Hail

20T would shoot it down because he's the only one here that still mixes up CST and modes and he has no idea that there's a difference

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AlanHB

I'd like it to explain that CST/patterns of visualising accidentals is an acceptable approach, kinda like my 3 approaches to modes blog.

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And no, Guitar Hero will not help. Even on expert. Really.

Sleepy__Head

/thread

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20Tigers

You are rather vague with your criticism.

I haven't discussed CST in this thread. If you are referring to the link in my sig in which I describe three typical ways that modes are used then I might actually understand WTF you are getting and be able to have a meaningful discussion.

But you have been very unclear in showing me where you think I have gone wrong. Your criticisms seem to imply that the posts I have made in this thread are confusing CST with modes. I don't believe any of what I have said in this post has anything to do with chord scale theory.

If you want to have a meaningful discussion then please elaborate on you criticism. If all you want to do is snipe then go right ahead and I'll know from here on out just to ignore you.

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Si
Explaining Modes part 1
Explaining Modes part 2 (continued)

Hail

modes do not exist within keys

it's not "the new use for modes" or "another use for modes". it's an established system that has absolutely nothing to do with modes, and has its own name to describe it. i don't understand why you feel the need to shove CST into modes and it doesn't make any sense to me.

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mdc

CST...

That's using modes as chord scales in the key of E minor.

Plainsong and folksong modes, aren't the same as scales. There's a final, which remains the same whether it's authentic or plagal, but there's no harmony.

The closest you could get to harmonizing a modal melody without destroying it's character is organum.

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Sweet

Hail

i know what modal music is and understand how primitive and fragile it is harmonically.

but when there's a key involved, and you're using a scale for "flavor" like the guthrie piece - CST or accidentals. call it whatever you want, but modality ends as far as the inspiration for the scales. 20T is mixing up the fact that there's a major, minor, and diminished mode in tonality with the church modes and ignoring that you can't just change the name of a convention because you're lazy, especially if one already exists.

i understand the idea came from a mis-imagining of the church modes, but realizing, in a key, they're functionally accidentals, is necessary to understand if you're going to try and instruct people as to what modes actually are

we can go into it for hours about whether modal music actually exists as its own entity rather than a very narrow glimpse at tonality, but that's not what this is about - it's literally about thinking that the idea changed completely because of conventions that we've already defined just aren't good enough for someone to accept that we can leave modes out of the equation.

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:-D

the poop that took a pee

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Sleepy__Head

I question the veracity of your statements concerning modes and harmony.

Early renaissance polyphony is drawn almost entirely from (church) modes. True, as time passes more and more accidentals crept into polyphonic music, and eventually this developed into the system of tonality we use now. Nonetheless it's possible to 'do' harmonised modal music.

The problem for modern listeners used to tonal music is that modal harmony has a tendency to sound like tonal harmony. So I can see why you say that harmonising a modal melody will destroy its character (every time we hear a dominant / tonic interchange, for example, it screams "establishment of key!!!"), but from the pov of history what you say is unsupported by evidence.

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Sleepy__Head

I somewhat echo your sentiment.

Rather than bothering about whether modes exist, look at how the term is used in its historical context. Questions of existence in relation to conceptual ideas invariably end up either on a wild goose chase or a pissing match over the definition of the terms 'exist' and 'real'.

It's no good, for example, trying to maintain that modes 'just are' a subset of tonality. Not only is that overly reductive, it's also entirely unhistorical, is in flat contradiction to modern musicological practice, and betrays a lack of understanding of the origin of the term and its changing usage over time. If you want to explain modes you need to have a much better grasp of them than that.

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20Tigers

Sorry it's so long, but I do want to clarify some things though because it appears that I was unclear in my earlier message as the meaning you took from my post is not what I intended it to be. I'm not trying to argue with you here just lay out my thinking in full when I posted the earlier post.

Modes are a collection of notes that make up the tonal character, or sonority of a piece of music arranged in a scale form. Often mode also refers to specific melodic (or harmonic) patterns. And what I mean there is that sometimes "mode" refers not just to the note collection but prescribe a specific way those notes are used.

"minor" when referring to tonal music is a mode. It is the collection of notes that give a piece of music a specific sonority that we call minor. Further it also specifices harmonic and melodic patterns that are a part of that mode i.e. the harmonic and melodic minor scales on a V-I cadene are a part of the melodic minor "mode".

