Modal relative minors

Axe_meister

Obviously the 6th degree of a major scale is the relative minor.
Is there a concept of relative minors when taking a modal approach?
Lets say I have a riff that is very much based around an Am Dorian sequence.
C D to Am.
Now I want to go it's associated Major Key. So the relative Major of Am is C, but that very much (in my thinking anyway) Assumes Aolian to Ionian.
Am I right in thinking that the G Major would the the relative Major in this case?
If had a chord sequence around B Phrygian, again I could go back to it's relative Major of G? 

digitalkettle

I don't think it's a thing really...I mean, diatonic chords a min3/maj3 apart are obviously very closely related.

There's nothing earth-shattering about the above chords...all in the key of G...as you've pointed out, it can get interesting when you focus on a tonal centre: "C D to Am" = A dorian.

Axe_meister

Yes in this case Am is the Tonal center. 

digitalkettle

If you're thinking modally, relative minor/major is less relevant...it's more of a tonal concept (more traditional harmony).

Axe_meister said:

...[Am Dorian]...
Now I want to go it's associated Major Key. So the relative Major of Am is C, but that very much (in my thinking anyway) Assumes Aolian to Ionian.
Am I right in thinking that the G Major would the the relative Major in this case?
If had a chord sequence around B Phrygian, again I could go back to it's relative Major of G? 

You're a bit mixed here. Am in A dorian doesn't have a relative major in the tonal sense...so it's not C...nor is it G.

Don't let that stop you from using it as a 'creative lever' though. What are you trying to achieve?

Axe_meister

I'm thinking around key changes.
Where going from Am key to C major is a common key change, obviously based around the relative minor.
I tend to approach modes as Keys as they very much have a different sound/tonality.

digitalkettle

Axe_meister said:

...
Where going from Am key to C major is a common key change, obviously based around the relative minor.
...

It's the most vanilla of key changes...and it's not 'based around'...it is the relative major/minor!

Axe_meister said:

...
I tend to approach modes as Keys as they very much have a different sound/tonality.

Modes are not keys, keys are not modes.

You can get a bit tangled-up here. One can get through a whole life of playing great music without the 'distraction' of modes.

digitalkettle

Btw, I'm not trying to burst all your balloons

I'm just treading water until @Viz gets here!

Axe_meister

digitalkettle said:

Btw, I'm not trying to burst all your balloons

I'm just treading water until @Viz gets here!

I know in a technical sense they are not keys, but
If someone says to me a song is in A Dorian, it gives me far more information than it being in the key of G. Yes the notes are the same, but it gives me additional information about the mood of the song as well as the tonal centre. 
I'm playing around with a song at the moment.
A little riff in the verse going C D C Am, for the Bridge I have two different options I'm looking at (both sound pretty good)
G to Am or
C to Dm

Which got me thinking about the usual Major to Minor (or minor to major), key changes you see in popular music, i.e. going to the relative minor or to the relative major. 
Hence I started thinking about these changes in a Modal context. Heck forget they are called modes, lets call them scales, with harmonised chords.

monquixote

Axe_meister said:

digitalkettle said:

Btw, I'm not trying to burst all your balloons

I'm just treading water until @Viz gets here!

I know in a technical sense they are not keys, but
If someone says to me a song is in A Dorian, it gives me far more information than it being in the key of G. Yes the notes are the same, but it gives me additional information about the mood of the song as well as the tonal centre. 
I'm playing around with a song at the moment.
A little riff in the verse going C D C Am, for the Bridge I have two different options I'm looking at (both sound pretty good)
G to Am or
C to Dm

Which got me thinking about the usual Major to Minor (or minor to major), key changes you see in popular music, i.e. going to the relative minor or to the relative major. 
Hence I started thinking about these changes in a Modal context. Heck forget they are called modes, lets call them scales, with harmonised chords.

I think just judge it by the changes in notes and the function (like this is the V chord relative to the chord where I am now). 

I'm trying to get a bit more interesting with my chord sequences and so I'm realising you can basically go from anything to anything as long as you move the notes around in a way that sounds nice.

Another way of thinking about it is if you were in a song that was in G major, but you just happen to be in a section that starts on the Am. Where would you go and what would be some nice changes from there.

viz

Lol hello.

