In a pro-career spanning 40 years and 5 countries, Cincinnati-born jazz guitarist Greg Chako has released ten albums and played countless shows around the world. His bi-weekly column, "Notes From The Desk Of A Jazz Guitarist” shares his expert tips on becoming a better player and person.
A Modes Mess
Modes were conceived in Medieval times, long before the advent of the major or minor scale, not to mention the concept of chromaticism. When I think of what actual modal music sounds like, I imagine Gregorian Chants and pre-Baroque Period church music first.
Since the advent of functional tonality and the chromatic scale, most people, to the best of my knowledge, do not compose with modes foremost in their minds. For a song to be considered modal, I believe it should adhere to the scale tones of whatever mode it is in, absent of any ‘chords’ per se.
Miles Davis’ famous Kind of Blue album, released in 1959, is considered modal because the compositions on that record were based on a series of ‘linear’ melody notes rather than any ‘vertical’ chord structure. In Miles’ own words, it was a “return to melody.”
But with Kind of Blue, having been given the melody (or scale?) to use as the basis for their improvisations, the soloists played whatever they felt like for the recording . . . i.e., they drew upon their own knowledge and experience up to that point, without sole reliance on a pre-determined tonal harmonic structure. In fact, unlike the way Gregorian Chants strictly adhered to a 7-note mode hundreds of years ago, the players on Kind of Blue improvised based on Miles’ limited and arguably ‘loose’ musical direction, but they were of course, fully armed with their keen ‘ears’ and an informed, thorough knowledge of much that had transpired with regard to theory over the previous 300 years of musical history. In other words, their solos were not limited to a 7-note mode.
I don’t quite understand why guitarists in particular seemed so intrigued by modes. We’re apparently willing to spend inordinate amounts of time discussing them, reading about them, and trying to learn or practice them, when in my opinion, our time is better spent learning to play melodies. To paraphrase guitarist Jim Hall, everything you need to know about how to improvise on a song can be discovered within its melody. I seriously question the value of knowing all about modes these days, and I do not believe that we guitarists really benefit much from ‘practicing’ them.
I’m a musician with a formal music education, and I have known about modes for decades. However, I have never composed a piece of music “by” modes or with modes as any sort of inspiration for the music. In fact, only once in my 35 years experience as an accomplished composer and arranger did I ever use, in the place of normal chord symbols, words like “Phrygian” or “Dorian” in one of my charts. I did replace chord symbols with the names of modes for a song that was included on my “Integration” album titled, “Tokong Burung.” I wrote out the words: E Dorian, E Phrygian, and G Dorian on the lead sheet instead of using the symbols E-7 and G-7. I did that because the chord symbols E-7 & G-7 could indicate one of at least three different modes for each of those chords, Aeolian (the vi-7), Phrygian (the iii-7), or Dorian (the ii-7).
I wanted specificity in describing the harmony and that’s what the mode names gave me. I wanted the soloists to know exactly what scale I was using for my accompanying chords (there was no pianist on that song), and what scale they might use as a basis for their solo. As a result, there was no doubt as to what my intention for the harmony was, and the soloists could make an informed decision about what they wanted to play.
To me, that is the only reason I can imagine why any of us need to know what the Greek words for modes mean. It is more than adequate to know the major Diatonic scale and how the chords of that scale are built. If you know that much, then you will know that the IV chord of the major scale will have a #11 in its (Lydian) chord scale, as a ‘just for instance’.
There are innumerable lessons available about modes. The purpose of this article is not to add to that wealth of information, but rather, to warn against your inadvertently assigning too much importance on them. Avoid delving ‘into the weeds’ with modes and save your time and energy for learning melodies, tunes, and chord scales . . . use al la mode to top your pie with!