## 9. Modes

A mode is a scale built from the same set of notes as a major scale but treating a different note as home, and the seven of them are the seven colours one set of notes can take depending on which note the music settles on.

Source: https://musictheory.center/course/modes
Level: Intermediate · Materials · 6 sections
Before this: Scales: Major and Minor, Keys and Key Signatures

### What a Mode Is

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#what-a-mode-is

> Play the first two. Each is a climb through exactly the same seven notes, with one low note sounding underneath it the whole way. Does the second one sound like the first one carried on from a different place, or like somewhere else entirely? Then play the third, which starts from the same low note as the second and raises two of the notes above it.

**Plays:** Seven notes over a low C (C3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5) · The same seven over a low D (D3 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5) · Over the same low D, two notes raised (D3 D4 E4 F#4 G4 A4 B4 C#5 D5)

The seven notes the first two clips are measured against, climbing from C to the C above it. The second clip adds nothing and removes nothing: it plays these same seven, in the same order of letters, beginning and ending on the second of them instead of the first. That is the whole of the operation, and yet the sound is not the sound of this staff — because the low note underneath told your ear that D, not C, was home. The third clip is the one that leaves this set. It keeps D as home and raises two of these notes — F to F sharp and C to C sharp — which arrives at the ordinary major scale on D, so it is measured against D and not against the staff above. The table below sets the two descriptions of the second clip side by side. They name exactly the same seven pitches, and both are correct.

| The two descriptions | How it gets there | What you end up with | Taught this way by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rotation view | Take a major scale and start on a different one of its notes, changing nothing | The notes of [C Major](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-major) read from D: D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 | Classical training and most written theory, where the parent key signature is already on the page |
| Parallel view | Take the major or minor scale on the note you want as home and alter the degrees that differ | [D Major](https://musictheory.center/scale/d-major) with its third and seventh lowered: F♯4 becomes F4 and C♯5 becomes C5 | Jazz and popular-music teaching, where a player is already standing on the tonic and needs to know what to change |

**mode**

*also called*: church mode (medieval and liturgical theory, where the system began)

**Definition.** A mode is a scale built from the same set of notes as a [major scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale) but treating a different note as home.

Nothing is added to the notes and nothing is taken away. What changes is the hierarchy laid over them: which note the music leans on, returns to and finally stops on, and therefore which distances the ear measures everything else by. Read C major from D and the third note above home is now only three [half steps](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) up rather than four, the sixth is wide where a minor scale would have it narrow, and the note below home sits a whole step away instead of leaning on it. Those are not new notes. They are the old notes measured from a new place.

This is why a mode cannot be established by starting somewhere. Play the white notes from D with nothing underneath and a listener hears C major that began late and ended early. Hold a D underneath, land on D, put a D in the bass, and the same notes reorganise themselves around it. The drone under every clip in this chapter is doing that job, and a real piece does it with a [bass line](https://musictheory.center/course/voice-leading#bass-lines-and-inversions), a repeated chord or a pedal note.

Because the notes are the same, two descriptions of any mode are always available and always agree. The rotation view names it by the degree of the parent major scale it starts on; the parallel view names it by what it does to the major or minor scale that already shares its tonic. A player who knows D major can reach D dorian by lowering two notes; a reader looking at a page with no sharps or flats can reach the same place by noticing that the music keeps landing on D. Same destination, two roads.

**Good to know**

- (Convention) The rotation view names a mode by which degree of a major scale it begins on: [D Dorian](https://musictheory.center/scale/d-dorian) is the second mode of [C Major](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-major), E phrygian the third, and so on. It is the description classical training and most written theory use, because the page already carries the parent scale’s [key signature](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#why-key-signatures-exist) and the reader only has to notice where the music settles.
- (Convention) The parallel view names a mode by what it alters in the major or minor scale on the same tonic: [D Dorian](https://musictheory.center/scale/d-dorian) is [D Major](https://musictheory.center/scale/d-major) with the third and the seventh lowered a half step. It is the description jazz and popular-music teaching use, because a player is already standing on the tonic and wants to know which two fingers to move.
- (Fact) Both descriptions produce the identical seven pitches, so neither is more correct than the other. They differ only in what they take as given — a parent scale in one case, a tonic in the other — and a musician who can move between them can name any mode from either direction.

**You already know this**

- The major scale from Chapter 7, the seven-note set every mode in this chapter is a reading of — https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale
- Relative and parallel keys from Chapter 8, the same two ways of being close that name the two views here — https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#relative-and-parallel

**Where this goes**

- Which chords a piece can build depends on which note of the set it calls home, which is the question this chapter asks — https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony

**In real music**

- Santana — “Oye Como Va” — the organ vamp that opens it and never stops is two chords on the same centre, and the second of them keeps a raised sixth that an ordinary minor key would not have
- Miles Davis — “So What” — the first sixteen bars of the head sit on one centre with no chord change at all, so the only thing establishing home is the bass figure repeating underneath

**Try it on your instrument:** Play or loop a single low note on your instrument and let it ring — an open string, a held bass note, a sustain pedal. Over it, play the seven white notes from C up to C. Then move the low note to D and play exactly the same seven white notes, from D up to D. Do each three times and notice how differently the note F sounds in the two of them.