If you're playing strictly in a mode, then yes, their relatives are also modal. So, Dorian's relative major is the Lydian scale, 3 semitones up. Because you're staying diatonic. So A Dorian's relative major is C Lydian, if you're staying true to your mode.

And A Phrygian's relative major is C Mixolydian, 3 semitones up.

And you can hear it when someone doesn't do that - it suddenly collapses everything that's special about that mode. If you play in A Dorian and then you go to the relative, C, but play a perfect 4th, all that brightness gets deflated and you're left with the standard Ionian sound.

--------------------------------

Interestingly, this all ties in. If you think of the diatonic family of C major and its seven modes, then we have D Dorian, right, which has that light and quirky-sounding raised 6th, so in other words, B natural (rather than the B flat of D natural minor). And its relative major would be F Lydian - WHICH ALSO HAS B NATURAL!

And E Phrygian, which has that mysterious F natural, not an F# like E natural minor, has its relative major as G Mixolydian - which also has an F natural! 


So the 6th of Dorian and the 4th of Lydian, which we know are those modes' special notes, are also the SAME NOTE, when they're in the same diatonic family. And the 2 of Phrygian and the 7 of Mixolydian are also the same note.

And all those cases ensure that you have no sharps or flats - in other words, you're staying true to the notes in the C major scale.


So, you could say that all the modes of C major are relatives. I think of C major and A minor as being brother and sister. And F Lydian and D Dorian are also brother and sister, but they're cousins of C major and A minor. And G Mixo and E Phryg are also brother and sister, also cousins. Lydian and Dorian are from the light, bright, optimistic side of the family. Mixolydian and Phrygian are the darker, saltier cousins.


------------------------------

If you're ok with being a bit sloppier about the modal accuracy, then D Dorian's relative major would just be F major, and you wouldn't worry about Lydianising the B natural. You'd just consider them as major and minor relatives, just remembering that while you're in D, you're raising the Bb to B, like, just adding brightness and colour.


--------------------------------


If you look at the top of the circle of 5ths, you can see them all there:

F   -   C   -   G
Dm - Am - Em





The only one missing is that ole' B Locrian which nobody gives a shit about.


---------------------------------------

And btw, it's also nice to remember that, as you go clockwise, you're introducing a sharp on the 7th note; in other words you're converting from mixolydian to Ionian (in the major), or from Phrygian to natural in the minor by raising the 2nd note. If you didn't raise the 7th, you'd be playing G mixolydian. So one-step clockwise always tells you the mixolydian mode of the one you're on. For example, D major has A mixolydian. And B minor has F#m Phrygian. And as D major has 2 sharps, then so does its sister, Bm. But also so does A Mixolydian, and F#m Phrygian.

And if you go anti-clockwise, you're converting from Lydian to Ionian because you're lowering the otherwise raised 4th. Making the B a Bb. otherwise you'd get F Lydian. And again, you're doing the same in the minor keys, preventing Dm from being D Dorian, by flattening the 6th. Making the B a Bb again.

It's quite amazing how it all works really.

Ddigger

Love your posts Viz.

Always an education.

Thanks.

digitalkettle

That's how it all hangs together...you only need to know a couple of things and everything else 'comes for free':

• At each step, you can apply your scale degrees...on each degree, you can stack intervals and build 'native' chords (diatonic harmony)
• You move round the circle of 5ths by changing one note per step
• Clockwise builds your sharp keys, anti-clockwise builds your flat keys
• Go too far and it gets a bit daft (nobody wants to sight read F# major, right)
• Adjacent keys are more closely related than distant ones (is this a good or bad thing?)

Getting back to the OP, how does this relativeness help?

Whilst, I've always been conscious of this stuff, it never struck me as the way to build interesting chord progressions. In fact, if I played something and it all started sounding a bit too consonant, that would often be a sign that I should throw a spanner in the works! Better to be driven by a melody, something you want to harmonise...lead with a voice...do something random...go against what's already there. It doesn't have to be awkward or ugly. Reaching for something relative is never really wrong but it's more of the same.

^ could be the product of too much coffee...erm...discuss?

