Help needed: Solos and scale modes...for dummies

[OmegaSlayer]

Ok, I started jamming on this C Dorian backtrack (then tried all the other modes in C)



So C Dorian
C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb (which is relative to Bb major)
Which I could also play Pentatonic style skipping the 2nd and 6th interval C-Eb-F-G-Bb

If I play some Zakk Wylde-like lick using C-Eb-F-Bb in this shape

E--11--8--11--8------------
B-----------------11--8----

Also tried the same patter with 3-6 (D-Eb-G-Bb) and 10-13 (A-C-D-F)

It sounds like crap, it sounds off, it sounds dead.
It's not only a matter of dynamics and tempo, because I tried to play and flavour over the beat paying much attention at what I did.

This is a pattern that in Metal you can use everywhere and I think we all agree it always sound very solid

 

[HoneyNut]

E--11--8--11--8------------
B-----------------11--8----

I just made up a pattern lick using the notes you mentioned over the Cmin and Fmin chord in that backing track:

Cm
E| 11--8--------11--8-------11--8--------10--8-------|
B| -------11--8-------11--8-------11--8-------11--8-| X2
G| ---------------------------------------------------|

Fm
E| ---------------------------------------------------|
B| 10--8--------10--8-------10--8--------11--8-------| X2
G| -------10--8-------10--8-------10--8-------10--8-|

These notes are within the Dorian mode/pentatonic box and they sound fine to me, as in, they do not sound 'off'. The lick is very basic and uninteresting, but I just tried it to check if it sounds off or not, and to me it doesn't sound off played in quarter notes (or 16th notes). It sounds horrible slowed.

I guess a Zakk Wylde pattern would only make sense in the faster parts of the solo ? I don't know. I'm not an expert in this, so I look forward to hearing what others have to say here.
__

In regards to the other two patterns, in my understanding they are not chord tones. Over the C min, the notes D and Bb are not chord tones. Hence a 3-6 pattern (D-Eb-G-Bb), sounds off over that chord. I could be very wrong, and welcome some enlightenment!

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Ok, tried your pattern and it quite worked.
Big problem is that I didn't realized the C Dorian is basically a Minor mode, silly me, and that's why some C arpeggios weren't working for example. Silly me.
The moment I realized it was Minor sounding everything started to flow a bit better.
Also...the 3--6 patters (which shares notes with C Aeolian) now works, even at good speeds.

Still I think I need to get used to some "typical Dorian" phrasing.
Can someone suggest me a couple of Dorian solos from fairly known rock-hard rock-metal song, so that I can become used to the sound and see how other guitarists works within the mode?
I would say a moody solo and a more shred oriented one.
Thanks

 

[HoneyNut]

Awesome man. I really appreciate these 'aha' moments after tinkering for such a long time...

I know for sure that the the first solo on Joe Satriani's Cool #9 is the dorian mode. It's on the legato-shred side though. The dorian solo start's at 4:35. (It's possible that the whole song is based on the dorian / pentatonic modes, but I am not sure)



Here is another Joe Satriani example (I am somehow familiar with his stuff!). The first verse solo is definitely dorian. The bend note at 0:38 provides that clue. (He changes the mode later in the faster solos I think)

 

[80H]

I recently came upon a teacher that had me play the chromatic scale over a series of ascending and descending chord sequences (usually very basic, almost never for the purpose of harmony but we did a few common progressions just for the sake of it in context).

Basically, what he emphasized to me was that you don't really want to learn a couple of "neat tricks" with the modes since they have so much to offer. You want a chromatic ear. One or two notes is sometimes all that it takes to shift your opinion of a key (especially obvious with the 3/5/7, which is typically stressed in every beginner's theory class).


In other words, your problem isn't necessarily in learning the modes. The modes are just a rearrangement of the major scale that scrambles your perception of the character of the intervals, because music is about context.


If you do it with the chromatic scale, the modes will eventually make more sense. If you learn the modes without a general sense of what chromatic tones sound like, a lot of the intervals will just be these wacky things you don't know how to use yet. Is your problem that you don't know how to use C Lydian or is your problem that the intervals in C Lydian don't make sense to you in contrast to C Major? It's that sort of relationship. If you don't know what it's like to go from a b3 to a 3, that's a much better place to start than trying to memorize a bunch of cryptic codes with number signs and lower case B's all over the place. Intuition does a lot of the work for you at every stage of the game, so you may as well play into it.



