Aeolian mode

Okay.

We first have to understand that we're in A minor, A natural minor, okay? A Aeolian, if that means anything to anybody, and it's okay if it doesn't.

It's okay if it doesn't.

But what it means is the notes of an A real minor scale are A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

one, wasn't it? Man, they love that.

Aeolian walk down.

They do like that.

We're going to get a little bit of that.

Then in 1988, they released their third album, Stronger Than Pride.

Here's one of the singles from that called Paradise.

What is that, Aeolian? Phrygian? Not Aeolian.

Maybe.

When I was teaching recorder, I added A as the second pitch because it was the next easiest to produce.

Once you introduce that second pitch, you can have students play the two pitches as chord roots to a song they already know how to sing in a tonality that uses tonic and subtonic harmonic functions, like Mixolydian, Dorian, Phrygian, or Aeolian.

For example, I use the song Ocean Waves from Music Play.

It goes like this.

Today we're exploring three of the seven modes, sometimes referred to as the church modes due to their use in Gregorian chant.

They have rather imposing names, Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.

But each one is simply a distinct pattern of half steps and whole steps that get you from a point in one octave to the next.

Two of them are already very familiar.

Ionian has the same pattern as a major scale.

Aeolian is the same as the natural minor scale.

And Aeolian is the mode that Susan Dawson uses in the first piece we'll hear today, Aeolian Mystery.

For me personally, it's easiest to think of modes in terms of how they differ from a major scale.