Modes and scales

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Fuzzbass

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Does anyone know of a good source of tab / diagrams for modes on the ukulele? I'm particularly looking for modes in the key of G. I have the Hal Leonard scale book, but its not very helpfully laid out :p
 
Maybe this is what you are looking for. It was the first thing that came up when I did a search on Yahoo for Ukulele Modes and Scales, and it looks like it has a lot of information. Anyway, I ended up bookmarking it for myself later.

https://liveukulele.com/tabs/scales/

I don't know what it is about Hal Leonard books, but I've bought a few and they just don't seem to cut it. I've given up on buying books. There's plenty of other resources.
 
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Thank you both. Found the sheets and am going to do a cut and paste to ty and learn the mode positions in different keys. I'm a sucker for scales.

I have quite a few Hal Leonard books, been quite useful, but I've found the layout of the scales book a little bit weird. It's not user friendly. All of the scales for one note are on the same page, rather than showing them ascending in order (I.e it's G ionian, G dorian etc) instead of G Ionian, A dorian, B phrygian etc. Which would be more useful :)
 
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The Ukuscales site is great, just wish there was a way to simply print out a fret diagram...
 
Fuzzbass said:
[snip]I've found the layout of the scales book a little bit weird. It's not user friendly. All of the scales for one note are on the same page, rather than showing them ascending in order (I.e it's G ionian, G dorian etc) instead of G Ionian, A dorian, B phrygian etc. Which would be more useful :)
Click to expand...

This just shows how difficult it is to please everybody -- Steve is correct that showing all the different scales related to each other (i.e. sharing the same key signature) would be useful, but in my opinion the way the book is laid out is *also* very useful, so that showing all the modes which are possible from the same starting can help a person who is trying to discover the scale/mode which will be the best in any given musical situation. So in my opinion either the book should be twice as long, showing all the different scales/modes both ways, or show it one way and have a reference chart that is clear and easy to understand to list the scales the other way. It really doesn't matter which way has the actual printed scales/modes as long as somewhere in the book the other list is printed.
 
I'm spending my weekend drawing out the modes in their keys in Numbers on my MacBook. I discovered a fantastic fret grid font this morning.

http://www.manneschlaier.com/

I'm really enjoying doing it, and this font system is the best £20 I've spent in a long long while. It works brilliantly, you can do just about any grid / chord / scale diagram you can think of :) So much easier than creating grids from scratch in Numbers or Excel...
 
:) I'm a hard taskmaster :)

dhbailey said:
This just shows how difficult it is to please everybody -- Steve is correct that showing all the different scales related to each other (i.e. sharing the same key signature) would be useful, but in my opinion the way the book is laid out is *also* very useful, so that showing all the modes which are possible from the same starting can help a person who is trying to discover the scale/mode which will be the best in any given musical situation. So in my opinion either the book should be twice as long, showing all the different scales/modes both ways, or show it one way and have a reference chart that is clear and easy to understand to list the scales the other way. It really doesn't matter which way has the actual printed scales/modes as long as somewhere in the book the other list is printed.
Click to expand...
 
Rllink said:
Maybe this is what you are looking for. It was the first thing that came up when I did a search on Yahoo for Ukulele Modes and Scales, and it looks like it has a lot of information. Anyway, I ended up bookmarking it for myself later.

https://liveukulele.com/tabs/scales/
.
Click to expand...

Those modes on that liveukulele site are really misleading. They're all in the wrong keys!! Each key (by which I mean each key signature) contains within it each of the 7 modes. These for example are the modes lying within the key (signature) of C:
Code: 
C Ionian:     C-D-EF-G-A-BC
D Dorian:     D-EF-G-A-BC-D
E Phrygian:   EF-G-A-BC-D-E
F Lydian:     F-G-A-BC-D-EF
G Mixolydian: G-A-BC-D-EF-G
A Aeolian:    A-BC-D-EF-G-A
B Locrian:    BC-D-EF-G-A-B
Transposing the matrix, if I were going to write out all the possible variants of the Dorian mode, I'd start like this:
Code: 
C  Dorian: C   DE♭  F   G   AB♭   C  (key of B♭)
C♯ Dorian: C♯  D♯E   F♯  G♯  A♯B   C♯ (key of B)
D  Dorian: D   EF    G   A   BC    D  (key of C)
D♯ Dorian: D♯  E♯F♯  G♯  A♯  B♯C♯  D♯ (key of C♯)
E  Dorian: E   F♯G   A   B   C♯D   E  (key of D)
F  Dorian: F   GA♭  B♭  C   DE♭  F  (key of E♭)
etc, etc

What liveukulele have done is, for example, to tab out the mode of C-Dorian in C (key signature), adding two 'accidental' flats on the stave where needed. But those two flats should be in the key signature, letting you know that C-Dorian is the Dorian mode found in the key (signature) of B♭ (as are also the modes of D-Phrygian, E♭-Lydian, F-Mixolydian, G-Aeolian and A-Locrian).

It took me a long time to appreciate that each variant of each mode belongs to one key and and one key only - and they're not the keys that liveukulele have placed them in.
 
