Modes...

[Happyguy]

Somebody stated that there should probably be more talk about theory on this forum so I will post a question.
For sumbody that knows his/her pentatonic scales they know that they all fit together
(a great exercise is to play 1rts string 1rst scale, 2nd 2nd scale all the way up and down the fingerboard). But where do the modes fit in to all this?? do I just find a spot where all the pentatonic notes fit into the chosen mode? Also when people are talking about a G scale are they just playing the 1rts pentatonic with a root note G? so all the other one are also in G?

happy guy out!

[Trey]

Don't know anything about modes, so I can't answer that part of the question.

As far as play the G pentatonic scale, you should really be able to play the given scale at any starting point on the fretboard. So say if your hand happens to be at the 8th position, you should know instinctly that you can use the 3rd form of the Pentatonic scale to play in the key of G. You would really limit yourself if you always had to start with thw first form of the scale, it would become a huge handicap in no time.

[TooManyWires]

Modes and the pentatonic scale are something that is for the most part different. It is possible to have modes of the pentatonic scale, but for the most part when someone speaks of "modes" they are referring to the ancient church modes, which are as follows:

Ionian (or Major)
Dorian
Phrygian
Lydian
Mixolydian
Aeolian (or Minor)
Locrian

And the next one in that progression would be Ionian again. All of these scales can be found in one key. For example, in the key of C, you have:

C Ionian - C D E F G A B C
D Dorian - D E F G A B C D
E Phrygian - E F G A B C D E
F Lydian - F G A B C D E F
G Mixolydian - G A B C D E F G
A Aeolian - A B C D E F G A
B Locrian - B C D E F G A B

Or, alternatively you can play each of them with a common root note:

C Ionian - C D E F G A B C
C Dorian - C D E^b F G A B^b C
C Phrygian - C D^b E^b F G A^b B^b C
C Lydian - C D E F^# G A B C
C Mixolydian - C D E F G A B^b C
C Aeolian - C D E^b F G A^b B^b C
C Locrian - C D^b E^b F G^b A^b B^b C

Similarly you could play each one starting with any root notw you wanted. Each mode has it's own distinct flavor, or feeling. Ionian is a natural major scale. Dorian is a minor scale with a raised sixth. Phrygian is a minor scale with a lowered second. Lydian is a major scale with a raised fourth. Mixolydian is a major scale with a lowered seventh. Aeolian is a natural minor scale, or a major scale with a lowered third, sixth, and seventh. And Locrian is basically a diminished, or half-diminished scale, I can't remember which right now.

Each scale has it's own sound and use. Phrygian is commonly used in Spanish music, and heavy metal. Dorian is a popular jazz mode. So if you were jammin' with some people and they wanted to do a jazzy song in the key of A minor, you could use any scale that is based off of a minor scale without sounding wrong. You could use your A minor pentatonic, or your C major/A minor scale, or you could use an A dorian scale, or an A phrygian scale. Which would be a G major and F major scale, respectively. Or you could use a jazz minor scale, which is the first 4 notes of a minor scale coupled with the last four notes of the major scale of the same root. (C jazz minor - C D E^b F G A B C) This stems fromt the melodic minor scale, which is a minor scale which has a raised sixth and seventh which you correct on the way back down. The jazz minor scale is the same scale as the melodic minor, but you don't correct it on the way back down. You could also try using an A harmonic minor scale, which is an awesome scale to use it sounds very much like classical music, or spanish music. It's a minor scale with a raised seventh. (C harmonic minor - C D E^b F G A^b B C) This creates a major five chord so that you can have a proper cadence when writing in a minor key, but that's another story.

A pentatonic scale is just a major, or a minor scale with the tritone removed (the second and the seventh) (C major pentatonic - C E F G A C, C minor pentatonic - C E^b F G A^b C) Since there are five notes in the pentatonic scale, there are then five possible modes for each major and minor pentatonic scale.

One side note that really has nothing to do with the way the actualy scales work is this: notice how when noting changes to a scale I've used the words raised and lowered as opposed to sharped and flatted? This is to save confusion, as if you told someone to write out a C minor scale with a flat third, or a flatted third, they might not make any changes since the third is already flat (E^b). This is just a little something that I was taught. Also just another note is that I am a guitar player by nature, so I never knew anything about notation, and scale composition, and real technical musical theory, but I did learn it. It is possible for guitar players to read notation and be as competent with music as other musicians. We get a bad rep, because tab is so simple, and limited, and we don't know a lot about scales and stuff. We play a pentatonic scale, and a musician asks, what are you playing? And we say a pentatonic scale. Then they'd say, where does it come from? How do you get that from a major scale? Name the seven church modes? And the guitar played almost invariably can't answer any of those questions, so we get frowned upon. But it doesn't have to be that way. An extended knowledge of scales can really drastically improve your playing, or at least I've found that it can.

Anyways, it's getting rather late for my brain to try to be working properly, and it's been a while since I've really done any work with any of this stuff, so I've come to the limits of my memory that I believe to be correct. I could probably spiel on for a while longer, but the percent of the spiel that was reliable would just drop, so I won't bother.

[lunaalta]

Wow, that is a really awesome post. Well done, that man!

