Do you use the modes to play guitar

Manfred-Klose

I have been using modes combined with arpeggios for years , and i have my own little structured way of calculated guitar playing combined with improv.

Now for a while my mind has been boggled about how guitarists like Al Di Meola, Eric Johnson en Guthrie Govan goes about thinking up all those flashy notes. It occurred to me they know what they are doing. and i want to as well.

So i am busy touching up and rethinking on how to better incorporate the modes into my way of playing.

I then realize only a few of my friends actually know what modes are.

anyone else using them modes ?

P.S: The myxolydian is my favourite to play if i can throw it in somewhere.

(old forum) Poll Results: Do you use the Modes to play guitar ?

Yes: 8
No: 4
i do, but dont really understand how it works.: 4
I have no idea what you are on about?: 1

AlanRatcliffe

Yes, but I don't always know what I'm doing. ?

Try find Joe Satriani's Guitar Player article on modes. That is probably the best (or at least the most practical) explanation on using modes.

Manfred-Klose

Yes, but I don't always know what I'm doing. Cheesy

ok so i am not alone. been doing it by ear all this time, following the basic structures

FruitarGeek

Manfred, you definitely gotta get into Jazz then. The beauty about Jazz, it 'forces' you to think in scale/modes/arpeggio's for EVERY chord that comes along. And also, it allows you to break a few melodic rules, namely, you can play your Phrigian scale over any minor chord that comes along to give it that zestful sound..

But, what I do, that I find helps, and what my mentor kept telling me is that you got to see your guitar fretboard as a map. sounds weird right? Well, essentially, like those children keyboards with the keys that light up when you supposed to play that key, you need to visualise the same with guitar. So knowing your modes is a great start, but, can you play the modes from the 5th string? from the 4th string? etc. You must know the theory behind it, so that when you play the Ionian scale, if you start from the root on the 6th string, by the time you've hit the 4th note, you are playing the root of the Lydian. I know this sounds obvious, but you need to think and internalize this stuff. Then you'll have no problem knowing exactly what goes where.

Manfred-Klose

see your guitar fretboard as a map.

i am doing that already, been playing my lyidians and all that stuff, but mainly to music that stayed in 1 key, say 3 majors and a minor type stuff.
so i want to get out of the "box" and explore abit

Ray

Very difficult to structure when i am trying to create.

briang-telkomsa-net

I've been struggling to get my head around this for years - I think it is finally sinking in though.
Even managed to used Dorian against Minor 7th blues progression the other day and I worked it out all by myself. OK with a bit of help from JustinGuitar and various other sites on the topic.

Man it seems almost impossible to utilise modes "thinking (playing) on your feet" though - probably take a while to internalise the stuff as Adrian suggests which is the only way to go. And the Jazz application of changing for every chord is even more daunting. Do you think much when using a Pentatonic - that's where you got to get to with modes I guess.

Chocklit_Thunda

You know... In three years of lessons at a well renowned music school, not one of my three teachers over the years ever went into modes. In fact we didn't even go into scales in that much detail... Only during my last year did my final teacher attempt to teach me all the shapes of the minor pentatonic ???
Kinda scary

Manfred-Klose

@chocklit , that sucks, time to make up for lost time!!!

a few basic things i picked up, if you listen to blues and rock, its mostly pentatonic based. (not all of it, just using a basic example)
so you have to listen to music that does incorporate modes, as you must first know what it sounds like, and be able to hear the modes if you want to be able to play them without having to think much.
simple answer, listen to alot of that type of music.

so if you only want to play pentatonic based music, then do it.

anyone else have a different approach ?

coynegfsa

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Try find Joe Satriani's Guitar Player article on modes. That is probably the best (or at least the most practical) explanation on using modes.

Here's Part 1 and 2 of the video lesson for those who want to check it out, should probably go through it myself at some point.

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arjunmenon

Manfred Klose wrote @chocklit , that sucks, time to make up for lost time!!!

a few basic things i picked up, if you listen to blues and rock, its mostly pentatonic based. (not all of it, just using a basic example)
so you have to listen to music that does incorporate modes, as you must first know what it sounds like, and be able to hear the modes if you want to be able to play them without having to think much.
simple answer, listen to alot of that type of music.

so if you only want to play pentatonic based music, then do it.

anyone else have a different approach ?