Typically when someone speaks of music being modal what they are saying is that the "mode" for that particulary piece is one other than the normal major and minor that have grown accustomed to over the past 200+ years. Most often referring to the church modes.

The church modes have a long and very complex history. I think it stretches over a some 800 years and the details relating to the modes (what they were, how they were used, the number of modes etc) changed and evolved with the music and musical theories that were fashionable in the day.

While looking at the changing fashions in music theorists eventually posited that much of the music that was being produced could be reduced to two modes (one major and one minor) that could be transposed to any of the 12 tonal centres and that these 24 keys (12 major and 12 minor) could be used to analyse and understand all the music that was happening at the time.

People loved this new tonal music and it caught on. It became pretty much the only way any new music was created for the next 200 years. The church modes, all but abandoned; continued their existence in the old plain song and folk traditions.

In the 19th and 20th centuries composers wanted some fresh ideas and sounds. And they found through an exploration of the church modes.

Some sources categorize three basic reasons for incorporating church modes into music today. 1. To imitate the feel of 16thC sacred music 2. To bring qualities of traditional folk music 3. as a reactoin against the major/minor system to find new sounds and ideas.

Though the modern composers saw the old modes as an opportunity to explore new ideas and fresh sounds they did not completely ignore the last 200 years of music. The modes were reinterpreted through the lens of 200 years of major/minor dominated tonal music.

The modes no longer had the all the same defining characteristics in regard to ambitus, predetermined melodic patterns, and final that defined the modes of the 16th Century and before. What defined the mode in the new interpretation was strictly the intervallic structure (step pattern). The step pattern could be applied to any key note (tonal centre) to produce the same mode in a different ***.

I think that last sentence is where I lost you last time. I was not implying that the modes exist within a major key or that they exist within the minor key as some kind of CST. I was actually, and perhaps erroneously, separating key from major/minor. I was perhaps a little too influenced by the wording of the Harvard Dictionary of Music when I wrote that post. Specifically I refer to the following entries:




Hopefully this has clarified what I was thinking when I posted the last post. -Nothing to do with CST.

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Si
Explaining Modes part 1
Explaining Modes part 2 (continued)

AeolianWolf

^ i can't disagree with anything in that post. well said.

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amonamarthmetal

I'm hiding this thread cause i'ts stupid.

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The Madcap

I saw a big post by Xiaoxi a while back about modes. Do any of you guys have it? I'm kind of having trouble understanding the argument, myself. I only have 3 semesters of undergrad Theory under my belt so if one of you guys wants to explain it to me, I'm all ears.

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jrenkert

The Madcap,

Basically all you have missed is a pissing match about definitions.

Love,

JR

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J-Dawg158

Allow me to bring you up to speed:

1. Guy posts question in MT asking about using scales to write songs/what scales he should learn/what do scales have to do with guitar/scales/scales/scales/scales/modes/scales

etc...

2. Some people give some good advice for a post or two then some would-be shredhead still sporting a hard-on from that Satch article on "Pitch Axis" spouts off that TS should learn modes.

3. The Regs respond that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.(Note: This ranges from somebody like Hotspur or mdc offering a mild mannered rebuttal to Hail or Griff Calling him a Dumbass and he should go home & re-evaluate his theory/playing/life in general, or something along those lines.)

4. Shred head gets all butthurt and escalates the argument further culminating in 100+ posts of knowledge, bullshit, name calling, comments about the sexual misadventures of someone's maternal figure, side dish recipes, you name it it's probably come up. All ending with AW laying down the law only to be refuted by 20T locking them into a clash of titanic proportions.

That's my general observation anyway.

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mdc

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Sweet

mdc

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Sweet

chronowarp

Doesn't anyone think that saying, "It's just in the key of X" is an unsatisfactory explanation when one is trying to describe a section or fragment of a composition that is clearly formed around the tonality of a mode?

Think about the Chocobo Theme in FF. One could simply state that it's in the Key of G, because at points it clearly indicates that it is harmonically functional, but would it not be more descriptive, and helpful, to note that the entire A section, and a lot of the B section, is based around a Mixolydian tonality?

Or is the AeolianWolf method of "IT'S THE KEY OF G, SOMETIMES THERE'S b7's! NOOB!" more descriptive and helpful in communicating what's happening musically?

Honest question.

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