A First Look at Modes

This is a light, optional lesson: without touching a single black key, changing which note is home gives the same seven white keys a brand-new flavor.

Press play and listen to this little riff: every note is a white key, but its home is not C — it is D. This white-key scale with D as home is called the Dorian mode.

New home, new flavor

Take the seven white keys of C major and shift the center of gravity to D. Walking from D up to the next D, the whole steps and half steps now fall in different places. Not one note has changed, yet the ear hears a completely different color — that is the entire secret of modes.

Dorian: minor with a bright 6th

D Dorian sounds like a minor scale (its 3rd is a minor 3rd), but its 6th degree sits a half step higher than in natural minor — a ray of light in the shade. Jazz, funk and plenty of film scores love this melancholy-but-not-gloomy flavor. That B in the riff above is exactly that ray of light.

Mixolydian: major, relaxed

The white-key scale with G as home is called the Mixolydian mode: it sounds like major, except the 7th degree is a half step lower (F instead of F♯). It loses that urgent must-get-home pull and gains the relaxed swagger of rock and blues. Listen for the F in the riff — that is the note doing the relaxing.

Just remember the direction

No need to memorize mode names yet. Keep one sentence: same notes, different home, different flavor. Whenever you meet the words Dorian or Mixolydian in a score or an interview, come back to this page, play for a minute, and the feeling will return.