My teacher also made it very clear that this was a much faster route to travel. If you play with modes all day for a week straight, how many of them can you go through? First, you have to memorize enough of their notes to maneuver your way around the fretboard. Then, you have to memorize another one. Then you have to decide which intervals are ugly and which ones make sense in the context of the song.


Whereas if you're playing the chromatic scale over a series of progressions indefinitely, you subconsciously start to process what different intervals over different chords do. You don't have to ask someone else which notes sound ugly over a Maj7b5 because you've been there a few times and know which ones were more dissonant than you'd ever care for.


It's an efficiency thing. Do you want to spend 2 months learning a few modes and their application, or do you want to spend a few weeks to develop a general intuition of every note over every chord in various situations? The chromatic approach can get a little boring or tedious, but if you're going to save yourself all that confusion...

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

I know for sure that the the first solo on Joe Satriani's Cool #9 is the dorian mode. It's on the legato-shred side though. The dorian solo start's at 4:35. (It's possible that the whole song is based on the dorian / pentatonic modes, but I am not sure)

Yep. Dorian with some strong bluesisms. Uses the ♭6 more at around 5:50.

 

[OmegaSlayer]

@jeesan
Shred is not a problem.
Maybe I won't be able to play it full speed, but that's not my purpose for this thing.

I recently came upon a teacher that had me play the chromatic scale over a series of ascending and descending chord sequences (usually very basic, almost never for the purpose of harmony but we did a few common progressions just for the sake of it in context).

Basically, what he emphasized to me was that you don't really want to learn a couple of "neat tricks" with the modes since they have so much to offer. You want a chromatic ear. One or two notes is sometimes all that it takes to shift your opinion of a key (especially obvious with the 3/5/7, which is typically stressed in every beginner's theory class).


In other words, your problem isn't necessarily in learning the modes. The modes are just a rearrangement of the major scale that scrambles your perception of the character of the intervals, because music is about context.


If you do it with the chromatic scale, the modes will eventually make more sense. If you learn the modes without a general sense of what chromatic tones sound like, a lot of the intervals will just be these wacky things you don't know how to use yet. Is your problem that you don't know how to use C Lydian or is your problem that the intervals in C Lydian don't make sense to you in contrast to C Major? It's that sort of relationship. If you don't know what it's like to go from a b3 to a 3, that's a much better place to start than trying to memorize a bunch of cryptic codes with number signs and lower case B's all over the place. Intuition does a lot of the work for you at every stage of the game, so you may as well play into it.



My teacher also made it very clear that this was a much faster route to travel. If you play with modes all day for a week straight, how many of them can you go through? First, you have to memorize enough of their notes to maneuver your way around the fretboard. Then, you have to memorize another one. Then you have to decide which intervals are ugly and which ones make sense in the context of the song.


Whereas if you're playing the chromatic scale over a series of progressions indefinitely, you subconsciously start to process what different intervals over different chords do. You don't have to ask someone else which notes sound ugly over a Maj7b5 because you've been there a few times and know which ones were more dissonant than you'd ever care for.


It's an efficiency thing. Do you want to spend 2 months learning a few modes and their application, or do you want to spend a few weeks to develop a general intuition of every note over every chord in various situations? The chromatic approach can get a little boring or tedious, but if you're going to save yourself all that confusion...

Makes lots of sense.
Still I have been stuck with Metal phrasing for life.
I was 8 yo when I got Powerslave tape and now I'm almost 36...
I must get out of the box a little before going into the chromatic approach.
At least I must get another "ear approach"
Which I'm trying to develope.

It's interesting how you mention "learning stages".
I studied harmony when I was 7 and started piano.
I went through 2 years of harmony and solfeggio without applying it to the instrument, with the result that I understood very few, and remember less.

Now, after 2 decades of playing guitar without almost any notion of theory, what I read now about theory easily click and I see it on the fretboard easily.
I see shapes, triads, chord that I used without thinking.

Yep. Dorian with some strong bluesisms. Uses the ♭6 more at around 5:50.

