Dorian mode

So you have the ninth and the sixth.

And now you happen to be coincidentally playing the Dorian scale, the D Dorian scale.

which is usually what we'll use on static minor seven chords, but also minor seven chords that are functioning in a larger progression, like a 2-5-1, 3-6-2-5-1, or something like that.

But a good scale, or sorry, a good tune that you can use this on would be Impressions, or So What by Miles Davis, which is just... you know this modal D minor vamp for half the tune and then it goes up a half step to E flat minor so it's like very little thinking compared to a lot of like great American songbook tunes where you'll have you know one chord per measure or two chords per measure and the harmonic rhythm is just like much faster so you know just kind of thinking of like soloing within that box maybe to start slowly kind of venturing outside of the box a little bit and then trying to also then visualize those auxiliary notes in other positions you know so if you have like your d minor pentatonic down here or the full box going down to that a down there you know where's the ninth and the sixth within that then trying to connect phrases

Yeah.

One thing that's interesting about the way you're describing it that might be unfamiliar or newly familiar to people watching this is you're really relating to the scale tones.

So when you're going up and down these shapes, it's not just this is the pentatonic scale or this is the Dorian scale and it just looks like this big chunk.

It's actually relationships between these notes and the nine has its own character and the six has its own character.

A7.

So E minor makes us think that we're in the key of E minor, yeah? A7, it's like the four major chord in E minor, which creates the feeling of E Dorian mode.

That's not a particularly unusual sound in rock or blues or R&B or related styles.

But then we get a C chord.

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.

That, I think, could be a good piece for a student at the intermediate level who has smaller hands.

The largest harmonic reach is only a sixth, and the pattern that the left hand plays, the familiar root, fifth, and octave, would be good practice at not reaching, but using sideways lateral movement to make sure fingers and thumb line up parallel to each key as it is played.

From Aeolian, we move to Dorian with a piece by Stacey Farian called Nice Tardigrade.

Tardigrade.

Now, Evan stepped in and laid down an entirely different kind of map.

Instead of chasing chord changes, he let a single mode, D minor, or more precisely, Dorian, reign for the whole piece.

That shift is subtle on paper, but seismic when you hear it.

The first thing that catches your ear is how the harmony stays static for long stretches.