Last night, I lay awake thinking about scales and modes so you don’t have to. The concept of a mode only makes sense as a scale starts to get asymmetrical. There are no modes in a chromatic scale.
It doesn’t matter if you start here or here. This is also true for the whole tone scale in which every scale degree is a whole tone away from the last pitch. Now, it occurred to me last night, in the dead of night, the first meaningful place we see a mode show up is with a diminished scale.
Let me show you what I mean. While technically still a symmetrical scale, a diminished scale is built of alternating whole steps and half steps, which means that effectively there are two modes, the whole step half step mode and the half step whole step mode. Because of the short symmetry, when we jump back up to the third degree, we’re back to the whole step half step mode.
Which one do you use? Generally, we go whole step half step over a diminished chord because it avoids the major third. The half whole mode is useful over altered dominant chords as it passes through major, minor, as well as flat seven and flat nine.
Don’t forget to like this post if it was useful. And if someone who lays awake at night thinking about this stuff like I do, maybe they should be taking or teaching a Beat Kitchen class.