Now I see things.
Back to what I was saying about seeing stuff.
Speaking very roughly and practically C Dorian is basically C Ionian moved a whole tone back so the blues note b5 becomes a b6

 

[HoneyNut]

Speaking very roughly and practically C Dorian is basically C Ionian moved a whole tone back so the blues note b5 becomes a b6

I cannot exactly see the logic in the statement, it's a little hard for me to grasp it that way. So I will try to share how I see it.

Take the C Ionian. It contains the notes C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C (1 octave). Let's say it's:

G -----------------------
D ---------------7-9-10-
A -------7-8-10---------
E -8-10-----------------

So, if you start the same scale-shape pattern, and instead of starting at the root note C, you start it at D and play D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D, you get the D Dorian (as well as the shape/box of the Dorian scale)

G --------------------7-
D ------------7-9-10---
A -----7-8-10----------
E -10------------------

If you take those notes, and transpose it by starting on the 10th fret, you get:

D Dorian

D ----------------9-10-12-
A ----------10-12---------
E -10-12-13--------------

I'm sure you can see that both the tabs sound the same, it's just that the D Dorian shape has been constructed out of the C Ionian.
___

Now, If we construct the A Aeolian the same way using the 6th interval of the C Ionian, we get the notes (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A). So instead of playing it on that same position, let's transpose it so that the root note A is on the E-string. We get:

A Aeolian

D -------------5-7-
A -------5-7-8-----
E -5-7-8-----------

The Aeolian mode is what people learn first as the "Minor Scale" since it's so commonly used.

Now, to get to my final point! If you take the Dorian scale pattern, and just move the 6th note 1/2 step back, you get the Aeolian scale pattern. Dorian and Aeolian shapes are almost similar, just that the Aeolian shape has a flat-6th. You can compare that with the D Dorian and A Aeolian shapes in the tabs.

Therefore, the distinctive sound the Dorian scale gets is because of it's 6th interval note. It's not a flat-6, it's a regular 6. Whereas, the Aeolian scale (the regular minor, and common) has a flat-6, which is what we hear all the time. The regular 6th note of the Dorian scale is what gives it its flavor so to speak.

So when Mr. Big Noodles was saying that Satriani uses the flat-6th after 5:50, he meant that Satriani ditched the Dorian mode and used the Aeolian mode going forward.
______
And, about shred, I know you are very comfortable with it. I looked into the Cowboys from Hell solo you were talking about earlier, plus I am aware that you are attempting Jason Becker, which is something I don't exactly have the guts to attempt yet...haha
______

Edit: On "Cool #9" Satriani was using the C Dorian (with the regular 6th = A), but after 5:50 he was using C Aeolian (with the flat-6th = G#).

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Ok...let me explain.
That's a little brute and unrefined LOL
But as I mentioned, it's easier for me to work subconsiusly on something then put the theory on it.

C Ionian
D-------------------------9--10--
A-------------8--10--12----------
E--8--10--12---------------------

Two steps, or a whole tone lower

Bb Ionian
D-------------------------7--8--(10)
A-------------6--8--10--------------
E--6--8--10--------------------------

Take the Bb shape and start from C

C Dorian
D-------------------------7--8--10--
A-------------6--8--10--------------
E--(6)--8--10-----------------------

Anyway I messed about the b5
The blues b5 becomes a b4.

-------------------------------------
About shredding...I'm not a shredder, I can play some fast stuff and get stucked on some slow stuff, I'm very uneven because I practiced only what I liked and practiced like an idiot, so I'm trying to fill the gaps.

 

[HoneyNut]

haha..yeah man...we're on the same page! Well at least I got some 'tabbing' practice.

Yeah, I too play without that much focus on the scales. I know some people here actually think about the interval they want to hit...but that approach is so specific, I wonder how to play so uber-consciously. I need to ear-train and learn the intervals. But how do I get it ingrained? All practice I guess. Mr. Big Noodles suggested this website - musictheory.net

Lot of ear training exercises there to keep me busy for the moment.

 

[OmegaSlayer]

I spend almost an hour a day on musictheory lol

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

So when Mr. Big Noodles was saying that Satriani uses the flat-6th after 5:50, he meant that Satriani ditched the Dorian mode and used the Aeolian mode going forward.

...

