Why is it much more fun...

Frank Zappa probably answered your first one best: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

What is it about modal theory that gets you stuck? There are some good (although long) threads here on the topic.

Hey Noteboat thats a great analogy ;)
Primarily I was introduced to the 1,3 and 5 method in relation to modal theory and particularly with reference to the myxalidian mode.
It's all greek to me :)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the 1-3-5 method...

The difference between mixolydian and ionian (major scale) is the mixolydian has a b7 instead of a natural 7:

C Ionian C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C
C Mixolydian C-D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C

If you think of modes as alterations of the major scale with the same keynote, I find they become more useful. They're not a 'shift' of major scale notes - although that's an easy (and common) explanation, it says nothing about the way they work... they're really scales in their own right, and you can form them by changing one or more notes in a major scale. For instance, Lydian raises the fourth tone:

C Lydian C-D-E-F#-G-A-B-C

Does that help?

It does Noteboat-thanks a million-I'll save you a couple of tickets for when I'm playing at Shea Stadium :)

I guess I need to read some more on the modes. I thought the modes were the same scale but starting and ending on notes of the scale other than the root.

I didn't understand that they added accidentals.......I'm not sure what I've been doing when working a scale from other than the root as the "center" or home base when playing.

Cracker,

I guess in a way I had the same impression that they were the exact same notes starting from a different degree in the scale. That always puzzled me how they could sound different if they in fact were the exact same notes.

On the other hand I knew that you change the starting note of the scale but if you follow the formula for the major scale you would end up with different notes. I never really put the two together.

Noteboat - maybe you can clarify. I was always told the modes just started on a diffeent degreee but the used the same notes. In your example above those aren't the exact same notes. What is the correct definition of modes?

Jim, modes are conceptually very easy (and almost useless) when you think of shifting a tonal center - the notes of the C major scale appear in seven different modes, so lots of folks explain them that way. Trouble is, all that gives you is the notes of the mode.

If you're thinking of a C scale, and trying to center it on D, you're thinking you're in D Dorian.... but because you're envisioning the relationship to C major, the odds are really good that you're PLAYING in C major, and nothing sounds any different from what you'd do in C.

On the other hand, if you recognize that Dorian flats the third and seventh notes of the major scale, you'll be thinking and playing in D, but using F and C natural. Same notes, but a tremendously different approach.

If you prefer, you can think of Dorian as the natural minor with a raised sixth, (or the ascending melodic minor with a b7), and that'll work out just as well. The trick is to be thinking in relation to a D scale (major or minor) and not to notes in C.

Personally, the more I study modes, the more I think a couple of things:

1) Modes a just an easy way to get to chromatic melodies without having to really understand how intervals work together in a melodic line.

2) Most people don't use modes, even when they think they are, and those that do understand a lot of theory, and alot about intervalic relationships and they are far closer to simply playing chromatically than just using modes.

3) If you can't make music with the basic scales -- major, natural minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, minor pentatonic, whole tone, diminished, blues -- then modes won't help you either.

4) Intervalic playing is the key to great soloing, not modes.

Modes are a sideline of music theory that Berklee has elevated to diety status for a reason I'm yet to comprehend. Maybe I'm missing something fundamental and everything I'm saying is absolutely wrong, but I honestly don't think that modes bring that much to the table.

That said, I still study modal playing, but I'm seriously considering droping it for more work on playing chromatically.

Kingpatzer, you might want to see if you can find a book by Joe Diorio called "21st Century Intervallic Designs".

In his introduction he writes "I have arrived at a point where Diatonic Harmony, Chord Symbols, Key Signatures, Key Centers, or similar devices no longer have any hold on me. In short, I have become liberated, freed from the weight of thinking about music as opposed to just playing it..."

The book designs melodic lines taking advantage of interval skips over various harmonies, exploiting tension and release.

I searched Amazon, and there's a book with a similar title by Diorio (and the identical subtitle, "Ultramodern Sounds for Improvising", but I don't know if it's the same one, exactly... it's published by Hal Leonard, 40 pages; my copy, which is at least 25 years old, was published by REH Publications, and ran 56 pages.

There's not a lot of text to the book - mostly diagrams of the fretboard, with numbered sequences for the order of the notes played. Each one in my copy has standard notation as well. It's one of those books that's more meant to give ideas than instruction, especially for jazz and fusion.

Noteboat,

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll defintely look it up!

Currently I'm working through A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody by Liebman.

It's 170 pages of wonderful musical ideas that I think will take me a year to absorb. It has so many deep ideas, and once you take the examples and try to extend them to your own music, the ideas just keep appearing. It's a really great resource.

Oddly, I'm also getting a lot of milage out of Mike Steinel's Building a Jazz Vocabulary: A Resource for Learning Jazz Improvisation. I say "oddly" because it's very much in contrast to how LIebman looks at things. But once you start playing with it, you realize it's just the other side of the same coin.

I'm also working through the Johnny Smith books with my instructor.