Axe_meister

I guess it comes down to artistry, some people paint by numbers, some are spontaneous. My mathematical mind likes rules I can break, whereas some people use the rules to explain what they have already broken.
I find without theory I tend to stick to the safe I IV V structures, it is theory that gives me "permission" to move beyond safely.
Once I've come up with a song using 3 note triads, I then elaborate with chord extensions and tine signatures.

digitalkettle

Axe_meister said:

I guess it comes down to artistry, some people paint by numbers, some are spontaneous. My mathematical mind likes rules I can break, whereas some people use the rules to explain what they have already broken.
I find without theory I tend to stick to the safe I IV V structures, it is theory that gives me "permission" to move beyond safely.
Once I've come up with a song using 3 note triads, I then elaborate with chord extensions and tine signatures.

I can dig that.

viz

digitalkettle said:

Axe_meister said:

I guess it comes down to artistry, some people paint by numbers, some are spontaneous. My mathematical mind likes rules I can break, whereas some people use the rules to explain what they have already broken.
I find without theory I tend to stick to the safe I IV V structures, it is theory that gives me "permission" to move beyond safely.
Once I've come up with a song using 3 note triads, I then elaborate with chord extensions and tine signatures.

I can dig that.

Yes, but can the OP?

edit. Scratch that. Embarrassing. I thought the op was ddigger. Sorry @Axe_meister!

viz

digitalkettle said:

• Adjacent keys are more closely related than distant ones (is this a good or bad thing?)

I like this point. The circle of 5ths puts the keys in order of key similarity. If it was just the circle of semitones - C, C#, D, D#, etc, they'd be very close in terms of pitch, but as far as possible from each other in terms of key similarity. The circle of 5ths is the opposite - it's designed to show the keys that are closest in key similarity, but consequently furthest away in terms of pitch. 

digitalkettle

viz said:

digitalkettle said:

• Adjacent keys are more closely related than distant ones (is this a good or bad thing?)

I like this point. The circle of 5ths puts the keys in order of key similarity. If it was just the circle of semitones - C, C#, D, D#, etc, they'd be very close in terms of pitch, but as far as possible from each other in terms of key similarity. The circle of 5ths is the opposite - it's designed to show the keys that are closest in key similarity, but consequently furthest away in terms of pitch. 

Should deter people from that 'up a semitone and reveal kids' choir' moment on the final reprise of [insert big X Factor number here].

viz

Trucker’s gear change

GuyBoden

Secondary Relative minor is another great choice.

Examples;

E minor over CMaj Chord.

(Even B Locrian over G7 Chord or the CMaj7 Chord.)

But, it's about hearing the note choices. 1st, 3rd, 5th, b7th notes of a secondary minor are good sounding notes over a major tonality, so are the 1st, 3rd, b5th, b7th of the Locrian.

Alternatively, you could learn the intervals and know instinctively the sound of each note in a scale against a chord.

Listen carefully and hear the sounds. 

Evo

I've always disliked the whole "relative major/minor" relationship.

By far the most common way it's used is "I can play in E minor over G major" or vice versa, which is one of the main contributing factors to confusion over the concept of modes in my experience. 

You can play in E minor over G major, but for the most part...you shouldn't. 

Because all your resolutions and bends will be ending up in places which aren't as good as they would be if you were thinking in G major. Putting it overly simply, you'll be playing E's when you should be playing G's.

Sure, there's a case to be made because it kind of works anyway. Most people make slight adjustments by ear and get reasonably good results, but this ends up kicking a metaphorical can down the street and when we come to modal theory we end up with "oh, so C major is D dorian as well, and A minor is G mixolydian". 

No. No it isn't. 

I'm going to directly contradict a point made earlier and say that from my perspective, modes are actually keys. G mixolydian is a different key to C major and D dorian and A minor, not only does it have a different root note but if your G mixolydian music sounds remotely dorian-like then something has gone wrong because it isn't supposed to. 

The TLDR of this is that just because two (or more) scales happen to share the same notes, does not mean that they are inherently related. I find things will go much smoother if you maintain a mental separation between the modes as different scales, and treat their "relativity" as an interesting quirk.

Certainly from a theoretical standpoint anyway, from a practical perspective of ways to mentally organise your fretboard whilst improvising or working on the fly... that's a different matter. 

Roland

Evo said: … from my perspective, modes are actually keys…

From my perspective, modes are a distraction. What we’re looking for are the notes which add colour to a piece of music. They are usually the less usual notes. We can invent scales or modes which contain them, but those concepts can trap us into staying within that scale or mode. They can cause us to think “I’m changing mode” whereas what we’re actually doing is choosing a different note for colour.