General Music Chat

paperDog

Learning scales and modes has changed a lot of how I approach things. My help with this has been http://gosk.com/. Has a lot of hard info boiled down into usable facts: scales, modes, chords, arpeggios.

I had learneed and forgot some of that back when I was playing professionally. When I decided to take another poke at it, I found this site to be very helpful in getting me back up to speed and beyond.

I was playing the other night, two drinks only, and trying to figure out how to escapte a pentatonic that had ran out of steam - so in the same key I jumped to phrygian, fearing it would sound awkward. Worked really well! I was suruprised to see the post about that - it sure confirms what I was thinking after trying that.

The interesting thing is each note in the diatonic scale has a counterpart mode, Triad and chord. As in G scale First note is G, Ionian (major) Mode and so on with a major, minor or dim for each note of the scale. In the G scale Phrygian would relate to the Third note B, and chord which is Bmin.

Talbot

I admit it... I dunno what Phyrgian scale means... Nor pentatonic... What are the differences essentially? (do you have a link that can illustrate?) thanks[/quote]


Phrygian is essentially the 3rd mode of the major scale. In the key of C you have C-D-E-F-G-A-B. This follows the pattern W-W-H-W-W-W-H (W = Whole step, 2 frets i.e. C to D. H = Half step, 1 fret i.e. C to C#).

The Phrygian would be E-F-G-A-B-C-D (Just playing C major, but start on the E). This follows a H-W-W-W-H-W-W. The E major scale is E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#. Therefore by playing the Phrygian you have a b3, b4, b6, & b7. It is a minor 7 and has an egyptian sound as well.

E natural minor is actually the 6th mode of the G major scale. All natural minors are the Aeolian mode. So, E minor is E-F#-G-A-B-C-D. The E minor pentatonic is just a variation of a minor scale its notes are E-G-A-B-D.

E Dorian is the 2nd mode of the D major.

It's really easy: All major scales have 7 chords associated with them. That's what makes up a key. They always go in the order of M,m,m,M,M,m,d (M=major, m=minor, d=diminished)

In the key of C:
C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim. 1, 4, 5 always major. 2, 3, 6 always minor. 7 diminished. It only stands to reason that if you started a major scale on the 1st note it would sound major, 2nd it would sound minor, etc.

I explain these things in my videos on youtube.

--In summary--
E natural minor: E-F#-G-A-B-C-D (E Aeolian, out of G major, has b3, b6, & b7)
E Dorian: E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D (second mode of the D major, has b3 & b7)
E Phrygian: E-F-G-A-B-C-D (third mode of C major, has b3, b4, b6, &b7)
E minor pentatonic: E-G-A-B-D (5 notes of the E Aeolian)

So, you can see that depending on which one you are using over an Em chord, the sound can be vastly different.

Wow! thank you both (Mike, Delauney). Actually I think I get it.. LOL Don't know how.. but is seems to make a little bit of sense. I will examine this closer...