Does this mean that the old adage, 'To make a guitarist turn down the volume, just give him the sheet music', is not true

[UnklMickey]

happyguy said:

Somebody stated that there should probably be more talk about theory on this forum so I will post a question.
For sumbody that knows his/her pentatonic scales they know that they all fit together
(a great exercise is to play 1rts string 1rst scale, 2nd 2nd scale all the way up and down the fingerboard). But where do the modes fit in to all this?? do I just find a spot where all the pentatonic notes fit into the chosen mode? Also when people are talking about a G scale are they just playing the 1rts pentatonic with a root note G? so all the other one are also in G?

happy guy out!

well i admit i'm the somebody that suggested we spend more time here (i had an ulterior motive, this is an area where i am weak, figgered i'd learn lots here.)

we sure found a sumbody in TooManyWires. thanks for a superb post!

one thing i couldn't help noticing was how the pentatonic scales nest within the church modes. for instance:

all the notes of the C minor pentatonic scale are valid in the C Dorian, C Phrygian, and C Aeolian modes. (although the 2nd & 4th notes of those modes are not present in the pentatonic scale.)

you could play a C minor pentatonic scale and still fit within those modes.

likewise you could use a C major pentatonic within the confines of C Ionian, Lydian, or Mixolydian modes. (4th & 7th notes of those modes not represented)

going a step further, C major pentatonic fits within D Dorian (without the 3rd and 6th of the mode)

C major pentatonic also fits within F Lydian (without the 1st & 4th of the mode). although i seriously doubt the usefulness of using a scale that never uses the root of the mode you're in.

the question is, does it have any utility to look at it this way? or is this a bit too far out there?

[Happyguy]

Wow very,very helpfull/usefull stuff there guys!

the question is, does it have any utility to look at it this way? or is this a bit too far out there?

I think that the best way to realy improvise stuff is to learn all this theory, but that may be just me... You know .... everything has to have RULES lol

[Trey]

happyguy said:

Wow very,very helpfull/usefull stuff there guys!

the question is, does it have any utility to look at it this way? or is this a bit too far out there?

I think that the best way to realy improvise stuff is to learn all this theory, but that may be just me... You know .... everything has to have RULES lol

Hmm..I'm pretty much the exact oppisite, I think to many constraints are bad. It can be helpful in the beginning but eventually you'll find yourself stuck in a rut playing the same things within the same scale.

[RandomHero]

I've always had a very freestyle nature of soloing and writing riffs, which more or less involves a very innate understanding of intervals (I used to harmonize by ear with my mum as songleaders of our church when I was a kid) and totalling winging it. The more I get into theory though, the more I'm realizing I've been obscure modes and scales my entire playing life and never known it.

[Mustang]

RH, I think we may be 'kindred spirits'. I'm very impressed by the technical basis that is fundamental to all we do, and sort of wish I knew more about (that's the engineer coming out in me). But, I've always used the 'hunt for it' and know it when I 'hear it' or 'freestyle' approach you refer to.

'To each his own'. It just reinforces how little I know about some things. Got to be impressed with 'TooManyWires'. It will take me a long time to soak all that in.

[TooManyWires]

Well, I agree, sometimes having too many restraints isn't all that good. But just because you know a scale, and you might be playing it, doesn't really mean that you can only play notes from it. There's no specific rule that says if you're playing a song in G and you go to do a lead bit, and you play a note that isn't in the G scale, that some kind of scale police will come along and shoot you, or anything like that. Knowing scales and some scale theory and that kind of thing, I've found, was a great way to understand where lead comes from. Until I started doing a bit of that, I never even had any idea of how you would know what to play for a solo. Now that I have the comprehension of where stuff came from, I can improvise a little bit. (Still needs a lot more practice to get to be 'good') I find the hardest part is translating that stuff that I spouted out in the previous post into guitar and vice versa. I understand some music theory, and I can play guitar, but what stops up guitar players, as someone said about the sheet music, (or at least in my case) is that I can read sheet music (not as well as other people, or even as well as I used to) but then taking those notes from that page, and turning them into numbers for the guitar playing, is what takes time. It's like learning a second language. I learned french a number of years back, and you start out reading french and then thinking of what the words mean in english and then you understand the sentences. You have to translate it in your head. BUt eventually, with a lot of time and work at it, you get to a point where you read a french sentence, and you just know what it means, you don't have to translate any more, you just understand. The same holds true for playing from sheet music. It takes a lot of time and practice before you can get to a point where you can read the notes on a staff, and then be able to play them on a guitar without having to try to convert them from C to 3rd fret A string, or whatever the case happens to be.

[wolf]

Yes great post Too Many Wires.
I think there is a small mistake. You said that
the C minor pentatonic scale is C Eb F G Ab C

Shouldn't that be a Bb instead of an Ab?

For just about all my solos, I use the minor pentatonic scale which I think is a 1960's guitar-playing mentality. Just as an example, the guitar solo in "Louie, Louie" is based on the minor pentatonic scale. How would you play a solo for "Louie Louie" in a phrygian mode or mixolydian and how well would it "fit" into the "garage band" style of the song?

[Trey]

Well the Mixolydian only has one tone which is diffrent from the Minor Pentatonic, the 3th(Minor Pen has a b3rd), and adds two tone which are left out of the Minor Penta, the 2nd and 6th. So it really doesn't sound as exotic as something like the phrygian scales, and would fit well into most any song which is Blues based or Classic Rock.

[TooManyWires]

There could very easily be a mistake. When I wrote the post I was reading the notes off of the neck of a guitar, so I could quite easily have screwed up.