music theory general knowledge exchange

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 purplepiper wrote:

Hello fellow peoples. I'm a musician who loves to eat up any little bit of knowlege I can get from people who know more than me. I've got so many questions! For instance, what exactly is the definition of an arpeggio, or what exactly is dissonance, or what exactly is harmony between notes. We all 'sort of know' what these things mean, but I couldn't define it. This is intended as a thread for some of the more theory oriented people here to share some basic knowledge and enlighten the rest of us. 

I'll start us off- i'll explain the concept of modes. A mode is essentially a 'starting position' in a scale. Every scale has as many modes as it has notes in it. The major scale, having 7 notes, has 7 modes (ionian/major, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian/minor, locrian) To utilize any of these modes, simply treat their coresponding 'starting positions' as the root of the scale. It's not difficult at all, they are all just versions of the same scale with an emphasis on different notes. If anyone would like further explanation, i'll be happy to explain! (I know a lot of you know this stuff already, but many of the musicians i've met did not. This is an opportunity for people to learn something useful =) 

As Purplepiper says, Modes are startlingly easy once you get the hang of it. I find it easiest to think of them on a piano keyboard. In any octave there are 7 white-keys and 5 black-keys (sharps); if you start on "C" and play the 7 white-keys up to (but not including) the next "C" you have played the Major scale, which is also the Ionian Mode. However if you start at "D" and play all the white-keys up to the next "D" you have played the Dorian scale. All the modal scales using this method are as follows:

C: Ionian (or Major Scale)
D: Dorian
E: Phrygian
F: Lydian
G: Mixolydian
A: Aeolian (or Minor Scale)
B: Locrian

Obviously to play a Major scale in "D" would mean starting at "D" and then playing the same semitone intervals between notes that there were in the key of C-major (t-t-s-t-t-t), so in this case the F and C would be sharpened. This transposition is simply based upon the semi-tone intervals of the original root, hence transposing a Modal scale into a different key is done by the same method.