Explaining the modes

  • IMHO in the beginning to learn what each mode does,(the feel) chord progressions do not help much if you want to stay in tbe rock-kind of things...(well..with jazz/fusion ofcourse things are different).


    A nice example of what for example mixo can do in "simple power chord"-rock is "american woman".Listen to the original the guess who start it like a pure blues-thing and then..this wonderfull mixo-line comes and gives it this beautifull sexy-feel..I went nuts when I heard this song for the first time early in the 80s(thanx to my older brother).


    It speaks for itself that Lenny Kravitz did not use this Mixo-line at all besides some mixo-style in the solo with a sound I did not like..


    I guess they sat in the studio doing this song talking like "we cant do this mixo-stufc because the people will not like it" or something like this.


    But this line together with hook is all the money.Removing it made the cover "just another pentatonic rock song".


    Listen to this older stuff can teach us a lot more than anything else.


    For nice dorian stuff listen to mickey moody and bernie mardsen in the early whitesnake days.."blindman" or the nice cover of "aint no love" and some other classics with a singer who got his scale-lessons already with blackmore and lord at deep purple earlier in his days."Aint cry no more today" has one of the most beautifull mixo-style intros in rock hitory.

  • IMHO in the beginning to learn what each mode does,(the feel) chord progressions do not help much if you want to stay in tbe rock-kind of things...(well..with jazz/fusion ofcourse things are different).


    Could you lay out somewhat of a roadmap on where you would start with learning 3nps instead of being "caged". Thanks Nikos for your help.

  • Could you lay out somewhat of a roadmap on where you would start with learning 3nps instead of being "caged". Thanks Nikos for your help.

    If you know the 3NPS pattern and that it just keeps repeating as though the guitar had an infinite amount of strings you can apply this knowledge to any string, you just have to bear in mind the B String shift. knowing this when playing allows you to always start on any string any fret and play the caged pattern
    uncaged :) you are only caged if you just learn a pattern and don't study the relationship between the notes and the pattern :)


  • If you know the 3NPS pattern and that it just keeps repeating as though the guitar had an infinite amount of strings you can apply this knowledge to any string, you just have to bear in mind the B String shift. knowing this when playing allows you to always start on any string any fret and play the caged pattern
    uncaged :) you are only caged if you just learn a pattern and don't study the relationship between the notes and the pattern :)


    Thanks @djazz and @Raoul23, appreciate the help. I do understand the 3nps patterns, the repeating patterns and how they relate to the modes. But moving horizontally up/down the neck, I guess the next thing to learn is the intervals posted by Kempermaniac. This way I would be able to leave an area of the fretboard (navigating one string maybe) and still play in say "D dorian" in another position higher on the fretboard or is there another way I should be viewing this. To me it's still a box type pattern only with 3nps. You can go vertically all day and stay in the same "3nps" or do I just jump /grab another D note somewhere else and continue. Just looking for some views from more experienced players. Thanks so much for the help. Hope my thoughts make some sense.

  • @Zapman


    IMO the "first pattern" does not help much without at least a second one.I tried to explain this in a earlier post.You cant work yourself "up and down the fretboard horizontally" without some..well..lets call them "hotspots" you can memorize in each key.I gave in an earlier post my example of the pattern I use (with the help of the A-minor/C-major thing) and tried to explain how I implemeted a further pattern.It is just an example.For me it worked wonders when I tried to memorize the modes all over the fretboard.I just repeated (as Raoul already said) the same two patterns with the same displacement in any key.For example the A-minor/C-major pattern up a two half notes down the fretboard becomes G-minor/A#-major and but also we can start to think again in this method (always to find in my previous posts here in this thread) to memorize quickly how to play G-mixo/G-lydian etc..again with the same pattern and with the root note in mind.


    All I can say is that this method needs a lot of work too.There is no way to evade this work.There is "no trick".. ;)


    But at least it is a method which has all these advantages we already have talked about.And these advantages are worth all the work.This is not the case with the "caged system" which needs 10x the work with no sufficient results.


    @Raoul23


    Dude..my english may be much to little to explain these things sufficiently.All help is much appreciated.. :thumbup:

  • Thanks to whomever posted the Rob Chapman video.and all who have contributed here. I never really quite got it when it came to the modes. So Ive never really invested much in practice. I understood all the explanations, but somehow reading through the forum and listening to rob with the droning root note has made a big difference. Now thanks to you all I have more homework...

  • Was not to sure if I should bump this thread..anyway..


    Great guy this mr Ross Daly...Big knowledge and most of all he knows to explain..who ever is still searching for new ideas and influences (and is still not satisfied with just getting new delays,harmonizers and reverbs or whatever technical toy) should maybe take a listen of why modes are so important.


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    Edited once, last by Nikos ().