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He, He. I'm just enjoying approaching music from a different perspective, having played bass for a long, long while, I never really had the need for modes, and concentrated on holding down the root with a supporting groove. Now with the Uke, using modes I am playing melody lines based "around" the root note of the chord, not centred on it. Melodic thinking is a new and exciting thing to me :)
 
Bill1 said:
Also, consider the code at post 11 which just has the C major scale as a template instead of the C major scale. Consider learning it as a template. Then work through the table assigning the variable C to equal one each of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale: A Bb B C C# D Eb E F F# G Ab (yes enharmonics as well).
Click to expand...
Did you mean to write "consider the code at post 11 which just has the C chromatic scale as a template instead of the C major scale."?
Bill1 said:
Perhaps this is what musicians did before the 15th century, learned it all in C and then just set up a root note to suit the vocalist and called it C? Obviously the limitations of the instruments would have been taken into account as well. But this is what you can do today, now even. Your ukulele is well suited to learning everything in C because of the range of notes you get in GCEA tuning.
Click to expand...

No, musicians (Western musicians, at any rate) before the 15th century had no keys, because they had no chords. Chordal harmony (harmonising 3rds and 5ths together) only developed in England in the C15th, & didn't begin to be fully exploited until the C17th. The vast majority of their instruments back then were diatonic, not chromatic. If there had been a 14th century keyboard, each octave would have contained only the 7 white keys. As Howard Goodall puts it, in his "The Story of Music" (p92): "modes organise melodies - keys organise chords" (I paraphrase). No chords (no chordal harmony)? No keys (key signatures) - no need for them, so no 'accidentals' aka chromatics aka black keys on a keyboard - only modes, and only 7 of these to boot.

I take your point about a mediaeval musician picking a root note to suit his/her voice: it's why we call it 'troubadour tuning' after all! But thinking about that and going back to your chromatic scale example, wouldn't it be easier in any case to assign do, re, mi... to each one of those 12 notes as required, instead of going to the trouble of relabelling your root note as C? Then, to get to each of your modes, you'd simply apply a do, a re, a mi... as appropriate, to whichever of your 12 chromatic notes you'd decided to start on.

Code: 
Ionian:     do  re  mi-fa  so  la  ti-do
Dorian:     re  mi-fa  so  la  ti-do  re
Phrygian:   mi-fa  so  la  ti-do  re  mi
Lydian:     fa  so  la  ti-do  re  mi-fa
Mixolydian: so  la  ti-do  re  mi-fa  so
Aeolian:    la  ti-do  re  mi-fa  so  la
Locrian:    ti-do  re  mi-fa  so  la  ti

And that's really the way to think of modes, beginning and ending on a different scale-degree within a diatonic scale.

So Dorian mode always starts on the 2nd scale degree, re: which means that a Dorian mode beginning on C has to be in the key of B♭ (be written on a stave containg 2 flats in the key signature), because C is the re to B♭'s do; in D, it's in the key of C; in E, in the key of D; in F, in the key of E♭, etc, etc.

We have no problem doing this with Aeolian mode, btw. We all know that if we encounter a piece of sheet music with no sharps or flats, it's going to be either in C-major (C Ionian) or A-minor (A Aeolian). To figure out which it is, we simply look to see which note the melody finally comes to rest on. If it's a C-note, the piece is (in all likelihood) written in C-major (C Ionian). If it's an A-note, the piece is (in all likelihood) written in A-minor (A Aeolian).

In other words, when it comes to use of the Ionian/Aeolian mode, we always automatically assign the correct key signature according to the scale-degree principle. All I'm saying is, when tabbing out his scales, our boy in Hawai'i should have applied the same principle to the other 5 modes!

Take Slade's Merry Christmas, Everybody! as an example. The key signature contains one sharp - key of G? Yes & no - every single melody line in the song ends on a D-note (harmonised on a D-chord). It's in the same key family as G (Ionian), but actually it's in D-Mixolydian. David Bowie's "Heroes" is another well-known example.

(we've been here before, btw :) )
 
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Bill1 said:
The idea is to get down to your fretboard and some very basic stuff remembered by rote until you have used it enough to have it sink into your brain. Without needing a book or getting caught up in who invented chords.

However, some people just want to creatively play and sing and arrange without reference to history or books, you can do that just by following what I have typed. All you need is a melody on paper or in your head, a fretboard, and the knowledge of where some harmony notes are, which can come from learning your modes on the fretboard. So you play the melody from the paper or from your head and then add in the other notes to make an arrangement that will sound nice, eventually, after you work on it for a while. Then you can get your friends who like technical stuff to analyse it and tell you the names of the modes and technical terminology for what you are doing, while you are thinking about the next melody to arrange.
Click to expand...
Yes!!! One approach is playing mostly by ear at the start, as you've described. The other approach is firstly, learning all the notations, scales and modes. As fuzzbass and I've discussed, and as we are dilleigently working out.

The folks in the first group though, will enjoy being able to play songs and accompany vocals early on, while the 2d group may not be able to play chords in proper time to the songs until much later. (Just an observation from personal experience). There are exceptions of course, and all kinds of in-betweeners.
 
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