Modes/scales

Who gave you modes to practice as a beginner?

Frankly, I think that is really bad pedagogy. Modes are unnecessary theoretical baggage except for bop and post-bop jazz and some really old classical and baroque stuff. For everything else out there you would do a lot better with a solid understanding of the major scale and how to alter that scale appropriately.

The way you play the G Major scale is simple. You play any G, then you skip a whole step and play the next note, A, then you skip another whole step and play B, half step C, whole step D, whole step E, whole step F#, half step G.

Do that anywhere on the guitar neck and you will have played a one-octave G Major scale.

If you don't know the guitar neck, it is too early for you to be learning scales by "shape." Any teacher who is teaching you this way is doing damage to you!!

Think in terms of notes and tones not in terms of shape.

If you do that, then when you move on to start trying to do lead work and improvisational playing, you will have a much easier time transferring melodic ideas from your mind to your fretboard.

However, if we're going to talk about shapes, your tab is wrong.

The two octave G major scale for that shape ends with:

B--------------------------5-7-8

The notes:
----------------------------------A-B-C
e---------------------------------5-7-8

Are IN the key of G major but are not part of the two octave scale you are playing. They are part of the next octave scale ending with the G above high C in concert pitch. (E string, fret 15).

Scales are an ordered collection of notes spanning one or more octaves, which start and end with the same pitch class. That is, if you start on a G, you end on a G or it isn't a scale.

Umm this is quite discouraging. As I can't afford a guitar teacher I am having to learn off others, which clearly isn't the best idea :(. I am desperate to learn as much as I can about guitar and how everything is formed, though clearly I am going about this the wrong way! Since I have no real guidance I am struggling as to what I need to learn, and so it would seem what I have been shown is incorrect? and was this a waste of my time?

The Dorian scale I have been given to learn is A Dorian which goes as follows and I take it this is also incorrect?

E-5-7-8
A-------5-7-9
D-------------5-7-9
G--------------------5-7-9
B---------------------------7-8-10
e-----------------------------------7-8-10

Now this as far as I am aware is the same as G Major. I am slightly confused as to what to believe and what to learn :S Can anyone please give me any kind of guidance?

I certainly wouldn't call it a waste of your time! There are always hurdles and wrong turns along the way of learning a new thing, and I think all of the experience will help you in the end.

If I studied that tab for a few minutes, I could tell you if that was the A Dorian scale or not. But I'd recommend, like kp, that you learn about major scales in general before moving onto any specific scale, like "A Dorian". If you know the major scale, you can find any of the major scales, and many other scales are just ways of shifting or altering the major scale. If you learn the strings/fretboard, you can play them all anywhere, too. If you know the Dorian is the same pattern as Major but starting 2 notes later, or that Dorian has flat 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th, you can figure out any Dorian scale from the Major scale; the same goes for many other scale variants.

Personally, scales, intervals, and notes on the fretboard are all things I'm working on myself, too, just following the lessons on this site and working through it all as I practice, trying to get the knowledge deeper into my brain and maybe even into my fingers. :)

If you can't afford a teacher, I think this site is the best place you could be - tons of super helpful and smart guitar players around here in the forums, and lots of great lessons on the main site. Good luck!

Yeah thanks a lot Voidious, I agree about this site, many other forums I have been on everyone seems in competition of whom is the best blah blah and I feel I get short changed on information just so that I won't overtake them. Also I don't suppose it was that much of a waste, just like I say I am so keen to learn things and the time spent learning what I have shown could have been put towards something else more worthwhile. I will have to like you say go through the site as what I have seen so far is very good and promising.

Kr1s -- learn your major scales and your fretboard.

I don't mean know the shapes.

I mean if I ask you: What's the b5 of the F# major scale you can give me the correct answer off the top of your head.

I mean if you are playing along just randomly hitting notes on teh fretboard and I stop you and ask "What is that note" you can tell me. If I ask you "What role does that note play in an Eb Major scale?" you can tell me.

If I give you a note, say B# you can tell me what major scales it is a member of, and where it sits in each of those scales.

If you can do all of that, you will know more than most guitar players, and you'll be able to do anything you want to do, musically speaking.

If I give you starting note on the fretboard, you should be able to start showing me different ways to play the major scale from that spot, adn you should be able to come up with dozens of ways -- most of which aren't the "standard shapes." (and most of which are, admittedly, of little practical use, but you'd be surprised at when they come in handy).

Modes are important for some areas of music. But if you aren't interested in those genres they are just baggage. Even if you are interested in those areas, unless you have your major scales and fretboard knowledge down cold, they are a needless distraction.

KP and Voidius are right. Get to know the major scales thoroughly, which eventually includes being able to play them starting from any note of the scale. Now, it just so happens that G major starting from note 2 (A) is identical to the Dorian mode also starting from A (ABCDEF#GA). But if you think of it that way, you invite all sorts of confusion and misunderstanding.
Keep in mind that you're still playing G major, albeit from note 2 - not the Dorian mode, which is a different thing completely, despite, coincidentally, having the same notes. You could also say you're practising the Ethiopian religious ge'ez and ezel chant scale, which also has those notes in that order - but obviously you're doing no such thing.

Thinking of it as the Dorian mode is misleading, unless you're consciously applying it to Dorian mode music. And if you don't know what that is, then there's not much point in practising the mode.

Call it what it is - G major starting from note 2.

kr1s,

You are trying to run before you can walk. We've all been there, so don't feel bad about it.

