Well-known songs that use Modes

viz · July 2020

There’s a lot of confusion about modes. The usual way of explaining them is that they are ‘relatives’ of one another - Dorian is the 2nd mode of major, Dorian is like playing D to D on white notes on the piano, etc.

But this can be confusing. The other way is to ignore the relationship between them and think of them ‘absolutely’, as scales, or palettes of notes, in their own right, each with a tonal centre and a unique set of intervals. And a good way of getting to grips with each mode’s sound is simply listen to the music within each one.

So I thought I'd compile a little list of pieces for people to get familiar with each mode's sound. Feel free to suggest!

Ionian (the major scale)
Triumphant, settled, happy, resolute, unambiguous.

Over the Rainbow - Arlen & Harburg

Happy Birthday - Patty Hill

God save the Queen

Winnie the Pooh
I was Born to Love You - Freddie
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Doe a Deer / Do Re Me - Rogers & Hammerstein
The Four Seasons (Spring) - Vivaldi
Since You Been Gone - Rainbow
Brown-Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
If I Could Fly - Joe Satriani
Viva La Vida - Coldplay

Girls Just Want to Have Fun - Cindi Lauper
Take On Me - a-ha
Jump - Van Halen
Red Red Wine - UB40

viz · July 2020

Dorian (the minor scale but with a raised 6th)
Sad yet optimistic, quirky, peppery, light, old-fashioned.

Coconut Grove - David Lee Roth

What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor

Greensleeves

Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd

Apache - The Shadows

Thriller - Michael Jackson

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Ennio Morricone

A View to a Kill - Dorian Dorian

I Wish - Stevie Wonder

So What - Miles Davis

Oye Como Va - Santana

Stayin’ Alive - The Bee Gees

Silent Witness theme tune

viz · July 2020

Phrygian (the minor scale but with a lowered 2nd)

Dark, eastern, mysterious, salty, moody.

Modern Times - New Model Army

War - Joe Satriani

Remember Tomorrow - Iron Maiden

For the Love of God - Steve Vai

Harvester of Sorrow - Metallica

Powerslave - Iron Maiden

Wherever I May Roam - Metallica

Time - Joe Satriani

Bagatelle no 2 - William Walton

MikroKosmos - Bella Bartok

viz · July 2020

Lydian (the major scale with an augmented (raised) 4th)

Questioning, airy, spicy, sharp, ambiguous.

Flying in a Blue Dream - Joe Satriani

Giant Balls of Gold - Steve Vai

The Riddle - Steve Vai

Wake Up - Rage Against the Machine

viz · July 2020

Mixolydian (the major scale with a lowered 7th)

Steadfast, resolute, genuine, rocky.

Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns n’ Roses

She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult

Spiritwalker - The Cult

Sweet Home Alabama (D Mixolydian) - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Come Up and See Me (especially instrumental intro) - Steve Harley

You Really Got Me - The Kinks

Material World - Madonna

Celebration - Kool and the Gang

Led Boots - Jeff Beck

Walkin’ by Myself - Gary Moore

viz · July 2020

Aeolian (the natural minor scale)

Tragic, pessimistic, warm, calm, pensive, romantic.

Black Magic Woman - Santana

Losing my Religion - REM

Street Spirit - Radiohead

Eye of the Tiger - Survivor

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

viz · July 2020

Locrian (the minor scale with a diminished (lowered) 5th)

Unsettled, unresolved, uncomfortable, weird.

Army of Me - Björk

Harvester of Sorrow (guitar solo) - Metallica

5th piano concerto, 5th movement, ‘Vivo’ - Prokofiev

hotpickups · July 2020

viz said:

Locrian

Army of Me - Björk

Can't be many songs in Locrian I'd imagine? Funny mode that one

viz · July 2020

hotpickups said:

viz said:

Locrian

Army of Me - Björk

Can't be many songs in Locrian I'd imagine? Funny mode that one

Nope. There’s a prokofiev piano concerto movement and a fragment of a Rachmaninov prelude (Bm) and a few other bits and bobs, but the trouble with Locrian is every time you play it, it sounds more like the 1st inversion of the chord 2 tones down, than the key of the Locrian root!

monquixote · July 2020

I think the best mixolydian song is "Come up and see me" by Steve Harley.

It starts with a run up the mixolydian.

fastonebaz · July 2020

Shred mode

Yngwie Malmsteen

axisus · July 2020

I don't get modes. I've had them explained plenty of times over the years. I don't get modes.

octatonic · July 2020

axisus said:

I don't get modes. I've had them explained plenty of times over the years. I don't get modes.

It is simply the home of a chord progression.

