OT: Theory...Modes epiphany?

[Wasabi]

and b7



#4 instead of #5



I've learned a ton of stuff from Mr Nitti's columns in Bass Player, I plan to take his Music Dojo lessons when time and finance allows. So a sort-of +1 here

Sorry on those errors. It's early, and haven't had my morning cup of green tea yet.

 

[dlloyd]

Sorry on those errors. It's early, and haven't had my morning cup of green tea yet.

It took two cups of coffee and a handful of sudafed to get me going this morning!

 

[Wasabi]

It took two cups of coffee and a handful of sudafed to get me going this morning!

Don't they kind of counteract each other? ;-)

 

[dlloyd]

Don't they kind of counteract each other? ;-)

Sudafed's a stimulant. Of course, it should only be used in moderation, and only for colds

 

[tkarter]

Learn chordal scales and how they are used and you save yourself a bunch of learning to get to the same place.

IMHO

tk

 

[roballanson]

Oh...listen to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, and start with So What. Learn his solo on your bass, and see how he explores a modal shape.

Guys this thread has been cracking. I grew up playing jazz, listening and playing the standards and trying to emulate the greats.
I mean I know what I am doing but never realised how and why it worked.... and learned my scales from an early age, but have not thought about it for atleast 10 years.

 

[adouglas]

Guys this thread has been cracking. I grew up playing jazz, listening and playing the standards and trying to emulate the greats.
I mean I know what I am doing but never realised how and why it worked.... and learned my scales from an early age, but have not thought about it for atleast 10 years.

<selects "File-->Print" to save this stuff forever>

+1 There's a whole lot of truly great stuff here, and it'll take me a while to digest it all.

If I might summarize briefly:

1) My "epiphany" isn't actually WRONG, but it only cracks the book open. There's much more to modes than simply playing within a given key (though that ought to work for the simple example I used).

2) It pays to look at this from a few different directions...that way I'll get the most out of it. I'm trying to understand the underlying relationships rather than just learning by rote, in the interest of being able to actually put this knowedge to use (albeit in a limited way)...but ultimately it's necessary to memorize a whole pile of stuff.

3) Different modes have different "flavors." (That's REALLY useful...see below.)


My objective is to be able to improvise a new bass line without having to sit down and work out which one of the umpty-dozen possible scales I should be playing. To that end, knowing where to go next is easier if I can narrow it down. I'm after some rules of thumb to get started down the road towards full understanding.

Consider arithmetic. If you need to divide 278 by 67, you can sit down, do long division and come up with a precise answer. Or you can look at the numbers and know right away that the answer is somewhere between 4 and 5, but closer to 4. The first path yields a precise answer (full understanding), but the second gets you in the ballpark far more quickly and yields an answer that's usable.

The thing that's still missing here is an understanding of when to use which mode. I get the message that you can use any of several modes over various chord progressions to get a different feel (which is why the "flavors" idea is so useful), but that just shows it's possible...it doesn't provide guidance on how to choose the proper mode, or which ones are definitely not appropriate. It's kind of like having a box of tools but no understanding of when it's appropriate to use which one.

Thanks again for all your input...I'm sure I'll have more questions once I internalize what you've already given me.

 

[RitchieDarling]

very true ... a few years ago i realized that being able to say "i dont know" is a very ballsy thing

I do that at work a lot. Throws them all off balance.

Ritchie

 

[MingusBASS]

There really is no such thing as a "proper" or "right" mode. If it sounds good to you, it's right. It might not be the most pleasant sound to hit a C# and hold it on a C Major Chord, but if you use it as a passing tone to the ii-it can give you a cool flavor. It's important to know that when you run the modes, you aren't just training your fingers to hit the right frets. You are training your ear to hear the difference between a phrygian mode and aeolian. They are both minor but the phrygian has a flat 2nd.

What makes a guy like Pino a bad ass? He doesn't over analyze every single chord as it comes along. When you are on a studio session or soloing you aren't going to have time for that.He hears the chord, and he plays the flavor he thinks fits best with it. He comes up with sweet sh*t that most of us would never come up with, but it seems so RIGHT when he plays it. Why? Because his ear is trained to pick up all the nuances of the chord so he can play off them.

 

[roballanson]

My objective is to be able to improvise a new bass line without having to sit down and work out which one of the umpty-dozen possible scales I should be playing. To that end, knowing where to go next is easier if I can narrow it down. I'm after some rules of thumb to get started down the road towards full understanding.

Yeah see for me its weird reading something that you end up doing instictively. I am not saying I am great or anything (cos my old sax section would laugh till they cried) but I find thinking in modes and scales and that sort of thing a bit clinical. For me learn it, use it and try not to think about it but aim to create a feeling and corking bass line.....

sorry hope that made sense, for a journo I am having trouble finding the right words today.

 

[dlloyd]

The thing that's still missing here is an understanding of when to use which mode. I get the message that you can use any of several modes over various chord progressions to get a different feel (which is why the "flavors" idea is so useful), but that just shows it's possible...it doesn't provide guidance on how to choose the proper mode, or which ones are definitely not appropriate. It's kind of like having a box of tools but no understanding of when it's appropriate to use which one.

For actual modal pieces, it depends on the context.

If the overall harmony is sparse/ambiguous, you will have more freedom of choice than if there are clearly defined chords.

If you've got, say, a single droned pedal note going on, you're free to choose from any mode with that note as the tonic.