[Enter the seven white notes with D as home and see them named as a mode](https://musictheory.center/tools/scale-finder?n=D+E+F+G+A+B+C&t=D)

**Check:** Two climbs in a row over the low note underneath. Did the second one keep the same home as the first, or move to a new one?

- A new home **(correct)** — Correct. Not one of the seven notes changed between the two climbs — the low note underneath moved from C to D, and the climb moved with it. That is the whole operation, and the second climb is D dorian.
- The same home — The notes were the same, which is what makes this worth a second listen, but home was not. The first climb began, turned and ended on C; the second did all three on D. Play it again and hum the very last note of each half.
- The same home, with the notes changed — This is the other way round. Nothing in the note set was altered here — all seven notes are the white notes both times. Changing the notes while keeping home is the parallel view, and it is the third clip in the Hear beat above.

### The Seven Modes

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#the-seven-modes

> Play all seven. Every one of them starts and ends on the same note, over the same low note underneath, and every one of them moves one or more of the notes in between. Nothing about home changes from clip to clip. Which of them sound brighter than the first, and which sound darker?

**Plays:** Nothing altered (C3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5) · Third and seventh lowered (C3 C4 D4 Eb4 F4 G4 A4 Bb4 C5) · Second, third, sixth and seventh lowered (C3 C4 Db4 Eb4 F4 G4 Ab4 Bb4 C5) · Fourth raised (C3 C4 D4 E4 F#4 G4 A4 B4 C5) · Seventh lowered (C3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 Bb4 C5) · Third, sixth and seventh lowered (C3 C4 D4 Eb4 F4 G4 Ab4 Bb4 C5) · Second, third, fifth, sixth and seventh lowered (C3 C4 Db4 Eb4 F4 Gb4 Ab4 Bb4 C5)

The fourth clip written out from C. Six of its seven notes are the ones C major already had; the fourth is raised, and it is the only one of the seven modes built on C that needs a sharp rather than flats. The table below gives all seven twice over: once as a rotation, reading C major from each of its degrees in turn, and once as an alteration of the major or minor scale on a single shared tonic — which is what the seven clips you just played were. Under the table, the ring puts the seven rotation tonics in order of rising fifths: F, C, G, D, A, E, B. That order is lydian, ionian, mixolydian, dorian, aeolian, phrygian, locrian, which is also their order from brightest to darkest, and it is not a coincidence — each step round the ring lowers exactly one degree. One caution about the diagram: the ring shows keys, not modes, so clicking a wedge plays that key’s major or minor triad and not the mode built on it.

| Mode | Starts on this degree of the parent | C major read from there | Steps | In a word | From the same tonic, it is |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ionian | 1st | C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 | W W H W W W H | Bright | the major scale itself |
| Dorian | 2nd | D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 | W H W W W H W | Hopeful | the natural minor with its sixth raised |
| Phrygian | 3rd | E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 | H W W W H W W | Dark | the natural minor with its second lowered |
| Lydian | 4th | F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 | W W W H W W H | Floating | the major scale with its fourth raised |
| Mixolydian | 5th | G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 | W W H W W H W | Earthy | the major scale with its seventh lowered |
| Aeolian | 6th | A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5 | W H W W H W W | Sad | the natural minor scale itself |
| Locrian | 7th | B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5 A5 | H W W H W W W | Unsettled | the natural minor with its second and its fifth lowered |

**the seven modes**

**Definition.** The seven modes are the seven scales produced by reading one [major scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale) from each of its seven degrees in turn: ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian and locrian, in that order.

Two of the seven already have other names. Ionian is the major scale, note for note; aeolian is the [natural minor](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-three-minors), note for note. That leaves five genuinely unfamiliar sounds, and it also explains why the whole system can feel like a trick at first: five sevenths of it is new, and the other two sevenths are the scales you have been playing since Chapter 7.

The names are Greek and the attributions are, historically speaking, a muddle. Medieval theorists took the words from Greek writers and applied them to a quite different set of scales; the Greek dorian was not the modern one. What survives is a list of seven labels in a fixed order, and the order is the only part that has to be learned, because the notes follow from it. Say the seven names while counting up the degrees of a major scale and you can build any of them from any note.