Although the notes of C Ionion and D Dorian are the same, Over the Rainbow sounds much more 'major key' than Greensleeves does because of where the tonality of the song is centred.

octatonic · July 2020

fastonebaz said:

Shred mode

Yngwie Malmsteen

Phrygian Dominant & Harmonic Minor, usually.

hotpickups · July 2020

axisus said:

I don't get modes. I've had them explained plenty of times over the years. I don't get modes.

I didn’t either before lockdown tbh. But with the little extra knowledge I’ve found I can honestly say it’s changed my way of playing since learning them. Still early stages but my playing has changed and become more tasteful, With some help from @viz people might think I actually know what I’m doing now lol

I don’t really though lol

viz · July 2020

octatonic said:

fastonebaz said:

Shred mode

Yngwie Malmsteen

Phrygian Dominant & Harmonic Minor, always.

Corrected

monquixote · July 2020

axisus said:

I don't get modes. I've had them explained plenty of times over the years. I don't get modes.

I think people confuse themselves thinking its a lot more complex than it is.

If a song uses the C major scale, but it starts on a D chord and the D note feels like "home" when you solo over it then it's in D Dorian

That's about all there is to it.

If you are in a minor sounding song and you are soloing away in your pentatonic box then try dropping in the extra notes from the minor. If the minor sixth sounds OK it's probably Natural Minor (Aeolian), but if it sounds a bit clashy and horrid and it sounds better up a semi tone to make a major 6th then it's probably Dorian.

Same with Major. If you feel a bit happier with the 7th being flattened it's probably mixolydian.

They are the only 4 modes I use.

stratman3142 · July 2020

monquixote said:

axisus said:

I don't get modes. I've had them explained plenty of times over the years. I don't get modes.

...If you are in a minor sounding song and you are soloing away in your pentatonic box then try dropping in the extra notes from the minor. If the minor sixth sounds OK it's probably Natural Minor (Aeolian), but if it sounds a bit clashy and horrid and it sounds better up a semi tone to make a major 6th then it's probably Dorian.

Same with Major. If you feel a bit happier with the 7th being flattened it's probably mixolydian...

That's how I learned things by ear before I knew what labels to put on things. I worked out the major and minor 5 note shapes by copying solos by Clapton, Hendrix and Kossoff etc, although I didn't know they were called 'pentatonics' at the time.

Then I heard players putting in extra notes. For example: Wishbone Ash sometimes used 'classical' minor type sounds which were the minor pentatonic with an added 2 and b6. I called it the 'classical minor' scale until I later learned it was the Aeolian mode. Peter Frampton used a jazz minor type sound which was the minor pentatonic with an added 2 and 6. I called it the jazz minor scale until I later learned it was the Dorian mode.

That's how I learned by ear. Hear a type of sound, put my own label on it and try to relate it to something I already knew. Then re-label the type of sound when I discovered a more universally accepted term.

I think of modes in terms of their intervals relative to their root note. The major and minor pentatonic patterns are useful templates, for me upon, which to build other scales. I view modes as useful labels to put on types of sound. So it's good that @viz is coming up with real world musical examples.

fastonebaz · July 2020

monquixote said:

axisus said:

I don't get modes. I've had them explained plenty of times over the years. I don't get modes.

I think people confuse themselves thinking its a lot more complex than it is.

If a song uses the C major scale, but it starts on a D chord and the D note feels like "home" when you solo over it then it's in D Dorian

That's about all there is to it.

If you are in a minor sounding song and you are soloing away in your pentatonic box then try dropping in the extra notes from the minor. If the minor sixth sounds OK it's probably Natural Minor (Aeolian), but if it sounds a bit clashy and horrid and it sounds better up a semi tone to make a major 6th then it's probably Dorian.

Same with Major. If you feel a bit happier with the 7th being flattened it's probably mixolydian.

They are the only 4 modes I use.

Ah so simple :-)

fastonebaz · July 2020

Funnily enough after the excellent info above came out, this popped up on Instagram

Danny1969 · July 2020

I personally don't see any harm to see'ing any mode as a customization of a major or minor scale ... it might not be right to think of it like that but it's perfectly valid.

To learn the intervals that produce these sounds it's far easier to view it from a keyboard rather than a fretboard. All the intervals are right there in front of you .... just start from C to C for the first mode (ionian - major scale) and note the intervals ... then start from D through to D (Dorian mode) and note the intervals ...then start from E through to E and note the intervals that produce the third mode etc

I think I'm probably not thinking it right myself and there's probably something wrong with the above but it's enabled me to produce modal sounds in all keys.

