and this scale has a gap of a double augmented second which is four semitones alright so if we run this calculation again but with the new limitation of the biggest Gap being four semitones we get 413 as in 59 scales with seven modes each the major scale harmonic minor and melodic minor being just three out of those 59s 21 out of those 413 modes the original eight that we had found was just 8 out of that 59. 56 out of that 413. that's so much unexplored territory it's nuts and all 413 have their unique sound their unique set of notes and chords when I found that number I was sort of shocked so much to explore it's exciting now for the vast majority of those modes and scales there is no common practice no real example but that makes it more exciting to me as in it's unexplored territory I find it super interesting to choose a set of seven notes and figure out what piece of music I could create with that set of seven notes what kind of sound they have together again to reiterate I think that limitations Focus creativity and this limitation is no exception if you like any of the music that you've heard in this video and would be interesting to hear more you could go visit my Spotify page Link in the description there's a bunch of my released music there not all the songs that you've heard in the videos because those are mostly Works in progress but they will eventually make their way onto albums that I'm going to release in the future one last bit of really interesting information that didn't quite fit in the flow of the story I was telling if you give yourself the limitation of no bigger Gap than two semitones as in the whole tone and no more than two consecutive gaps of one semitone as in you can't get [Music] three notes chromatically bunched together this gives us two scales with seven modes each the major scale and the melodic minor scale interesting food for thought and before I go I would never have been able to create this video or to really go deep into some of the weirder unusual modes without this amazing resource that I've found on the internet it's Ian Ring's exciting Universe of Music Theory and on that site there's an amazing ring widget where you can enter any notes of any scale it doesn't have to be seven notes and it tells you the name of the scale or the names of that scale because sometimes there's several names all the modes all the chords and Triads you can build from it and a bunch of other information as in way more than you would ever want to know about any scalar mode I think Ian spent eight years building this site it has YouTube videos it has Graphics it has everything that you would ever want strongly recommend if you're interested I've been doing a series of videos in which I explore a specific mode by writing songs and bits of music with it here's a link to the playlist or just go to my channel and pick away I hope you liked it and remember 413. see you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Moss and Dandy Music

Views: 2,850

Keywords: Music Theory, Mode, Modes, Harmonic, Songwriting, Composing, Composition, Minor Scale, Major Scale, Ionian, Lydian, Scale, Guitar, Fender Telecaster, Taylor Guitar, Shure, Shure SM57, Shure SM7B, Singing, Harmonies, Song, Original Music, CAD Equitek, Kaotica Eyeball, Kaotica, sE Electronics, DM1 Dynamite, Fender, Fender Bass VI, Bass VI Pawn Shop, Steinberg Verve, Harmonic Minor, Aeolian, Dorian, Phrygian, Locrian, Superlocrian, Melodic Minor, Mixolydian, Gacrian, Epycrian, Neapolitan

Id: xOdhv5jrm0U

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023