Ordered by brightness rather than by degree, the same seven make a ladder: lydian, ionian, mixolydian, dorian, aeolian, phrygian, locrian. Each step down the ladder lowers exactly one degree, and the tonics of those seven modes of C major — F, C, G, D, A, E, B — are seven consecutive steps of the [circle of fifths](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#the-circle-of-fifths). Bright and dark are not vague words here. They name a count of lowered degrees, and the count goes up by one at each step.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) All seven modes of a given major scale contain exactly the same seven pitches. [D Dorian](https://musictheory.center/scale/d-dorian), [E Phrygian](https://musictheory.center/scale/e-phrygian), [F Lydian](https://musictheory.center/scale/f-lydian), [G Mixolydian](https://musictheory.center/scale/g-mixolydian) and [B Locrian](https://musictheory.center/scale/b-locrian) each draw on the white notes and nothing else, because each of them is [C Major](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-major) read from a different one of its degrees.
- (Convention) Writing those pitches with the parent scale’s [key signature](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#why-key-signatures-exist) — nothing at all after the clef, for every mode of [C Major](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-major) — is one notational choice among several, not a consequence of the notes. A dorian or mixolydian piece is at least as often written with the key signature of the major or minor key on its own tonic, with the one altered degree printed as an [accidental](https://musictheory.center/course/notation#accidentals) each time it appears, because that spelling says at a glance where home is. The sound is identical either way.
- (Convention) Ionian and aeolian are alternative names for the major scale and the natural minor. The mode names are used when a piece is being described as modal — one of seven colours drawn from a parent set — and the key names when it is being described as tonal. The choice signals which kind of music is being talked about; the notes are identical either way.
- (Tendency — Western popular, folk, film and jazz repertoire; Andalusian, flamenco and metal traditions use phrygian far more heavily than this suggests) Of the seven, dorian, mixolydian and lydian carry nearly all the everyday use, phrygian a smaller and more stylistically marked share, and locrian almost none as a home key at all — its fifth is diminished, so the tonic chord it would build on is unstable and nothing settles.

**You already know this**

- Building a scale from its step pattern in Chapter 7, which is what the Steps column of the table asks you to do seven times over — https://musictheory.center/course/scales#building-any-scale
- The circle of fifths from Chapter 8, whose order turns out to be the order of the modes from brightest to darkest — https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#the-circle-of-fifths

**Where this goes**

- The chord built on a mode’s first degree is what tells you at once whether it belongs to the bright family or the dark one — https://musictheory.center/course/chords

**In real music**

- Danny Elfman — “The Simpsons Theme” — the very first phrase the voices sing leaps up to a raised fourth degree and hangs there, which is the whole reason the tune sounds cartoonish rather than merely cheerful
- R.E.M. — “Losing My Religion” — the mandolin figure that runs from the first bar to the last stays inside the natural minor and never once raises its seventh degree, so nothing ever leans back onto home

**Try it on your instrument:** Pick one note and hold or loop it. Play the ordinary [major scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale) from that note. Then play it six more times, each time making one alteration from the last column of the table: lower the third and seventh, then also lower the second and sixth, and so on. Say the name of each one out loud as you play it.

[Lower any degree of C major and see which mode you have made](https://musictheory.center/tools/scale-finder?n=C+D+Eb+F+G+A+Bb&t=C)

**Check:** Take the white notes and start them on G instead of C, keeping G underneath as home. Before you play it, predict which of the seven that gives you.

- Mixolydian **(correct)** — Correct. G is the fifth degree of C major, and the mode starting on the fifth degree is mixolydian. Measured from G, six of the notes match G major exactly and the seventh is F natural rather than F sharp — the lowered seventh you can hear refusing to lean back onto home.
- Lydian — Lydian starts on the fourth degree, which from C major is F, not G. It is the one with a raised fourth, and you would have heard a B against an F rather than an F against a G. Count up from C: C is 1, D is 2, E is 3, F is 4, G is 5.
- Dorian — Dorian starts on the second degree, which from C major is D. It is a minor sound, and what you just heard has a major third — B against G, four half steps. Two degrees too low: G is the fifth, not the second.

#### Where the names came from, and why they are wrong

The seven words are Greek place names — Doris, Phrygia, Lydia, Ionia, and the prefix mixo- meaning mixed — and they were in use for Greek scale systems eight centuries before any of the modes described in this chapter existed. The Greek systems were built downward rather than upward and organised by tetrachords rather than by a seven-note octave, and the scale the Greeks called dorian is not the scale this chapter calls dorian.

The mix-up was inherited rather than invented. Medieval theorists working on the classification of plainchant took the vocabulary from late Roman sources, chiefly Boethius, who had himself misread his Greek predecessors. By the time Glarean added ionian and aeolian to the list in 1547, the names were fixed to the wrong scales and had been for centuries, and it was far too late to renumber anything.

None of which affects a single note. The labels are arbitrary in the way the letters A to G are arbitrary: what they pick out is real and precisely defined, and the history only matters if you go looking in an ancient source and find something that does not match. It is worth knowing so that a book about Greek music does not send you back to this chapter thinking you had learned it wrong.

### Character Notes

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#character-notes

> Play the first three. Each one sounds a low note, sounds home above it, and then sounds one single note high up — and only that last note differs between the three clips. Listen to how much of the colour of a whole scale one note can carry. The fourth clip is the staff below note for note: home and then all three of those notes in turn, over the same low C.

