Stop 1 of 6
What are modes?
Relative and parallel: the same scale from another centre.
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Stop 1 of 6
Relative and parallel: the same scale from another centre.
You land on an archipelago where every island is made of the same rock, yet each has its own landscape. That is what are: seven scales that share their material and still sound like different worlds. In this stop you learn to look at them in both possible ways — relative and parallel — and find out why only one of them helps you hear them.
Before any definition, listen. The three melodies below use only the white keys of the piano: C, D, E, F, G, A and B. Not a single sharp or flat. The only thing that changes is the low note sounding underneath, a drone. Switch on the drone shown, play the melody (or press Listen) and notice the mood of each one.
The first sounds happy and settled: it is the good old major scale. The second is minor, but with a strange glow, almost funk or Celtic, especially when the B appears. The third is plain minor, more melancholy. Same notes, three feelings. That, in one sentence, is a mode.
The most common way to present modes is the relative view: take the C major scale and play it starting and ending on each of its notes. You get seven journeys:
| Starts on | Name | Degree of the parent major scale |
|---|---|---|
| C | I | |
| D | ii | |
| E | iii | |
| F | IV | |
| G | V | |
| A | vi | |
| B | vii |
Each is the of the others: they share notes, and C major is their “parent scale”. Look at what happens to the ladder of whole and half steps when you start on D instead of C:
The half steps (E–F and B–C) have not moved on the keyboard, but they have moved relative to the tonic. In C major they sit between degrees 3–4 and 7–8; in D Dorian, between 2–♭3 and 6–♭7. That new layout is the mode's fingerprint.
The relative view is very practical for your fingers: if you can play C major all over the neck, you already know where the notes of D Dorian are. But it has a huge trap: it describes the notes, not the sound.
Try it. Play the C major scale from D to D without a drone, like an exercise. Your ear, trained by years of tonal music, will probably keep hearing C as home and feel that the scale “starts on the second degree”. The mode does not appear because nothing tells the ear that D is the centre.
The relative view answers the question “which notes do I use?”. The one that really matters when you improvise or compose is different: “what colour does this have against its tonic?” For that you need the second view.
In the parallel view () you fix the tonic and change the formula. Every mode starts on the same note and you compare them degree by degree with the major scale. The differences jump out at once:
| Mode | Formula | Difference from Ionian |
|---|---|---|
| Lydian | 1 2 3 ♯4 5 6 7 | ♯4 |
| Ionian | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | — |
| Mixolydian | 1 2 3 4 5 6 ♭7 | ♭7 |
| Dorian | 1 2 ♭3 4 5 6 ♭7 | ♭3 ♭7 |
| Aeolian | 1 2 ♭3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7 | ♭3 ♭6 ♭7 |
| Phrygian | 1 ♭2 ♭3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7 | ♭2 ♭3 ♭6 ♭7 |
| Locrian | 1 ♭2 ♭3 4 ♭5 ♭6 ♭7 | ♭2 ♭3 ♭5 ♭6 ♭7 |
Listen to three parallel modes on A. Keep the A drone on and compare: only two or three notes change, yet the mood flips.
Between A Dorian and A Aeolian there is only one different note: F♯ versus F. That tiny difference is exactly what you need to learn to hear. That is why the parallel view is the useful one: it tells you which note to listen for to recognise each mode, its .
The names come from regions and peoples of ancient Greece, but the modes we use today are not the Greek ones: medieval theorists reused those names for their church modes and the correspondence shifted along the way.
The “factory” order follows the degrees of the major scale: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian. But there is a far more musical order: from brightest to darkest. Each step down lowers a single note by a half step:
The order in which degrees are lowered (4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5) moves in fourths, like the order of flats on the circle of fifths. If you keep the tonic fixed and move the parent scale down a fifth each time (E major for A Lydian, A major for A Ionian, D major for A Mixolydian…), each new parent scale adds one flat (or loses one sharp), and that flat lands exactly on the degree that drops. That is why parallel modes line up like keys on the circle of fifths.
Notice the families too: Lydian, Ionian and Mixolydian have a major third (major family); Dorian, Aeolian and Phrygian have ♭3 (minor family). Locrian stands apart: it does not even have a perfect fifth.
If the notes are the same, what decides the mode? The , the note the ear takes as home. Theory does not set it; concrete sound cues do:
Try this experiment: play the same C major fingering in fifth position, first with the D drone and then with the E drone. Do not change a single finger. Only change where your phrases end.
String 6, Fret 5: A2 · 5 · Fifth
String 6, Fret 5: A2 · 4 · Scale tone
With the drone on E, the F rubs against the tonic and everything darkens: that is Phrygian. Same frets, another island.
Goal: Play three phrases with the notes of C major that sound clearly centred on C, on D and on A, always ending on the drone's tonic.
With the A drone sounding, play each scale up and down one octave from the fifth string (12th fret) or the sixth (5th fret). When you move from one to the next, stop on the note that changes and hold it for two beats: C♯ → C, G♯ → G, F♯ → F.
Goal: Play A Ionian, A Dorian and A Aeolian in a row at 70 BPM in eighth notes, naming out loud the note that changes in each one.
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