The Steel Guitar Forum

Alan Brookes wrote:

Jim Cohen wrote:...but I was surprised to see you post that the others are 'rarely encountered' in western music! You coulda said, 'there are others but I'm not gonna tell you about them until you've got this one under your belt.'

Or ya coulda said: 'The definition of a Gentleman is someone who knows all the church modes but declines to discuss them in polite company.'

By the time he read all the way through this thread he could have read about halfway through a good theory book, eh?

Jim Cohen wrote:

Alan Brookes wrote:The minor and major scales are two of the modes... In modern western music most of the other modes are rarely encountered.

Well surely the Dorian (a different minor scale) and the Mixolydian ('dominant' scale) are very widely used in modern western music, as in 2m - 5(7)- 1 and all that. But you knew that, Alan, right?

I think Alan's statement is fair for "modern western music" (given that "dorian" over a ii in a ii-V-I is really just major of the tonic and not modal in character at all). Western music from the middle ages(e.g., Bakersfield sound, or "middle aged music") relies heavily on a mixolydian/subtonic juncture/b7 kind of sound. Still older western music (e.g. Bob Wills, "ars antiqua hesperia swing") uses a considerable amount of chromaticism.

But why confine the discussion to western music? What about country music?

Theory can be a bit unsettling starting out. One good thing, if he knows the major scales, he already knows "Ionian."

What do you get when you drop a big rock down a mine shaft.....Ab minor. Then of course if C Eb & G walked into a bar they wouldn't be able to serve a minor so Eb would have to leave, thus leaving an open 5th.