**Plays:** Home, then the wide sixth (C3 C4 A4) · Home, then the narrow sixth (C3 C4 Ab4) · Home, then the raised fourth (C3 C4 F#4) · Home, then all three, as written (C3 C4 Ab4 A4 F#4)

Home, then the three notes the clips above put against it: the narrow sixth, the wide sixth and the raised fourth. Each of those three, sounded against the same low C, is enough on its own to say which scale you are in — and each of them is one note away from a scale you already know. The table below names the one note that does that job for each of the six modes that are not simply the major scale, says which familiar scale it is measured against, and says what to listen for.

| Mode | Character note, from C | Measured against | Notes that differ | What to listen for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Dorian | Natural sixth: A4 | The natural minor on C | One | A lift in the middle of an otherwise minor sound, as though the scale were refusing to be sad |
| Phrygian | Lowered second: D♭4 | The natural minor on C | One | A half step immediately above home, which arrives on the second note and is unmistakable |
| Lydian | Raised fourth: F♯4 | The major scale on C | One | The fourth degree pulling upward instead of settling down, which is what makes it hover |
| Mixolydian | Lowered seventh: B♭4 | The major scale on C | One | The note below home sitting a whole step away and refusing to lean in |
| Aeolian | Lowered sixth: A♭4 | Dorian on C | One | The sixth degree pressing down onto the fifth, the weight that makes the natural minor heavy |
| Locrian | Lowered fifth: G♭4 | The natural minor on C | Two: D♭4 and G♭4 | The fifth hollowed out, so home has no solid floor under it and nothing can come to rest |

**character note**

**Definition.** A character note is the single degree that separates a mode from the nearest familiar scale on the same tonic, and therefore the note that has to be sounded before the mode can be recognised at all.

The arithmetic behind it is why the modes are learnable at all. Ionian is the [major scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale) and aeolian is the [natural minor](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-three-minors), so those two need nothing. Of the remaining five, four differ from whichever of those two is nearer by exactly one note — dorian raises the natural minor’s sixth, phrygian lowers its second, lydian raises the major scale’s fourth, mixolydian lowers its seventh — and only locrian differs by two. So there are not seven new scales to memorise. There are five alterations, one per mode, and a sixth for locrian.

That single note is also the whole of the sound. Play a mode and leave the character note out and you have played something else: a dorian line that never touches its sixth is simply a minor line, and no listener could tell otherwise. This is the commonest way modal writing fails — the scale is correct on paper, the one note that identifies it is never landed on, and the music comes out sounding like the parent [key](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#what-a-key-is) after all.

Aeolian is the one row in the table that has to be measured against something other than a major or minor scale, because it is the natural minor. Its character note is the lowered sixth, and what that distinguishes it from is dorian, the other minor mode in common use. The choice between a natural and a lowered sixth over a minor third is the single most frequent modal decision in popular music.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) Of the five modes that are not already the major or the natural minor scale, four differ from the nearer of those two by exactly one note, and locrian differs by two — its second and its fifth are both lowered. That is a count of pitches, not an impression: it can be checked note against note in the table above.
- (Constraint — writing or improvising a line that is meant to be recognised as modal) Sound the character note, and sound it in a strong position — long, high, landed on, or inside a chord — or the mode will not be heard as a mode. Everything else in a modal line is shared with a scale the listener already knows.

**You already know this**

- Major and minor sixths from Chapter 5, the two sixths the table keeps asking you to tell apart — https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#number-and-quality
- Scale degrees from Chapter 7, the numbering every character note in this chapter is named by — https://musictheory.center/course/scales#scale-degrees

**Where this goes**

- Borrowing a single chord from a parallel mode is the same idea applied to harmony: one altered note, imported for its colour — https://musictheory.center/course/advanced-harmony

**In real music**

- Béla Bartók — “Mikrokosmos No. 34: In Phrygian Mode” — a teaching piece Bartók titled after the mode he wrote it in, short enough to hear whole: the two hands keep sounding the half step directly above home against each other, and nothing in it ever leans up onto home from below
- The Beatles — “Norwegian Wood” — the sung line at the end of each verse phrase falls to a seventh degree a whole step below home rather than a half step, which is why the tune sounds folk-like instead of finished

**Try it on your instrument:** Hold or loop a low note. Over it, play home and then the natural sixth above it; then home and the lowered sixth. Do that six times, alternating, until you can hear the difference before the note has finished sounding. Then do the same with the fourth raised and natural, and with the seventh lowered and natural.

**Check:** A climb over a low note. Its sixth degree is either the higher of the two sixths or the lower. Which one did you hear, and which mode does that make it?

- The lower sixth: aeolian **(correct)** — Correct. The sixth degree was A flat, a half step below the A natural dorian would have given you, and everything else about the two is identical. A lowered sixth over a minor third is the natural minor, which under its mode name is aeolian.
- The higher sixth: dorian — Dorian would have put A natural there instead. Play the clip again and stop at the sixth note: it sits only a half step above the G before it, which is the aeolian sound, not the dorian one.
- The lowered second: phrygian — Phrygian is identified at the second note, not the sixth: its second degree would have been D flat, a half step above home. The second note here was D natural, a whole step up, so phrygian was ruled out before the clip was a second old.

### Modal Versus Tonal

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#modal-versus-tonal

> Play the first two. They are the same short figure over the same low note, and exactly one note differs between them: the note just below home, which is a whole step down in the first and only a half step down in the second. Then play the third, which puts those two notes side by side. Which of them sounds as though it has to go home, and which sounds as though it could stay out all night?