Edit: On "Cool #9" Satriani was using the C Dorian (with the regular 6th = A), but after 5:50 he was using C Aeolian (with the flat-6th = G#).

Exactly. Watch your spelling, though. ♭6 from C is A♭, not G#. G# is #5. Seeing G# implies a completely different harmonic situation than A♭.

Ok...let me explain.
That's a little brute and unrefined LOL
But as I mentioned, it's easier for me to work subconsiusly on something then put the theory on it.

C Ionian
D-------------------------9--10--
A-------------8--10--12----------
E--8--10--12---------------------

Two steps, or a whole tone lower

Bb Ionian
D-------------------------7--8--(10)
A-------------6--8--10--------------
E--6--8--10--------------------------

Take the Bb shape and start from C

C Dorian
D-------------------------7--8--10--
A-------------6--8--10--------------
E--(6)--8--10-----------------------

Be careful. You're putting in numerous extra steps. The result is the same, but it is extremely clunky. You do not want to continue in this way. Instead, think of it as you hear it. If I hear somebody play C D, then I am thinking, "Alright, we have a scale coming up and C is the first note." At this point, I only know that the scale contains C and D - that could be a lot of scales. Next, I hear an E♭. Uh! What do I do now? Is it dorian or aeolian? Does that mean I have to think B♭major or E♭ major? The answer is neither. Everything is still relating back to C. Don't even bother with "parent scales". And really, you shouldn't even bother with "modes" yet until you get a handle on functional harmony. Modes are fine, I love modes, but literally any collection of primary pitches is a mode. Major is just as much a mode as locrian or the whole tone scale. Furthermore, modality is a lot more flexible than most musicians will tell you (mostly for lack of knowledge). Any mode can contain any pitch, microtones included. Nobody tells you this because you're learning this on the internet, and the internet sucks. Many books suck too, by the way, because the authors who write the books use the internet. The information that exists in the popular sphere is so introductory that it's remedial. Many musicians model their entire musical understanding around this superficial pitch system. It's amazing how far some come with chord scale concept, but it inherently has a ceiling that many have difficulty surpassing.

Edit: The only place I've ever heard "ionian" is the internet. Professional musicians call it the major scale, or they get slapped by the union.

 

[HoneyNut]

...Watch your spelling, though. ♭6 from C is A♭, not G#. G# is #5. Seeing G# implies a completely different harmonic situation than A♭.

Ahh, so that's what you meant by spellings in an earlier post. Makes a lot of sense now!

You mentioned knowing functional harmony should precede any exposure to modes. I can understand why. But how does one go about familiarizing with functional harmony? How does one go about learning the practicality and uses of functional harmony?

Some of us have known these modes for ages, (maybe even before the internet !), but haven't been able to get past that. I guess knowing functional harmony will improve phrasing, but how does one go about it? Is it simply familiarizing with intervals? If it goes beyond understanding intervals, can you point to where we can learn more about it?

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Exactly. Watch your spelling, though. ♭6 from C is A♭, not G#. G# is #5. Seeing G# implies a completely different harmonic situation than A♭.



Be careful. You're putting in numerous extra steps. The result is the same, but it is extremely clunky. You do not want to continue in this way. Instead, think of it as you hear it. If I hear somebody play C D, then I am thinking, "Alright, we have a scale coming up and C is the first note." At this point, I only know that the scale contains C and D - that could be a lot of scales. Next, I hear an E♭. Uh! What do I do now? Is it dorian or aeolian? Does that mean I have to think B♭major or E♭ major? The answer is neither. Everything is still relating back to C. Don't even bother with "parent scales". And really, you shouldn't even bother with "modes" yet until you get a handle on functional harmony. Modes are fine, I love modes, but literally any collection of primary pitches is a mode. Major is just as much a mode as locrian or the whole tone scale. Furthermore, modality is a lot more flexible than most musicians will tell you (mostly for lack of knowledge). Any mode can contain any pitch, microtones included. Nobody tells you this because you're learning this on the internet, and the internet sucks. Many books suck too, by the way, because the authors who write the books use the internet. The information that exists in the popular sphere is so introductory that it's remedial. Many musicians model their entire musical understanding around this superficial pitch system. It's amazing how far some come with chord scale concept, but it inherently has a ceiling that many have difficulty surpassing.