Your first stop should be over to the lessons pages on this site. Look for anything by David Hodge - he's been teaching since time began and anything he doesn't know isn't worth knowing - especially "Theory Without Tears" and "Scales Within Scales", and you should read them through a few times before picking up your guitar.

What nobody's telling you is that Modes - Ionian, Dorian etc, are snapshots of the major scale, starting from a different root note. Yes, you should work your scales, because they are the building blocks of melody - and solos. No, you should not drive yourself to an early grave by working scales and nothing else. Start with the Major scale - all things in music begin there.

You need some fun too.

Next, take yourself over to the Easy Songs For Beginners pages, again they're available from the lessons link on the homepage. Start with Horse With No Name - David Hodge again, and all my students start with this one. Go to the shops and buy the record - if you buy a good compilation you get something worth listening too as well as something to play along with.

Continue working through the songs for beginners, there's a lot of instructional stuff in there and some great stuff to play with and to people. Let us know how you're getting on.

Best,

A :-)

Thanks so much everyone for your help, I think I need to deffinatly get to grips with the fretboard and all the note locations. I am still going ot practice scales as well as reading through all the suggested articles as I can do both at once.

I also make sure I have 'fun' as well as all of the work side of things, although I tend to play music along the lines of Muse, white stripes, YYY's and so on. Also I am learning Joe Satriani's Midnight which is great but hard to sound on my crappy acoustic.

Once again thanks everyone for your help.

As a relative beginner myself (been playing now for a 1 1/2 years), I can say that it was very useful learning the major scale inside and out, up and down....the major scale itself, not just the fretboard patterns of the major scale. Knowing the major scale has given me the ability to build modes on the fly (relative or parellel), anywhere on the fretboard (as long as you know the mode formula that is) and many other scales as well. As other have said, forget the modes for now, and concentrate on getting the major scale ingrained into your memory.

Interestingly, I can thank both Fretsource and KP for the same advise their giving you, when I made a reply to a similar thread, oh, about 1 1/2 years ago.

Dont forget though modes have their own modes also :) not many people realize this! There are i think 148 modes in total in the entire world of music of modern day that is used.. there are more but doubt they are used. in all shapes an forms 149 scales in total are used but the first one is major then the rest you sorta work out from the major which is how you can consider modes having their own modes. Unless you have quarter tone guitar's which does not exist in western world then there is more than 4 times that.

After re-reading this and was post at 4am roughly i kinda noticed i missed out some vital parts that made this sound slightly wrong. Hope this now makes a bit more sense for you to ponder on. But dont take modes on modes literrally its merely a though about how scales are worked out cos most derive from the major so that is how you can consider it.

Dont forget though modes have their own modes also :) not many people realize this! There are i think 148 modes in total in the entire world of music in all shapes an forms 149 scales in total but the first one is major then the rest you sorta work out from the major. Unless you have quarter tone guitar's which does not exist in western world then there is more than 4 times that.

We have a triple winner in the "I'll pass along some BS I heard somewhere" contest.

1. The reason people don't realize that modes "have their own modes" is because they DON'T have their own modes.

Think it through.

If you look at 'related' modes (i.e., the Phrygian is the major scale starting on the third note), start the Phrygian from the second note. What do you get?

The Lydian mode.

And you get that same Lydian mode if you use the Ionian 4th, the Dorian 3rd, the Aeolian 6th, etc. They're all the same Lydian mode; making a "mode of a mode" gives you nothing new.

2. The 149 number is WAY off.

Let's fix a root for figuring out how many scales there could be. The scale must contain the root, so we're looking for all scales that can be built on "C".

Above C there are 11 half steps. Any of these will either be in the scale or not - so you can express it as a binary number, 2 to the 11th power. That's 2,048.

But a scale must have at least two notes, so we need to subtract one possibility (the binary 00000000000, with no notes except C).

So there can be 2,047 different scales built on C. Most of them won't be very useful, but they will all be unique sets of tones.

3. Using quarter tone guitars doesn't give you four times as many possible scales. Far from it.

Quarter tones allow for 24 half steps to the octave, which allows over 8 MILLION unique interval patterns within an octave. 8,388,607 if you want to be precise about it.

I agree about learning the major scale first. Everything follows from that. As far as learning the notes or the shape, you need to know both. The guitar has a steep learning curve and people lern in different ways. my best advice is to learn what you can, however you can. it will all come together on its own time and you'll feel that you've made progress. until then just keep plugging away at it.

I agree about learning the major scale first. Everything follows from that. As far as learning the notes or the shape, you need to know both. The guitar has a steep learning curve and people lern in different ways. my best advice is to learn what you can, however you can. it will all come together on its own time and you'll feel that you've made progress. until then just keep plugging away at it.

Again, I strongly disagree with this for a student who doesn't already know their major scale and the fretboard.

Not because shapes aren't usefull. They are. But because the way you think about your instrument is formed in the first few years you are learning to play. If you think in terms of notes and tones, you will be a better musician than if you think in terms of shapes.

A player who thinks in terms of notes and tones is not constrained by set patterns. A player who thinks in terms of shapes not only is constrained by set patterns, but will be uncertain as to how to transfer a melodic idea from his brain to his fretboard.

Unless you have quarter tone guitar's which does not exist in western world then there is more than 4 times that.

I wonder how many modes my fretless bass has . . .