Has to be said though .... half the modes seem to me to be of limited use playing typical western music .....at the moment I use knowledge of what notes are in the underlying chords to spice up my solo's but I'm sure there's a secret to using the modes here ?

viz · July 2020

Danny1969 said:

I personally don't see any harm to see'ing any mode as a customization of a major or minor scale ... it might not be right to think of it like that but it's perfectly valid.

To learn the intervals that produce these sounds it's far easier to view it from a keyboard rather than a fretboard. All the intervals are right there in front of you .... just start from C to C for the first mode (ionian - major scale) and note the intervals ... then start from D through to D (Dorian mode) and note the intervals ...then start from E through to E and note the intervals that produce the third mode etc

I think I'm probably not thinking it right myself and there's probably something wrong with the above but it's enabled me to produce modal sounds in all keys.

Has to be said though .... half the modes seem to me to be of limited use playing typical western music .....at the moment I use knowledge of what notes are in the underlying chords to spice up my solo's but I'm sure there's a secret to using the modes here ?

Your method is spot on for creating them, and agreed, the piano is the ultimate tool because it’s a audiovisual model of our key system.

The other way is completely to ignore the incremental relationship between the modes and just think of them as deviations from the standard major and minor.

Yep, as you can see from the songs list, lydian and locrian are pretty rare. Even ionian is pretty rare if you’re a blues rocker.

I’d say mixolydian and dorian are the commonest in bluesy rock, and they both share the same notes in the upper part of the scale, so I’d almost be tempted to call them rock major and rock minor!

viz · July 2020

fastonebaz said:

Funnily enough after the excellent info above came out, this popped up on Instagram

Nice. Interestingly there’s hardly any music “in harmonic minor”, where harmonic minor is used as the notes over the root chord. Those notes are almost exclusively used over the V chord, as the phryg dom scale, like Octa said. Yngwie is often quoted as playing harmonic minor, but in actual fact he almost always snaps back to Aeolian once he comes off the V chord.

Philtre · July 2020

viz said:

Lydian

Flying in a Blue Dream - Joe Satriani
Giant Balls of Gold - Steve Vai

Every Frank Zappa guitar solo.

(OK, Dorian as well)

stratman3142 · July 2020

viz said:

...I’d say mixolydian and dorian are the commonest in bluesy rock, and they both share the same notes in the upper part of the scale, so I’d almost be tempted to call them rock major and rock minor!

When playing a blues in a major key, my general scale is the major pentatonic overlaid on top of the minor pentatonic, which can be thought of as the Dorian with an added major 3rd (or the Mixolydian with an added minor 3rd). Then I select notes to fit with the chords. It's kind of how I think of Clapton's classic solo to Crossroads.

One can also add the major 7 to that scale over the V7 chord because the major 7 of that scale is the major 3rd of the V7 chord. Although I tend to think of it as part of an arpeggio of the V7 chord.

GuyBoden · July 2020

Modal Harmony can be a bit more complex, if you want to avoid sounding like it's in a major key.

"The problem with the tritone in modal harmony is not so much the interval itself but the placement of that interval in a voicing in 3rds. Voicings in 3rds (triads and 7th chords) are so identified with the major and minor modes that their very use promotes tonal rather than modal identity."

DulcetJones · July 2020

I delved into modes several years ago and I get the theory and all but I came to the conclusion that the farther down the list you go the less "musical" they get. I use ionian and dorian but, I think the breakdown list Viz(nicely done BTW!) has laid out reflects this imo. As time marches on we might be surprised by some new composers though, you never know.

viz · July 2020

Ta

... and some old composers. Aeolian and Dorian and their hypos are well medieval. But yep, I hope you’re right!

UnclePsychosis · July 2020

Definitely think people overthink the modes.

1. They're just scales
2. Tutorials always dive in too deep. The only modes that are worth worrying about for beginners are Dorian and Mixolydian.

(and Ionian and Aeolian---but its significantly less confusing for beginners to think of these as just Major and Minor scales so beginners should pretend they aren't modes IMO)

TforTele · July 2020

viz said:

Phrygian

Modern Times - New Model Army
War - Joe Satriani
Remember Tomorrow - Iron Maiden
For the Love of God - Steve Vai

Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee?

viz · July 2020

TforTele said:

viz said:

Phrygian

Modern Times - New Model Army
War - Joe Satriani
Remember Tomorrow - Iron Maiden
For the Love of God - Steve Vai

Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee?

Nope

- that’s just minor. Maybe the fact that his first sung note is an E which then goes up a semitone to F might be lulling you into a false sense that that’s the b2, but actually it’s just a b6, as the song is in A minor. Maybe?

The killer fact early on before the singing even starts is that the 2nd chord - the bVII - is a G not a G minor, which it would have to be if the song were in A Phrygian.

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Well-known songs that use Modes

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