**Plays:** The figure as it stands (G3 D4 G4 A4 B4 F4) · The same figure, one note raised (G3 D4 G4 A4 B4 F#4) · The two notes under home, then home (G3 F4 F#4 G4)

The scale the first clip draws on, climbing from G. Its seventh degree is F natural, a whole step below home. Raise that one note to F sharp and the scale becomes G major and the second clip is what you get: the same eight notes of melody, one of them moved by a half step, and a completely different sense of obligation at the end. That single half step is most of what separates modal music from tonal music, and the table below sets out the rest.

|  | Common-practice tonal music | Modal music |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What makes a note sound like home | A pull towards it, set up by the chord a fifth above and by the note a half step below | Repetition and weight: the note is under everything, returned to constantly, and simply refuses to leave |
| The seventh degree | A half step below home, leaning on it. Minor keys raise it deliberately so that it does | Whatever the mode gives. In dorian and mixolydian it is a whole step below home and leans on nothing |
| How a phrase ends | On a cadence: a chord a fifth above home resolving down onto home | By arriving, stopping, or looping back to the beginning. That particular cadence is avoided because it would impose a different home |
| How long a chord lasts | A bar or two. Harmony moves, and the movement is where the interest is | Often many bars, sometimes the whole piece. Interest comes from the melody and from the colour of the scale |
| What changes when the music develops | The key: the music moves to a related key and comes back | Usually the mode, over the same centre, or nothing at all |

**modal music**

**Definition.** Modal music is music that establishes a home note by insisting on it rather than by resolving to it, so that the scale in use supplies colour instead of a pull.

The mechanism a tonal piece relies on is a two-part pull: a chord built a fifth above home, containing the note a [half step](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) below home, and the strong sense that both want to fall in. That half step is the [leading tone](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#scale-degrees), and it is so effective that the minor keys of common-practice music raise their seventh degree on purpose in order to have one. Almost every [cadence](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#cadences) you have ever heard in Western classical or mainstream popular music is that mechanism firing.

Five of the seven modes have no such half step. Dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, aeolian and locrian all put their seventh degree a whole step below home; only ionian and lydian have a leading tone at all. In four of those five the chord built a fifth above home comes out minor or diminished rather than major — minor in dorian, mixolydian and aeolian, diminished in phrygian — so there is nothing for a cadence to be made of. Locrian does not even have a perfect fifth above home to build that chord on. Modal writing does not compensate for any of this. It uses it. Without a pull dragging everything towards one resolution, a piece can sit on one centre for minutes at a time, and the ear stays interested because the colour of the scale — the raised sixth, the lowered second, the raised fourth — is doing the work instead.

Which is why the two systems mix badly by accident and well on purpose. Drop a dominant-to-tonic cadence into a dorian vamp and the mode collapses: the ear hears the pull, takes the tonic as a key centre, and the raised sixth turns into a passing decoration. Composers who want both — a great deal of film music, and most of the folk-influenced end of rock — keep them in separate sections rather than in the same [phrase](https://musictheory.center/course/melody#phrase-antecedent-consequent).

**Good to know**

- (Tendency — common-practice Western tonal music from roughly 1650 to 1900, and the popular music descended from it, set against modal folk, rock and jazz practice) The leading tone pulls to the tonic and the dominant chord resolves onto it, which is what gives a phrase its sense of arrival. In modal folk and rock the seventh degree sits a whole step below home and does none of that, and the modal centre is held by repetition, by bass emphasis and by a drone instead.
- (Constraint — writing a passage intended to stay modal; a deliberate move between modal and tonal sections is a different matter) Avoid the cadence that moves from a major chord a fifth above home down onto home while you want a piece to sound modal. It is the single fastest way to turn a mode back into an ordinary key, and it works even against a strong drone.
- (Fact) Five of the seven modes — dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, aeolian and locrian — have a seventh degree a whole step below the tonic, so no leading tone exists in them at all. Only ionian and lydian have one, because only those two keep the major seventh of the parent scale above their own tonic.

**You already know this**

- The leading tone from Chapter 7, the seventh degree a half step below home that five of the modes simply do not have — https://musictheory.center/course/scales#scale-degrees
- What a key is from Chapter 8, where home was established by leaving it and coming back rather than by sitting on it — https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#what-a-key-is

**Where this goes**

- The cadence this section spends its time avoiding is the centrepiece of tonal harmony, and Chapter 11 takes it apart — https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony

**In real music**

- Traditional — “Scarborough Fair” — the tune never once uses a leading tone, and the raised sixth degree arrives on the word "parsley" in the second line of every verse
- Lynyrd Skynyrd — “Sweet Home Alabama” — the three chords of the opening riff never produce a leading tone, and the second of them is built on the lowered seventh degree — which is why the song cycles instead of cadencing

**Try it on your instrument:** Loop a single low note on your instrument. Over it, play a short phrase that ends by stepping up onto home from a [whole step](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) below. Play it again ending with a half step below home instead. Play each version four times in a row and notice which one makes you want to stop and which one makes you want to keep going.

**Check:** The clip is mixolydian over a low note. Predict what happens if you raise its seventh degree by a half step and change nothing else: which scale is left?

- The major scale on the same note **(correct)** — Correct. Mixolydian is the major scale with its seventh lowered, so raising the seventh back undoes the only alteration there was: F natural becomes F sharp, and G mixolydian becomes G major. The second clip in the Hear beat is that change heard inside a phrase.
- Lydian on the same note — Lydian is the major scale with its fourth raised, not its seventh. Raising the seventh of mixolydian gets you as far as the plain major scale; you would then have to raise the fourth as well — C to C sharp, here — to arrive at lydian.
- Dorian on the same note — Dorian has a minor third, and nothing in this question touches the third. The clip has a major third — B against G — and it still will after the seventh moves. Raising a seventh cannot turn a bright scale into a dark one.