Edit: The only place I've ever heard "ionian" is the internet. Professional musicians call it the major scale, or they get slapped by the union.

Yup, I'm totally aware this is "dangerous" and probably this will help me to not get lost.
This little clunky trick serves its purpose on the fretboard so that I know where I can land my feet.
After some use now I know that Dorian mode has a b3 and a b6 and that is now some gained knowledge.
It was a trick to learn, knowing from the beginning that there was much more that I wasn't yet ready to assimilate.
You can say: "hey man, it's just 2 flats to put on 2 intervals, still I start to see how moving intervals change the mood.
Internet is the most affordable and time saving way to learn things, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Still, it can be very useful if you know ho to discern what to skip and avoid.

Still many things even in books can f**k you up pretty badly.
I always skipped until now the VII chords (only the major ones).
What I learnt in early chord books, were the 7 chords, that, as a theory ignorant, I considered Maj chords because they lacked the Maj/Min specification.
So, for me, for that little I knew, if a chord doesn't have Min in it's name...it's a Major chord.
Now I understood what a Dominant 7 chord is, where it is in the economy of a chord progression and start to figure what it does.
AND I'm starting to like the effects of Maj7/Min7 chords and how they enrich the musical texture.
Still something thrown in a book without a necessary explaination messed my perception from over 20 years.

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

Ahh, so that's what you mean by spellings in an earlier post. Makes a lot of sense now!

You mentioned knowing functional harmony should precede any exposure to modes. I can understand why. But how does one go about familiarizing with functional harmony? How does one go about learning the practicality and uses of functional harmony?

Some of us have known these modes for ages, (maybe even before the internet !), but haven't been able to get past that. I guess knowing functional harmony will improve phrasing, but how does one go about it?

There are a great many harmony textbooks out there that detail four-part chorale writing. None of them are perfect, but some are better than others. I like Stefan Kostka & Dorothy Payne's Tonal Harmony, 5th and 6th edition. It's not the holy grail of music theory or anything, but it makes sense and will keep you busy. Walter Piston's Harmony is another standard, and is quite different from K&P. It reads like a sit-down-and-read book rather than like a modern college textbook, and it's hella oldschool. In my opinion, that makes it easier to go through alone. If you decide to pick up Piston, you should seek out an earlier edition. (It should be noted that a certain swanky swanker can swank you a swank-swank swankishly.)

From Piston, relevant to the topic:

The development of chromatic resources in the nineteenth century emphasized the tendency of the two modes to merge into what one is finally tempted to call a chromatic mode. Chromatic tones are introduced partly by the method which has just permitted us to include both A-flat and A-natural in C major (modal interchange), and partly by the extension of the dominant principle to allow other degrees than the tonic to possess their own dominants (secondary functions, tonicization).

The study of these complexities belongs naturally to an advanced stage in the study of harmony, but there are two points of which the student should be made aware from the start. The first is that the modes, major and minor, tend to become interchangeable, even with triads. Examples from musical literature should be noted and the formulae added to the collection of progressions. In the exercises of the present stage, II and IV (these numerals are modally neutral) can be used with either major or minor sixth degree in the major mode, and the final tonic chord of the minor mode may have a major third. It is understood that these are effects of variety and should not be used too consistently.

The second important point is that notes outside of the scale do not necessarily affect the tonality. This principle may cause difficulty at first but should be announced early, if only to emphasize the fact that tonality is established by the progression of roots and the tonal functions of the chords, even though the superstructure of the music may contain all the tones of the chromatic scale.

(Yellow parentheticals are added by meeeeee!)

The gist of functional tonality is that certain chords in succession establish a direction and designate a single tone as "tonic", and its accompanying root position chord, the harmonic goal of the music. Because of the pull of every tone toward the tonic, we can say that the tonic has the most "tonal gravity" (a bullshit term I just made up) in a key. If we made up some lame analogy comparing tonality to the solar system, the tonic would be the Sun. Other bodies in our solar system also exert gravitational pull, and other tones in a key likewise exert tonal gravity. If the tonic is the Sun, then the dominant is Jupiter. The other tones and chords are lesser in their "tonal gravity", and they all pass towards the dominant before making their way to the molten chocolate center of the tonic.

