HCG Mini-Clinic #3: The Modes

Welcome to the
HCG Modes Tutorial

Here are the lessons in the HCG Modes Tutorial.  Scroll down if you’d like a little more info about the modes before you get started in the tutorial.

What are the modes?

Long story short, the modes are groupings of notes, much like scales, that can provide musicians with a palette of musical colors to play with.  Bright, happy, triumphant, sad, contemplative, dissonant, nasty–it’s all possible with this simple system.

In addition to that, they can also provide guitarists with a roadmap to the neck of the guitar, so that you can have any of these musical colors at your fingertips, in any key.

Who “Invented” the Modes?

  • The modes, or something like them, can be traced back to the earliest forms of western music. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle writes about them, and their potential to affect peoples’ moods.  Since we obviously don’t have recordings from that era, we don’t know for sure that the ancient Greeks’ idea of the modes was exactly the same as ours.
  • Early church music, such as Gregorian Chant, is based on modes, though they were not quite the same as the modes we use today.
  • Wikipedia has a pretty good page about the modes here.
  • Miles Davis is the first musician to be credited with the contemporary idea of using the modes as a basis for improvisation. His album Kind of Blue, with songs like “So What” and “Flamenco Sketches,” are considered groundbreaking in this area.
  • Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead were arguably the first musicians to bring modal improvisation into a rock and roll context.

Who uses the modes now?

  • All sorts of artists, from all genres, use the modes in their compositions and their improvisations (though it’s worth noting that not all musicians “think” in terms of the modes–yet their music can still be analyzed in terms of the modes).
  • The Allman Brothers, Phish, and many of today’s “jambands” still use the modes as the basis for much of their improvisation.
  • Jazz musicians continue to find new ways to use modes, and variations of them, in their composition and improvisation.

The HCG Modes Tutorial

As I re-read everything I wrote above, I’m thinking it all sounds complicated…but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to grasp the concept.  The first thing you’ll need to do is make sure you have a working understanding of the major scale, and also the basics of chord construction, as described in the HCG Practical Music Theory section of this website.  Then go ahead and dive into the Modes Overview to get a general understanding of what’s going on with the modes.
Once you’ve gone through that section, you’ll want to really crystallize your understanding of everything by making heavy use of the HCG Modes Workshop, where you’ll be able to practice this stuff to your heart’s content.