### Hearing the Modes

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#hearing-the-modes

> Play the first clip: a low note under it, and above that two different notes in turn. Then play the two climbs. Before trying to name anything, decide only one thing about each climb — which of those two high notes it used. That one decision cuts the field in half.

**Plays:** Two thirds over one low note (C3 E4 Eb4) · The first climb (C3 C4 D4 E4 F#4 G4 A4 B4 C5) · The second climb (C3 C4 Db4 Eb4 F4 G4 Ab4 Bb4 C5)

Home and the two thirds above it, which is the only question worth asking first. Four half steps up and you are in the bright family; three and you are in the dark one. After that there is exactly one more note to test, and the table below says which one, in which order, and what each answer means. Working in this order takes at most three decisions to name any of the seven, and the first decision is the easiest one in music to hear.

| The third says | Which leaves | Test this next | And the answer means |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Four half steps: the bright family | Lydian, ionian, mixolydian | The fourth degree | Raised: lydian. Natural: test the seventh instead — lowered gives mixolydian, natural gives ionian |
| Three half steps: the dark family | Dorian, aeolian, phrygian | The sixth degree | Raised: dorian. Lowered: test the second — lowered gives phrygian, natural gives aeolian |
| Three half steps, and the fifth sounds hollow | Locrian | The fifth degree | Lowered: locrian, and no other mode does this. The tonic chord has no perfect fifth to stand on |

**identifying a mode by ear**

**Definition.** Identifying a mode by ear is a procedure of at most three decisions: hear the third degree to place the scale in the bright or the dark family, then test the one or two further notes that separate the members of that family.

Doing it in that order matters more than it sounds. The third is the strongest colour signal in Western music and almost everyone can already hear it, even without training, because major and minor are the first distinction any listener learns. Three [half steps](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) or four is one decision, it is reliable, and it removes three or four candidates at a stroke. Trying instead to recognise each of the seven as a whole shape means holding seven templates in your head at once, and that is why people who try it that way conclude they cannot hear modes.

Every decision after the first one needs the drone. A character note only means something relative to home, so you must know where home is before you test it; a raised sixth heard in isolation is just a note. This is what a backing drone, a looped bass note or a held chord is for in practice, and it is why every clip in this chapter has one underneath.

And the procedure is not a substitute for listening. It is a scaffold that gets you to the right answer while your ear is learning to skip the steps. After a few weeks of hearing dorian against a drone, the raised sixth stops being something you check for and becomes something the scale simply sounds like — at which point you stop counting, and the procedure has done its job.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) The third degree divides the seven modes into a bright family — [C Lydian](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-lydian), ionian and [C Mixolydian](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-mixolydian), all with a major third — and a dark one — [C Dorian](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-dorian), aeolian, [C Phrygian](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-phrygian) and [C Locrian](https://musictheory.center/scale/c-locrian), all with a minor third. No mode is ambiguous about its third, so this first decision is never a judgement call.
- (Constraint — ear-training practice on modes, whether from a looper, a held bass note or a sustained chord) Test the character notes against a sounding drone, not from memory. The interval from home is what identifies a mode, so home has to be audible at the same moment for the comparison to mean anything.

**You already know this**

- Hearing intervals from Chapter 6, and in particular telling a major third from a minor third, which is the first step of the whole procedure — https://musictheory.center/course/ear-training#hearing-intervals
- The character notes from earlier in this chapter, which are the notes the later decisions of the procedure test for — https://musictheory.center/course/modes#character-notes

**Where this goes**

- Naming the mode over a chord by ear is how a player chooses what to improvise before the bar is over — https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary

**In real music**

- The Doors — “Riders on the Storm” — the keyboard vamp that runs under the entire song is minor, and the electric piano fills between the sung lines keep touching a raised sixth degree against it
- The Beatles — “Tomorrow Never Knows” — the track sits on one chord from beginning to end, so the only thing that can colour it is the sung line, which leans on a seventh degree a whole step below home

**Try it on your instrument:** Loop one low note. Have someone play, or play yourself without looking, one of the seven scales over it. Name the third first and say bright or dark out loud before you do anything else. Then test the one note the table tells you to. Do twenty of these and keep a tally of which pairs you confuse.

**Check:** A climb over a low note. Work out the third first, then the one note that decides between what is left. Which mode is it?

- Dorian **(correct)** — Correct. The third was E flat, three half steps above home, so this is the dark family. The sixth was A natural, a whole step above the G before it rather than a half step, and a raised sixth over a minor third is dorian and only dorian.
- Aeolian — The right family and one note out. Aeolian puts A flat on the sixth degree, only a half step above the fifth; this climb put A natural there, a whole step above it. That one note is the entire difference between the two, and it is the commonest confusion in modal ear training.
- Phrygian — Phrygian is settled at the second note, not the sixth. Its second degree is a half step above home — D flat over C — and this climb had D natural, a whole step up. The opening two notes rule phrygian in or out before anything else happens.
- Mixolydian — Mixolydian belongs to the bright family: its third is four half steps above home. This climb had a third of three half steps, which is minor, so the bright family was gone after the third note. What the two do share is a seventh a whole step below home.