[wuteva] > V > I
(^ 400 years of Western music)

In addition to chords going to chords, we are interested in the tones of those chords and how they proceed to the next chord. This is what is known as "voice leading". The following image expresses the V7 I progression in four voices:

You can see that each voice has its own stem. This indicates that these chord progressions are really four intersecting melodies. The voice leading we learn in the harmony books is parsimonious, meaning that it does not move much: stepwise motion and common tones are preferred over voices leaping around all over the place. If there is a leap in one of the melodies, the others tend to move by step or stay where they are. Some tones in the chord progression have a specific function. For this example, they are the leading tone (whose movement is indicated by an arrow) and the dominant's seventh (whose movement is indicated by a dashed line). These two notes are expected to resolve by step, and in contrary motion. In the third bar, the leading tone (B) does not undergo its normal resolution, opting instead to leap down to the dominant degree, indicated by a squiggly line. This is called a "frustrated leading tone", and is preferred when the leading tone is in an inner voice (not in the top or bottom voice), and a complete tonic chord (1 3 5) is desired over an incomplete tonic chord (1 3). This demonstrates that while we may set up a bunch of rules, they can be flexible and still have some logic.

The dominant-tonic relationship, especially the resolution of leading tone to tonic and the dominant's seventh to the tonic's third, is the most important relationship to explore in tonal harmony, and gives us the materials with which we can address every other functional chord. Those same principles are applied to the whole of this progression:

If you look at the motion of each voice, they move primarily by step or are static (common tones). Hell, the tenor line is on C for most of the phrase. The goal with these phrases is to move as little as possible. I could actually move even less with this phrase, but I'm trying to strike a compromise between economy of motion and musicality. It is not uncommon for the bass to leap all over the place, even if (and perhaps especially if) every other voice is staying practically still. There is technically a problem with the resolution of that Dm7, but I chose the stylistic error over having a lame and repetitive soprano melody. Everything still works. You can compromise when you know how to.

To jump ahead a little, at some point in a harmony method you typically start adding non-harmonic tones to a progression and labeling them. This is supposed to simulate the role of these non-harmonic tones in actual melodies, but it seems like a poor substitute for actual melodic writing to me. Since our four-part rules are designed to limit motion, and melodies actually benefit from motion, this weird melodization of abstract voice leading is doomed to fail. Nevertheless, doing it like this helps one to internalize where and when to use non-harmonic tones.

You can see my method here: whenever I have a gap of a third, I fill it with a passing tone (PT). Whenever a tone is repeated, I give it a neighbor tone (NT). Anything else, I approach by anticipation (ant.), appoggiatura (app.), or escape tone (ET). There are a few more non-harmonic tones out there, including the suspension, retardation, non-harmonic pedal, and cambiata (also known as "changing tone" or "neighbor group"). Ask me about these if you want to know more.

You can also harmonize non-chord tones to get chords between your chords. And what if you put non-chord tones in between those chords, and harmonize those too? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Now, I would never compose real music like that. I value those voice leading exercises, and I got a lot of good things out of doing them, but going chord-chord-chord-chord-chord, sticking some non-chord tones in wherever you can fit them, then calling it good does not result in good music. Why do it then, you ask? Because it will make you a better musician. It will make you a better composer. It will make you a better improviser. Learn to build this stuff from the ground up, and don't worry that you can't find an application for it yet. I waited two years before voice leading started to make sense in my guitar playing. Now, the two are indissoluble.

The next question you're asking is probably how I would go about composing "real music," if the above method is no good. My answer is this: music is rhythm, sound organized over time. We put a lot of emphasis on pitch in the Western world, but rhythm is way more important. Rhythm + pitch gives us a melody. You start with the melody, then find some way to flesh it out. In this case, there are long notes and pauses in the melody I decided to work with, so I need to introduce more melodies in order to fill the space. This is called "counterpoint," and you can bet your sweet Canadian behind that doing all of that parsimonious voice leading helps here. When your voice leading is crap, your counterpoint is even worse. The strange thing is that you can actually be looser with voice leading in contrapuntal textures, but it's almost like that freedom is more of a privilege than a right, and you earn it through doing your time with voice leading in four parts.

