Play With Your Music Theory: Advanced White Key Wizardry
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 มิ.ย. 2024
- The white keys on the piano produce seven different scales, the modes of the C major scale. These modes have seven very different moods. The video takes you through each mode, including real-world usage of each one.
Read more about the major scale modes here:
www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/the-...
Finally! Someone teaches a 1st introduction to the modes with the white keys!!!!! Doesn't get any easier and plainer than that! Thank you!!!!!
I am going to watch this entire Beat and Piano series 3 times. So helpful.
It’s took me a few years to get my head around the modes as some youtubers aren’t as clear in explaining them to me, but the penny has finally dropped. Thanks
This is... the most well-explained lesson on modes I've ever watched.
Best explanation of modes and how they are used I have come across. Clear explanations and good illustrations are easy to follow. Thanks!
You have helped make so many connections on the tip of my own thought, thank you so much, doing this may not get a ton of views but the people who find it and look for it are greatly rewarded, this is excellent.
sweet how using image can easily convey a formula or theory.. yay for images
This guide is GOAT'd seriously. First time i ever actually understood the piano.
It’s amazing how one can understand something faster with the right person explaining 🎉❤Thanks for breaking it down!!
To get a better understanding of modes, transpose them to the same root. Then you can really see the difference between them. This is what helped me understand modes the most, rather than "just use the same white keys but play them differently."
Hey Josh, can you explain more for a beginner like me. For starters what do you mean by transpose them to same root. I'm having a hard time finding difference between different modes
@@thodabewakoof Transpose means to move all the notes, either all up or all down, the same number of semitones. Even though the root changes, the intervals between the notes stay the same.
For example you know that C Major is C-D-E-F-G-A-B and D Dorian is D-E-F-G-A-B-C. Both have the same notes so it's not clear how they are different. To better compare the two let's take all the notes in D Dorian and drop them two semitones to get C Dorian. Then we see that C Dorian is C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb. Now the differences are easier to spot: Dorian when compared to major has the 3rd and 7th notes of the scale flattened.
@@josh34578 Thank you.
@@thodabewakoofanother way to look at it is to learn the intervals of each mode, and then ‘build’ each scale from the same root note. For example, the mixolydian mode is the same as the major scale apart from one note, the 7th note of the scale.
The 7th not of the mixolydian mode is a semitone down from the major scales 7th note. That’s why it is called a flat 7 or 7b.
Every mode has its own unique interval pattern. They can all be learned with the interval system.
Very, VERY useful for music psychology! Thank you for posting this!
this is a great breakdown to music theory about scales on the piano
nice video. The musical examples for each mode are a great aid for understanding. thanks!
All your videos have helped me a lot!! Thank you!
I have been looking for someone like this guy for so long! Love music theory defined mathematically!
Awesome! Never heard it explained so descriptively that I actually want to delve into modes.. They've always seemed so scary! Super cool way to teach them!!! Thank you!
I don't know why so many teachers make learning the modes such an anxiety producing proposition. They're the easiest thing to learn in Music Theory, but only when taught this way FIRST! All children in school should be taught this exact lesson in their super basic elementary school music class.
Thank you, Ethan, that was really interesting.
Knowledge you pass on is golden!
TO ALL MUSICIANS (drummers & singers, too): LEARN THIS LESSON!!! This is the EASIEST, MOST IMPORTANT, & FASTEST way to become a melodic musician who sounds like he or she knows something professional. REPEAT: This is so EASY!! Don't be afraid.
These videos are very helpful, thank you!
Wonderful explanation. Thanks!
Another great lesson, this time about Modes... Thank you once more! :-)
Great video mate.
Great lesson
Props Ethan!!
you have one of these for melodic or harmonic minor?
would mode in music be similar to permutations in mathematics?
So i need to play the white keys in the same order as he does when he improvises a melody (if that is what he does)? Or can I simply just go up and down from any rootnote to get the modes right?
I‘d say, a mode is defined by the placing of the intervals, especially the minor second, as the major and minor too. So a dorian mode starting on D has the characteristics of having the minor second on 2/3 place and 6/7 place. You can now play a dorian mode starting on G, so you play: G, A, Bflat, C#, D#, E, F, G. That‘s your musical material, you can improvise with these Notes.
