Modes with Bears
Modes are an essential part of understanding jazz theory but are often presented in an overly complicated manner. This chapter aims to present these in a holistic fashion that will be easier to parse, and more importantly, compose and improvise with. As we work our way through this material, try to keep the big picture in focus and not get tied up too much in the minutia.
What is a Mode?
Modes are another name for scales. In fact, the major and minor scales you’re already likely familiar with are modes.
- Major is also known as Ionian.
- Natural Minor is also known as Aeolian.
If you know these two scales, you already know a few modes. All we’re going to do from here is add to the family and show you how they all fit together.
So you may ask, why do we have two terms then? Modes, when viewed together, do have another characteristic—they connect together into families which help us express all the subtleties of different chords within a key. Of course, it’s not that a scale doesn’t have this. It’s just that when we talk about scales, we typically think of them individually, while modes are usually viewed in context with each other and the harmonies they express.
Modes can be understood as scales in context.
As has been done many times in many books about scales, we’ll look at all the modes within a given key and observe their unique characteristics, but don’t lose sight of what they all have in common. The context a set of modes exist in is as important as the modes themselves. This will become clear as we move forward.
Exploring the Modes of a Key
Let’s begin in the key of C. We’ll do this so that key signatures and accidentals don’t run the risk of confusing us. Just as there are seven notes in any given major key, there are seven basic 7th chords we can build, and seven modes that can be derived. Let’s unpack this a bit. Here’s the C major scale, which can also be called C Ionian.
And now, by stacking three 3rds over each tone, we get seven 7th chords.
Doing this gives us the vertical harmonies diatonic to C major. Notice a few characteristics:
- There are two major 7 chords on the 1st and 4th notes.
- There are three minor 7 chords on the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th notes.
- There is a dominant 7th chord on the 5th note.
- And there is a half-diminished chord on the 7th note.
Each of these chords has a different quality to it. We often use terms like tonic, dominant, and subdominant to describe the feelings they create, but I like to think of how they move. Major and minor chords are relatively stable. The five major and minor 7th chords here don’t have a ton of urgency to them. The dominant and half-diminished chords however both contain tritones and have an unstable tension that moves us forward.
And something even more subtle is going on here. There are two major chords, but if we play them back-to-back, there’s something different between them. They’re not identical. The I feels very “home” while the IV is more brilliant. And the mi