Guthrie Govan suggests the use of pentatonics as a starting point and adding notes as you please...makes sense the way i see it because your scale structure remains pretty basic (adding more notes and/or changing notes around still keeps a majority of the notes common) without having to think too hard about where a #/b is appropriate

Something i know i struggled with in the past (and i think many struggle with IMO) is landing on chord tones on the beat

Guys like Eric Johnson & Carl Verheyen are great examples of guys who, although they move around, manage to land on strong notes...i.e playing through the changes as opposed to playing over them.

Playing over changes is what you see a lot of the rock guys do because it's simple enough when there are no key changes involved.

A great way to start thinking outside the box is to approach every chord in a progression as an individual unit...this should help you build interesting phrases on chord-per-chord basis.
Follow this up with string each phrase together, from one chord to the next.
Something i picked up from a Jody Fisher book on jazz harmony is to keep it simple and focus on the melodic aspect of playing through the changes, and then adding other notes to add tension to the melody.

Liken the above to an elastic band. Think of the stretched elastic band as the main melody. Now liken the addition of other notes as pulling the elastic band. The truth is that you can't keep pulling and pulling on the elastic band without returning it to its original state (the melody). The key is to pull and release in a way that yields maximum musicality.

chrisbark

I use em, but I try not to think too much when I do ?

Adrian Rogowski wrote Manfred, you definitely gotta get into Jazz then. The beauty about Jazz, it 'forces' you to think in scale/modes/arpeggio's for EVERY chord that comes along. And also, it allows you to break a few melodic rules, namely, you can play your Phrigian scale over any minor chord that comes along to give it that zestful sound..

I think it depends from player to player. More modern thinking is along modal lines but traditionally it was chord tones and arpeggios.

Arjun Menon wrote Something i picked up from a Jody Fisher book on jazz harmony is to keep it simple and focus on the melodic aspect of playing through the changes, and then adding other notes to add tension to the melody.

That is the whole truth and nothing but !

A lot of jazz players don't think one mode per chord because thinking about three modes for a single ii-V-I is too much mental arithmetic and doesn't necessarily help spell out the changes. Someone like Joe Pass plays modally but to him a ii-V-I is just one chord with a little "movement".

You can analyse Pat Martino's playing and see all kinds of modal funkiness, but he doesn't think in terms of modes, he converts everything to a minor and plays minor line forms which are pretty much modal soup.

Since minor pentatonics work well on the guitar and Dorian is only a minor pentatonic with two more notes, one method to play "modally" but keep the thinking simple is by converting everything to a minor and then play with one shape/mode : Dorian.

Major chord ? Play Dorian from the 2nd
Minor chord ? Play Dorian from the root
Dominant chord ? Play Dorian from the 5th
Minor 7 flat 5 ? Dorian from the 3rd

Phrygian sound over a minor chord ? Play Dorian from the 7th
Lydian sound over a major ? play Dorian from the 6th

The advantage with this approach is you can learn 5 Dorian shapes (which are just one or two notes more than the minor pentatonics you may already know) that fit well under the fingers and cover the whole fretboard and play over almost any chord

The hard part as Adrian says is being able to start from any string or note in the scale.

arjunmenon

chrisbark wrote The hard part as Adrian says is being able to start from any string or note in the scale.

This..is my holy grail

ryanguit

I was big into satch so I had to learn modes early on. I couldn't play we'll but I knew my modes... Then I got into blues and saw that I could play Dorian most of the time as the 4th chord in basic blues was a dominant 7th and pentatonic fits around it really easily. Raise the third in Dorian changes to mixo which is useful since blues is alot of V7 chords... Just some use of modes... Cheers

Attila

Check out some lessons and vids by Kirk Lorange he does not like to use modes but speaks and teaches about the chord of moment, which allows for easy melody which is musically more pleasing to the ear, than ratterling off a mode/scale in lightning speed

Eample:

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Manfred-Klose

thanks for all the new ideas, i will check em all out.