I have the most annoying question, but what Locrian Key does it sound like YYZ is in, because I hear the notes C, Db, Eb, Gb and Ab being used, so I was just curious. C Locrian?
C locrian is right then the same scale as D flat major starting on the 7th note.
@@jadonx youve got a patience of a saint to have tried to understand whatever that collection of letters meant to mean))
I didn’t understand. He’s playing a Dm chord and playing the notes from the C major scale in order to produce the D dorian flavor?
What makes a specific mode flavor? Using a certain chord predominantly as home chord?
Like for example, does playing a lot if G7 over the notes of C major create the G mixolydian feel? Or just the fact of landing on a certain note when starting and ending a phrase?
Playing a G major chord or a single G root note will turn your C major scale noodling into G Mixolydian (flavor included) automatically. Then play an F major chord or an F bass note under the same C major scale noodling and it immediately becomes F Lydian flavored (there's no stopping it!). That's what's great about the modes. You're already playing them whether you know it or not!
BTW, when you play the F Lydian, you'll note that you kind of sound like Steve Vai (playing slowly), even if you never planned on sounding like Steve Vai in your entire life, because there's no stopping it. Steve Vai loves Lydian flavor.
I've also discovered something the helped me a lot, and that is to unserstand that music is not just about which notes you're playing or what scale (C major for example), but rather it's in how you play those notes or that scale that makes the sound. Don't get stuck in the box of thinking there is only one tonality in each scale, change your root to another note within the scale, emphasize other notes besides the chord tones we're always taught to target, and you'll find you can do so much with the same ol' notes you've been playing all along. Cheers!
An equivalent way of thinking about D Dorian is starting with D-major and adding two flats. (If sharps remain, remove a sharp each time you would add a flat). This rule works for other keys, such as F-Dorian which is F-major with two additional flats, or three total, F-G-Ab-Bb-C-D-Eb-F.
You can deduce what the sharp/flat rule is for each mode in C if you know the notes of A-major, B-major, etc. And every major scale is formed by: root + whole step + whole step + half step + whole step + whole step + whole step + half step.
The order in which flats are added is BEADGCF, and the order in which sharps are added is the reverse, FCGDAEB. So C-Dorian has B-flat and E-flat. G-major has one sharp, but G-Dorian "adds two flats" and ends up with just one flat.
This isn't the only way to build scales. There are ways to add flats or sharps "out of order" and get other things that have their own sound. But the modes that fit in a single major key are sometimes called "diatonic".
At the moment, my favorite non-diatonic mode is where you add a sharp and a flat at the same time (not negating, but diverging both ways at the same time), such as C-D-E-F#-G-A-Bb-C. The Simpsons theme uses this scale. Starting from major, the "next sharp" is the 4th note, and the "next flat" is the 7th note, so doing both. Sometimes it's called "Lydian Dominant", due to Lydian (sharp 4) and Dominant (flat 7), though "dominant" in other contexts often refers to chords where the 7th is flat relative to its major key. If you play C-E-G in the left hand and play C Lydian Dominant scale and rearrange the notes or play pairs of them in patterns, it just sounds different but not too bright or dark, it just tweaks something in your brain, but it also sort of sounds dreamy, like it needs to resolve eventually.
It really helps to be good with your standard keys and you can piece together whatever's changed after the fact. If there's a D root tone but the scale feels like all white keys, then that's Dorian and it's ok. If you can figure out the root and the scale that sound good and take it slow, you can piece things together eventually.
Cool😎
I've been making quite complex music for decades but mostly on an intuitive basis. For the biggest part of that time I have hoever known that you can get / transpose to other keys by starting at another note but still using the same intervals as in C major, even when using the black keys, I however always thought that playing only white keys means you stay in c major anyway. Now I find out that I have been intuitively doing a lot more then that! So suddenly about everything else drops into place! Man, It feels like being kept from understanding the full language for years by missing just one single remaining fact! So the truth is really out there! :-)
I learned something when I programmed music once, that is, I programmed a microcontroler to produce frequencies of the C scale, which is supposed to be logarithmic, except that, as I discovered, this sounds unfamiliar and thus rather terrible, because the F key needs to be the odd one out, a few Hertz off
... the moral is, western concert tuning means a quint played over F or G produces different harmonics, even if pitch adjusted.
