We think of scales as being linear, but a scale exists within the boundary of an octave, at which point it just repeats. So in that sense you can think of them as circular. It’s like a walk around the block.
It doesn’t really matter which number we start on. A trip around the block is always going to be a trip around the scale. And that’s the idea behind a mode.
We can start here on one. Or starting on one, two, three, four, five, six. The two modes I just showed you are also called Ionian, the Aeolian mode.
And that’s really the beginning of the way that we abstract the idea of major and minor keys. The modes themselves can be useful and they can serve as a compass to help us understand the function of the chord that we’re playing, but that only works up to a point, particularly in the minor key. And that’s where we get in discussions of the harmonic and the natural minor, and we’re going to save that for another day.
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