Modes, Scales, Getting The Tonality/Color Of Said Modes, Etc

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I just need some clarification at the moment. So I know a bit about modes, and their relation to a parent scale. What I'm failing to understand is how exactly to play in a modal way on guitar. I remember reading somewhere that what you do is basically transpose a mode's patterns onto the parent scale's key.

For example, say we're dealing with C Major, and we want to go to a D Dorian, what I understand is that to play D Dorian, you would move it from D to a C, and then play a Dorian pattern starting from C. Is this a correct way to go about playing in a modal sense? If so, then I'm also failing how to bring out the flavor of each mode, like in the sense of doing backing rhythm sections. To some degree, I understand that you should start playing, using the above example, a Dm and establish D as the tonal center.

For full disclosure, to aid my learning, I'm trying to use the scale finder on all-guitar-chords, and to say the least, it's all very confusing to me: all that I said above seems to work fine if I take a major scale and look at the major modes, but it all falls apart if I try to apply this same logic to any of the minor modes, which I fail to understand at all. From what I've been learning, all the modes should work under a parent scale, but from what I'm seeing, that's not the case, indicating a flaw in what I've been learning.

To sum it all up: how would you bring out a mode's flavor and establish that mode's mood for a section of music, in both a lead and rhythm sense and how exactly do you use the all-guitar-chords site to show modes in what would be considered a correct way?

manpreet 2 years ago