@@vecvan Yeah, we have all become accustomed to the compromse tuning that puts all 12 notes in our system in one table. If that would not be the case we would actully need a differently tuned keyboard per scale, which could now indeed be done quite easily with a tuning table but was very complex when instruments where still purely mechanical. It's probably also where the idea comes from that scales have their own flavours. Throuh these tuning corrections some notes in the 12 tone system beat more agianst each other then others. That sort of physical stuff I know but the system by which the classic scales are formed and named has long eluded me. This video suddenly puts all the loose bits I already did knew into a clear single perspective. It's one of those "Ping!" moments, I gues. :-).
Just came across these videos and they are excellent, Just watched four in a row. While I have a fair to middling knowledge of music theory and can strum a guitar, I found making music as I wanted, too difficult, so I turned to a DAW(Fruity) and began programming. Only, I am not so much into the modern beats as I am into the classic beats. Perhaps, its an age thing. But I also love experimentation from Eno to Reich and more. I recently composed a piece in the note of C. soundcloud.com/frederickthornton/so-you-say
While, not everyone's cup of tea, I found it pretty amazing in showing me the value of timbre, texture and how melody can be implied by using these. I also came to the conclusion, that there is lots of opportunity in the C major/A minor scale and its modes to expand one's compositions. Once you figure it out in C maj, you can apply it to an scale easily.
woa i tought only using black keys is sad
Mode-zart :D
I was never taught any of this in my CSE music.
only Rush could ride the B
Of all the ways of introducing and explaining the seven modes, this is by far the worst and most damaging, because it ignores the single defining element of a mode: the relationship between the intervals. Also, this horrible obsession with the white keys is what makes C major "easy" and F minor "hard" for an amateur keyboard player like me; we get scared of the black keys and avoid them like the plague. Fact is, once you understand the modes as rotations of the cycle of intervals (T - T - ST - T - T - T - ST), you can play any mode of any key with relative ease, and understand, for example, why the tritone in the lydian scale sounds completely different from the tritone in the locrian scale (i.e. one is an augmented fourth and the other is a diminished fifth, therefore play *completely* different harmonic roles).
Not only that, but the obsessive hammering of the notion of "happy" and "sad" doesn't even make sense in our day and age.There's SO much hidden expressive power in music that our Western tradition is unaware of because we stick to that ancient prejudice that "major = happy, minor = sad". Can't people see, for example, that to keep repeating that the locrian mode is "not very useful" is *exactly* what makes people scared to use it? The locrian mode is not only gorgeous and expressive on its own, but it's absolutely useful: every time you play the diminished seventh chord (e.g. in a vii° -> III7 -> vi progression), voilà, welcome to locrian.
I think you're confusing the locrian mode with the locrian SCALE. The scale is really useful, as you mentioned. The mode is a whole another issue: the diminished chord is supposed to act like the tonic (i°), but it has a high dissonance... no wonder hardly anybody uses this mode.
"The mode is a whole another issue: the diminished chord is supposed to act like the tonic (i°), but it has a high dissonance..."
So what? I bet a lot of people were confused when bluesmen started using diminished seventh chords as their tonic. I think we're way, way past the point in history when we were supposed to think that there's something inherently "wrong" with dissonance, and that it has to be "fixed" through resolution. We've moved past that.
Also, it's about time that we stop inverting cause and effect. "It has high dissonance, therefore hardly anybody uses it". Perhaps it's the other way around: "Hardly anybody uses it, therefore we perceive it as highly dissonant".
Beginners, intermediate and advanced students need totally approaches when teaching. There's no point into adventuring into advanced stuff when they don't even know the basics.
Chill out, man.
What "advanced" stuff are you talking about now? Seriously, I have no idea what you're objecting against: if a student is "advanced" enough to be hearing about modes, then they *should* be advanced enough to know about intervals. Otherwise, their musical education is really screwed up.
I just replied to your last comment, no references to intervals.
Downvoted for the click-bait "wizardry". It's a joke.
Did you learn anything from the Lesson while you were here? This is the most important, effective, and easiest lesson in music.