[sc]https://soundcloud.com/menuridae/muad-dib[/sc]

So, I started with a melody (bonus points if you know the tune) that is represented in the top staff, then replicated on the piano staff beneath it. I arranged this in three voices: soprano, alto, and bass. The octave doubling in the bass does not count as a fourth voice. The soprano is obviously the melody itself, and the bass is always acting against that melody. The alto is like a shadow to the soprano; when dealing with three voices, sometimes one of them ends up as a subordinate voice. We want to avoid doing that all the time, and the alto breaks away every now and then here (because I heard that it was too bare without that rhythmic separation), but it's fine in melody-heavy styles. If you have three voices, you should ideally have three distinct melodies going on.

Pay special attention to the dialogue: where one voice is rhythmically inactive, another voice is rhythmically active. The big one is on beat 3 of measure 3 (remember, this starts with an anacrusis), where the soprano and alto are hanging onto an eighth note tied to a half note and the bass is climbing up with eighth notes. It's not a particularly good line in my opinion, and if I had made a point of it I would have written something better, but the important thing is that we fill this space. You can have shit notes and still sound good, as long as you manage your rhythms and counterpoint well. Measure 9 is cheesy, but eeeeh, it works. This phrase ends with a phrygian half cadence. No, it doesn't mean that this little piece has anything to do with the phrygian mode.

Looking at voice leading, this is pretty solid. Check the E in the left hand in measure 2. On the downbeat of measure 3, that turns into a D. Stepwise motion, huh? How about the C# (the leading tone) in the alto on beat 4 of measure 2? It is held over as a retardation before resolving to D (the tonic). More stepwise motion and leading tone resolution. On beat 4 of measure 6, we get another leading tone in the soprano, and it... doesn't go to the tonic right away. That's okay, though: that E on the downbeat of 7 is an accented appoggiatura, so it's delaying the resolution but is not a technical error. As a matter of fact, it's quite nice. Measure 8 arguably has some parallel octaves between the soprano and bass, which is not good at all, but they're hidden by the counterpoint and non-chord tones. I don't think anybody would deny that the bass and soprano sound like different melodies. Nevertheless, you might hear that this measure sounds, hm, 'stale', and that's what bad voice leading sounds like. In measure 9, I bring back the rhythm from the anacrusis at the beginning of the phrase. That is a compositional thing, and while my intention was good and I could probably make it work if I spent a little more time with this, I can't get over the harmonic cliché. Perhaps if that figure was inverted, it would sound better.

Yeah, inverting it does sound better.

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

Yup, I'm totally aware this is "dangerous" and probably this will help me to not get lost.
This little clunky trick serves its purpose on the fretboard so that I know where I can land my feet.

Nothing wrong with that. I used to use a phrygian and lydian pattern for everything diatonic, because that's what I spent my time learning until I realized that it's all the same thing.

After some use now I know that Dorian mode has a b3 and a b6 and that is now some gained knowledge.

♭7?

Internet is the most affordable and time saving way to learn things, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Still, it can be very useful if you know ho to discern what to skip and avoid.

Absolutely. And communities like this are amazing.

 

[HoneyNut]

Mr Big Noodles, swanked swankfully haha.

Thanks a lot for the recommendations. The rest is over the top of my head, obviously! I'll try to make sense out of it, but I doubt I'll get any far, in case I was expected to (which I also doubt).


Edit: I'll look into functional harmony and voice leading.

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Thank you Mr Big Noodles, see ya in 4-5 days after I realized the first 2 sentences ^___^

 

[OmegaSlayer]

I think for now I'll do study a bit of Dorian triads and seventh chords.
I checked on musictheory the chord progressions used for Harmonic Minor and Melodic Minor with 7th, maybe doing that work using the C Dorian mode will be some kind of help.

I'll update this post with the result (which might not be of anyone's interest, but oh well )

C-Eb-G-Bb (i7 mM7)
D-F-A-C (ii7 m7)
Eb-G-Bb-D (III7 dim7)
F-A-C-Eb (IV7 7)
G-Bb-D-F (v7 m7)
A-C-Eb-G (vi7 dim7)
Bb-D-F-A (VII7 Maj7)

Don't have the guitar in hands, so yeah, might have made a mess.
Things are not so straight-forward and mechanical yet.

 

[Konfyouzd]

Focus on the pentatonic boxes and intervals. Add in other degrees sparingly to add color.