**Check:** Another climb over a low note. The third puts it in the bright family. Which of the bright three is it?

- Lydian **(correct)** — Correct. Major third, and then the fourth degree arrived as F sharp rather than F natural — a whole step above the E before it instead of a half step. A raised fourth belongs to lydian alone, and it is what makes the scale sound as though it is floating upward.
- Ionian — Ionian is the ordinary major scale, whose fourth degree is F natural, a half step above the third. This climb went a whole step from E to F sharp instead. Play it again and stop on the fourth note: it is the one that does not belong to the major scale.
- Mixolydian — Mixolydian is identified at the seventh degree, which it lowers. The seventh here was B natural, a half step below home and leaning on it, so the seventh is not what was altered in this climb. The altered degree is the fourth.
- Dorian — Dorian is in the dark family — a minor third, three half steps above home. This climb had four half steps between home and its third, which is major, so the dark family was ruled out before the fourth note sounded.

### Using Modes

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#using-modes

> Play the first clip: two chords alternating over one low note. Play the second, which is the same pair with a single note inside the second chord lowered by a half step. Then play the third, which is that note on its own, both ways. One pair sounds like it is going somewhere; the other sounds like it has stopped trying.

**Plays:** Two chords over a low note (D3 D4 F4 A4 G4 B4) · The same pair, one note lowered (D3 D4 F4 A4 G4 Bb4) · That one note, both ways (D3 B4 Bb4)

The scale the first clip is drawn from, climbing from D. The two chords in that clip are built on its first and its fourth degrees, and the second of them contains the note B — the raised sixth degree, which is the one note that separates this scale from the ordinary minor on D. That is the recipe for a modal vamp: pick two chords from the mode, make sure at least one of them contains the character note, and alternate them over a bass that never leaves home. Lower the B to B flat, as the second clip does, and the same two chords become an ordinary minor pair. The table below gives each mode a use and a recording to hear it in.

| Mode | Where it is used | A vamp that works | Listen to |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ionian | The default of Western melody: pop, hymns, most classical themes | Any ordinary major progression | "Let It Be" — The Beatles |
| Dorian | Minor grooves that need to stay buoyant: jazz, funk, folk, progressive rock | Minor chord on 1 alternating with the major chord on 4 | "So What" — Miles Davis |
| Phrygian | Flamenco and Andalusian music — usually with the third of the home chord raised — metal, and anything wanting menace | Minor chord on 1 alternating with the major chord on the lowered 2 | "Mikrokosmos No. 34: In Phrygian Mode" — Béla Bartók |
| Lydian | Film and television scores, dream pop, anything meant to feel weightless | Major chord on 1 alternating with the major chord on 2 | "The Simpsons Theme" — Danny Elfman |
| Mixolydian | Rock, blues-rock, jam bands, Celtic and Appalachian tunes | Major chord on 1 alternating with the major chord on the lowered 7 | "Sweet Home Alabama" — Lynyrd Skynyrd |
| Aeolian | The default of minor-key popular music and most film underscore | Minor chord on 1 with the major chords on the lowered 6 and 7 | "Losing My Religion" — R.E.M. |
| Locrian | Almost never a home key. It turns up as the scale played over a half-diminished chord inside a tonal progression | There is no stable vamp: the chord on the first degree has no perfect fifth | Any minor two-five: the scale over the first chord of it |

**modal vamp**

**Definition.** A modal vamp is a short loop of two or three chords drawn from one mode, at least one of which contains the mode’s character note, repeated over a bass that stays on the tonic.

Each of its parts is doing a specific job. The repetition and the static bass establish home without a [cadence](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#cadences), which is what §4 said modal music has to do. The chord containing the character note makes the mode audible every time round the loop, so a listener does not have to catch a passing melody note. And keeping the loop to two or three chords stops any of them being heard as a [dominant](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#harmonic-function) setting up a resolution somewhere else.

Building one takes about a minute. Write out the mode, harmonise a few of its degrees into chords, find which of those chords contain the character note, and alternate one of them with the chord on the first degree. In dorian the character note is the raised sixth, the chord on the fourth degree is major and contains it, and the result is the D minor to G major loop in the first clip above — the most used modal vamp in popular music. In mixolydian the character note is the lowered seventh and the chord built on it is major, which gives the G to F loop that most riff-based rock lives on.

Then play over it. A drone and a loop turn all of this from a definition into something you can hear happening, and the thing worth practising is not running the scale but landing on the character note: hold it, arrive on it, bend into it. Every mode has exactly one note that has to be sold, and selling it is the entire skill.

**Good to know**

- (Tendency — rock, funk, folk-rock and modal jazz from the late 1950s onward) Modal vamps in popular music are short — two chords far more often than three — and change slowly, because each repetition is what is holding the centre in place. A loop that moves too fast or wanders too far starts to sound like a progression going somewhere, and the modal quality goes with it.
- (Constraint — writing a vamp intended to establish a mode rather than a key) Choose the second chord of a vamp so that it contains the character note. A pair of chords that both avoid it will sound like the parent [key](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#what-a-key-is) no matter how long you loop them, which is the commonest reason a modal idea does not survive contact with a band.