If you've got a fifth going on there, you're not going to want to use the locrian mode. But if you're in the unlikely position of having to solo over a continuous Fm7b5 chord, you're pretty much limited to F locrian.

Major chords imply either lydian, ionian or mixolydian, but the minute you start extending those chords, the choice is limited. Maj7 chords can be either ionian or lydian, but dominant chords want you to play mixolydian. Maj7#11 chords want you to use the lydian mode.

Minor chords can be either dorian, aeolian or phrygian. If you have a m9 chord, you don't want to play phrygian.

The use of chord progression can also imply specific modes... If you see a progression that hangs around, say, F major, but also includes E minor, you know it's going to be F lydian. However, in some modal tunes you can do the blues thing and go from, say, C dorian to F dorian (like in "Footprints", essentially a minor blues thing) or, for example, from D dorian to Eb dorian like in "So What".

For the diatonic chord/scale thing, just stick to the "modes" that you'd expect from the chords.

I = ionian
ii = dorian
iii = phrygian
IV = lydian
V = mixolydian
vi = aeolian
vii = locrian

So if you've got, say, Am7 |D9 |Gmaj7, you'll play A dorian, D mixolydian, G ionian.

Or if you're in any doubt, play the root!

Edit: By far the most important bit of the heiroglyphics above is the last line. The most mileage we get, as bassists, is from the chord tones.

 

[dlloyd]

I find thinking in modes and scales and that sort of thing a bit clinical. For me learn it, use it and try not to think about it but aim to create a feeling and corking bass line.....

Couldn't have said it better.

Often simpler is better. It was suggested above somewhere, to transcribe Miles' solo on "So What" 90% of it can be understood in terms of D and Eb minor pentatonic.

 

[Paul_C]

Simple is often good, but it doesn't hurt to have the knowledge to back it up.

Telling a loved one you love them may be perfect for the moment, but that doesn't mean a full grasp of the language won't be of use on another day

Knowledge of theory doesn't limit you to anything, but it gives you more vocabulary to use if you want to use it. You're still free to play root notes if that's what's needed to make the song work, or create a tune you can hear in your head, but having the knowledge there as backup won't make your playing less than it could be.

P.

 

[tkarter]

While I am not a good teacher of music. I do understand how chords move and what a chord is made up of.

Music is made with chords.

Hearing the chord is the important part of playing music.

I am slowly learning what is being said here but don't think knowing it will make me any better player.

tk

 

[muggsy]

While I am not a good teacher of music. I do understand how chords move and what a chord is made up of.

Music is made with chords.

Hearing the chord is the important part of playing music.

I am slowly learning what is being said here but don't think knowing it will make me any better player.

tk

I don't think knowing theory can be a bad thing. For someone like me, who didn't start out with a good ear, learning the modes and understanding theory will (I hope) eventually get me to a place where the concepts are internalized and I can use them without thinking too hard. It's like learning a foreign language -- you start out translating each word in your head into your native tongue, then putting the words together to get the meaning of the sentence. Eventually, you get past that and start thinking and speaking in the other language without the intermediate translation step.

Right now it's still cumbersome for me to look at a chord progression and figure out what modes to play over each chord, then find the scale on the fretboard and come up with a line. I'm assuming it'll get easier with practice. I feel like I'm getting closer to the lightbulb moment when it all makes sense, but I'm not quite there yet.

This is a great thread.

 

[nicolasd]

Bass Guitar For Dummies

if you'll excuse the name, has an AWESOME explanation on modes. and disclaimer here, my bass teacher, patrick pfeiffer wrote it for the folks at wiley publishing (owners of the "for dummies" series). i did the technical illustrations in it.

but it's seriously one of, if not the best bass instruction book there is. and i bet every bassist on this forum would find something useful in it.

-n.

 

[tkarter]

Wasabi came as close to getting my light bulb lit as anyone ever has discussing modes. Still I think the string on the lamp the bulb was in was rotten and broke before the danged light came on.


tk

 

[Psychicpet]

Bass Guitar For Dummies

if you'll excuse the name, has an AWESOME explanation on modes. and disclaimer here, my bass teacher, patrick pfeiffer wrote it for the folks at wiley publishing (owners of the "for dummies" series). i did the technical illustrations in it.

but it's seriously one of, if not the best bass instruction book there is. and i bet every bassist on this forum would find something useful in it.

-n.

Absolutely! One of my students 'hipped' me to patrick's stuff, amazing teacher and the book is an awesome resource. Please do say hello and thanks to him from me

 

[nicolasd]

Absolutely! One of my students 'hipped' me to patrick's stuff, amazing teacher and the book is an awesome resource. Please do say hello and thanks to him from me

absolutely. will do! he's an amazing teacher and i'm lucky to be able to learn from him in person. he plays MTD basses, but has fully endorsed my decision to get a bongo 5!

he just released his first book through Hal Leonard called "Improve Your Groove," that's on amazon etc. right now. i find he's really addressing the areas in bass book instruction no one touches upon.

and lucky me, i get to be the guinea pig for all the experiments of this german mad scientist of bass!

the horror!

-n.

 

[Lazybite]

yes a truely great post....

I have mostly used the modes to alter the patterns I use when I am playing something for the first time.... it gives me various combos/passing notes etc.

And also use them for learning where on the neck I play for each key... and for practicing getting up and down the fretboard quickly in key...