This Is Why MODES Are So Confusing To Guitar Players [Music Theory]

In 3 seconds: shat is the most confusing topic in music theory for guitar players?

three... two... one...

... DING!

Time's up.

And the answer is: Modes.

Modes are T.H.E. thing that confuses guitar players the most.

I mean, chromatic harmony may be complex, and fretboard visualisation does not come together in five minutes either...

...but in sheer number of 'wrong ideas that everybody repeats', modes definitely takes the first prize.

Have you ever heard things like: "the Dorian mode is just the major scale starting from the second note"?

It's wrong.

How about: "To play Mixolydian, just play the major scale 5 frets above"?

Misleading at best.

And what about the super common: "Lydian is a mode and not a scale"?

I'd like to say that this last one is wrong... but the reality is that this statement has no sense at all. To quote famous scientist Wolfgang Pauli: "It's not even wrong"!

Now, if I was a good internet marketer, I would simply tell you to get my course Master of the Modes, where you will find all the answers.

And while this is true (the answers are there), I know that there are be many of you that won't get that course. (You don't have the time, or the money, or you don't trust online courses, or you already know everything, etc etc - no problem)

And in the meantime people keep repeating stuff like the things I quoted above...

Alas, I have to go against my better judgment of selling more courses here... So here's what we are going to do.

Here's a video that will dissolve these confusions about modes and show you how modes actually work.

It's free. It's short. It's clear.

(or at least... I hope it's clear!)

You watch it, you see how modes are actually supposed to work, you understand why the quotes above are wrong.

And so maybe in time we will all do our little part in making modes clearer and easier for all musicians.

You don't have to take my course to watch this video.

If you like this video, share, like, comment & don't forget to subscribe for more content!

FOLLOW ME:

[hnnymn]

Oh man this is great great stuff. Everything you said is exactly correct.

I was confused about modes for a long time due to having “learned” from the flawed explanations of other YouTube “experts”. It took quite some time and effort to extricate myself from the cognitive quicksand that resulted, but I did manage to figure things out.

If I'd started HERE with your cogent and 100% correct instruction, then my understanding would have been so much quicker and easier!

[johndiraimo]

"Excuse me for a moment, while I RESET your ears... " LOL... Brilliant Tomasso.

[creator]

The first crystal clear explanation… took a while for me to find this

[brunnoteixeira]

I believe that you are a great musician, but I am absolutely sure that you were born to be a great teacher. You really stand out when you're teaching music.

[Wind-njxz]

4:44 How Jazz sounds like to non jazz listeners

[pedromoreira]

I think the term "Starting" has a meaning of "emphasis" in the tonic, despite the starting note the tendency is to emphasize the tonic in the melody.

[scottt]

Dang - Tommaso is SUCH a good teacher - more than makes up for the handwriting that is actually (maybe just a little) worse than mine ;). Hey, but it works, right? He breaks down theory so well and so practically...One thing that was helping me a bit before this was thinking about 'relative' modes (D Dorian as a relative mode to C Major - maybe similar to Aeolian being the relative(/natural) minor scale to CMaj) vs 'parallel' modes (D Ionian, D Dorian, D Phrygian, etc. ). The relative helped me to find a mode in a pinch (a little useful) but the parallel is more helpful, at least to me, in choosing a mode to play over a chord. I do aspire to feel vs just choose, one day. That said, it still wasn't locked down for me. Tommaso's explanation here got me soooo much farther.

[imjonkatz]

Ive said it before and ill say it again. Thank you for everything you've done, do, and will do. Every video that you make elucidates a great deal of points in music that are often not talked about in much detail. Keep on rocking 😎

[manwithaplan]

I love your videos. I literally had this problem last night with a student.

[peterbryenton]

Thank you for your clear explanation. The ear-brain system and the "reference note" makes sense to me, because there seems to be a similar physiological effect in the eye-brain system when we are processing colour, specifically when we automatically fix on what we perceive as our "white" reference, even under very different light sources.

[gaetan]

"It's psychological". GOD THANK YOU. I have heard many times the "it just starts on a different note" and I just couldn't understand why modes sounded so different when they contain the same notes. It's all about context.

[adamquek]

Thanks for explaining this. The modes are always so confusing for me as a bass player.

[DavidBagshaw]

Fantastic post: the psychological (while real) roots of the tonic, and the roots of modulation in the same area are a revelation.

[michaelinglis]

Why couldn't I have had this video 15 years ago lol! It took me forever and so much confusion to realize these distinctions! Great video!

[r-bascus]

For me it was the 'starting from..' that did it. Just as a start, to hear and to learn how the different modes are build. But of course, you need to use it in a context. Different brains, work in different ways.

[petewiseman]

A mode starts FROM a certain note, in theory (teaching us what you call the reference, or the drone of each mode). But a phrase starts WITH any of several notes, in practice - notes missed out in the first octave work in the next because they are supported by the basic chord used in the first octave...
Hearing a minor chord (or m7) does NOT give us the sound of Dorian, since a minor chord is ambiguous to three keys. You need to hear the 9 and 13 (or b9 or b13) to be sure - so when you played the note E over Dm7 it said 'this is not D Phrygian but it could be D Aeolian or D Dorian'.
Thanks, I do like your work

[vaughanmacegan]

This should be required watching for *EVERYONE* starting to learn about modes. This would have solved me years of trouble just trying to understand what they were. It would not have helped me implementing them but at least I would have understood.

[serapiocorrea]

There are two approaches to the modes1)relative modes=, for example Doric D is a relative mode of the C major scale, because it has the same notes as the C scale, but diferent root.
2)parallel mode=Ddoric is a
parallel mode of D major or Ionic D, it has the same root D, but different notes.

[pfkmsandiego]

great vid, dude! yep- the harmony dictates which mode is being played. i often remind my students that when we learn the modes that it's really just learning how to play the relative major and minor scales in different hand positions bc... i won't bother explaining- u kno already. : ) BUT- there are many benefits of learning the modes as different starting points of an established key- i think ud agree with the traditional way of teaching the modes that way- as long as the teacher share the fact that the harmony dictates what actual mode the melody is in.
i remember learning the modes in college and asking the teacher what makes the modes modes if they're just technically different starting points of the major scale and i remember the answer being unsatisfactory and i had to figure it out later that the harmony was what was making the modes the modes. i still teach the modes the same as i learned them in college but i do a much better job of explaining what makes a mode a mode.

[arnogoossens]

I understand this point. Another way to interpret is the confusion, is to say that we should interpret the word "starting" in the following manner:

"Starting" on a certain note, means that note is assigned to the 1st grade of the new scale, counting 2nd, 3rd and all other grades from that note. Besides that, we're to use it however we want, just like the major scale.

So D-Dorian is a C major/ionian scale starting on D means: whereas C was the 1st grade of the scale, we're going to take the same notes, having D as the 1st grade now, counting up to C as the 7th grade. There you go, you have a D dorian mode, a C major scale "starting" on D.