**You already know this**

- The character note from earlier in this chapter, which is what the second chord of a vamp exists to put in front of the listener — https://musictheory.center/course/modes#character-notes
- What a scale is from Chapter 7, a supply of notes rather than a thing to be run up and down, which is exactly how a vamp uses one — https://musictheory.center/course/scales#what-a-scale-is

**Where this goes**

- The chords a vamp is built from come from stacking thirds on the degrees of the mode, which is where Chapter 10 starts — https://musictheory.center/course/chords
- Choosing a scale to play over each chord of a progression is modal thinking applied bar by bar, and it is how jazz improvisation is taught — https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary

**In real music**

- Pink Floyd — “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” — the guitar solo sits on a two-chord loop — the minor chord on the first degree and the major chord on the fourth — for its entire length, which is the vamp in the first clip of this section
- Daft Punk — “Get Lucky” — the four-chord loop repeats from the first bar to the last with no cadence anywhere in it, and the third of the major chord in it — G sharp, inside the E chord — is what keeps the raised sixth in earshot

**Lesson:** https://musictheory.center/lessons/modes-explained

**Try it on your instrument:** Set a drone or a looped bass note going. Over it, play a two-chord vamp from one mode — minor to major a fourth up for dorian, major to major a whole tone down for mixolydian — and improvise over it for two minutes, landing on the character note at the end of every [phrase](https://musictheory.center/course/melody#phrase-antecedent-consequent). Then move the drone to a different note and do it again.

**Check:** A two-chord vamp loops over a low bass note. Predict what happens to the mode if you replace the second chord with a major chord built a fifth above home and let it fall back to the first chord.

- It stops sounding modal and sounds like an ordinary key **(correct)** — Correct. A major chord a fifth above home contains the leading tone, and the fall from it onto home is the cadence tonal music is built on. The ear takes the arrival as a resolution, hears a key rather than a centre, and the raised sixth demotes itself to a passing note.
- It sounds more strongly modal — It does the opposite. The pull of that cadence is stronger than any drone, so rather than reinforcing the centre it replaces the reason the centre was there. This is the mistake §4 warns about, and it is audible within one bar.
- Nothing changes, because the bass note is the same — The bass note matters, but it is not the only thing establishing home — it competes with whatever the harmony is implying. A cadence from a fifth above overrides a pedal note easily, which is why organ points in tonal music create tension rather than a modal centre.

### Key Takeaways

https://musictheory.center/course/modes#key-takeaways

- A mode is a scale built from the same set of notes as a major scale but treating a different note as home.
- The seven modes are ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian and locrian, taken from the first through seventh degrees of the parent scale.
- The same mode can be described as a rotation of a parent major scale or as an alteration of the major or minor scale on its own tonic, and both descriptions produce identical notes.
- Ionian is the major scale and aeolian is the natural minor, so only five of the seven are genuinely new sounds.
- Each mode has one character note that separates it from the nearest familiar scale, and a mode is not heard as a mode until that note has been sounded.
- Modal music holds its centre by repetition, drone and bass emphasis rather than by the cadence tonal music resolves onto.
- To identify a mode by ear, hear the third first to choose between the bright and dark families, then test the one note that decides between what is left.
- A modal vamp loops two or three chords from the mode over a static bass, at least one of them containing the character note.

### Questions

**What are modes in music?**

Modes are the seven scales you get by taking one [major scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale) and treating each of its notes in turn as home. They contain identical pitches and share a [key signature](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#why-key-signatures-exist), but each measures its intervals from a different starting point, so each has its own colour.

**Is dorian a minor mode?**

Yes. Dorian has a minor third, so it belongs to the minor family and sounds minor. What separates it from the [natural minor](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-three-minors) is one note: its sixth degree is a [half step](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) higher, which lightens the whole scale and is the only thing you need to hear.

**What is the difference between a mode and a scale?**

A [scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#what-a-scale-is) is any ordered set of notes. A mode is a scale defined by which degree of a parent major scale it treats as home, so every mode is a scale while most scales are not modes. Harmonic minor and the [blues scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#pentatonic-and-blues) are scales, not modes.

**How do I hear the difference between modes?**

Play the scale over a held tonic and listen to the third first: four [half steps](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) means the bright family, three the dark one. Then test the fourth and seventh if bright, the sixth and second if dark. At most three decisions name any mode.

**Why does starting a major scale on a different note not sound different?**

Because nothing has told your ear that the new note is home. Played alone, the white notes from D are just C major begun late. Hold a D underneath, land on D, or put D in the bass, and the same notes reorganise around it as dorian.

**Which mode should I learn first?**

Dorian, because it differs from the [natural minor](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-three-minors) by one note and turns up constantly in rock, funk, folk and jazz. Mixolydian is the natural second, being the major scale with one note lowered. Those two cover [most modal music you will meet](https://musictheory.center/lessons/modes-explained).

### Other languages

- https://musictheory.center/course/modes/llms.txt
- https://musictheory.center/fr/cours/modes/llms.txt
- https://musictheory.center/es/curso/modos/llms.txt