We worked on this in Part Ten of the previous section, but it’s probably a good idea to retrace our steps and consider this topic again. So here goes.
There are times when a songwriter is looking for “that minor sound.” Perhaps the project at hand is contemplative in nature, or sad. Maybe the project is intense and needs a dark and somber kind of expression. Or maybe the songwriter just wants to explore something that isn’t quite so “major key sounding.” For whatever the reason, the question of minor keys eventually comes up.
Perhaps you can identify with this element in my personal story. There came a time when, after exploring major keys for quite a while, I began to wonder about minor keys. What were they? It was like a mystery. How do you explore that part of the musical landscape? What kind of understanding do you have to have to play in minor keys as freely as you play in major keys?
Slowly, ideas came and found their places in the big picture. But, to understand this picture, it’s best to take a step back and start with this concept.
Concept - Not everything that sounds minor is actually “minor”
When we discussed this in Part Ten, we talked about a piano that didn’t yet have the black keys on it. This time we’re going to use a different approach.
Imagine for a moment that you were working with a music student who had an interest in songwriting but didn’t play any instruments. After thinking about it, the student decided to start learning to play guitar. So, like most beginning guitarists, the student learned some basic chords.
If you play guitar, you know it isn’t too hard to learn these chords—Em, Am, G, Dm, C—and, with a little work, a simplified version of the F chord. Now it turns out these six chords are all found in the key of C major. If we list them in order, we get C - Dm - Em - F - G - Am. (There is one more—the B diminished chord—but most beginning students would not have learned it at this point, so we will leave it out of the discussion for the moment.)
Let’s say the student went home and worked diligently to learn these six chords, and then, because of a strong aptitude and interest, started writing songs right away. Each of the student’s songs was written with C as the I chord (the “home” chord), and typical progressions like F - G - C, or Dm - G - C, or C - G - Am - F were all being used.
So all was well, until one day the student grew tired of writing songs having a C major sound. Not knowing any other chords, the student reasoned this way. “I only know six chords (C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am), and I’ve written several songs that all seem to be wrapped around this C chord. What if I use the same six chords, but instead of thinking of C as being the home chord, I’ll start and end the song with Dm as the main chord? I’ll keep coming back to Dm. That will be the sound that anchors this song.”
Before we go any further, let me say that, though this may sound like an unusual story, the idea is really not too far from the experience of many songwriting beginners. The six chords mentioned are quite common. And it’s possible to have a wonderful vocabulary when it comes to writing and singing words and lyrics, and yet have a very limited chord vocabulary when first learning to play an accompaniment instrument like the guitar.
So, because the only chords this student knew were C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and because using C as the home chord had already been explored a few times, the student began writing songs where the home chord was one of the other possibilities—in this case, Dm.
Now we could complicate things a lot here by saying things like:
1 - This new key has a minor chord as the i chord. (D minor)
2 - The chord built on note 2 is minor. (E minor)
3 - There is a major chord built on the flat three note. (F major)
4 - The IV chord is major. (G major)
5 - The V chord is minor. (A minor)
6 - There is a chord built on the flat seven note. (the C chord)
Or, we could be much simpler and just say that the student had accomplished the main objective. Using the chords available, a new song had been created that had a minor chord as the home chord.
We can represent it like this.
C - Em - F - G - Am
Dm
Notice Dm is bold type and underlined, indicating that this is the main chord in this particular example. All of the other chords are available when needed, but the one that keeps drawing us back is Dm.
With this idea in mind, the student can explore the following progressions.
Progressions where only one chord comes before going back to Dm.
Dm - C - Dm
Dm - Em - Dm
Dm - F - Dm
Dm - G - Dm
Dm - A - Dm
Progressions where two chords come before going back to Dm.
Dm - C - Em - Dm
Dm - C - F - Dm
Dm - C - G - Dm
Dm - C - Am - Dm
Dm - Em - F - Dm
Dm - Em - G - Dm
Dm - Em - Am - Dm
Dm - F - G - Dm
Dm - F - Am - Dm
Dm - G - Am - Dm
(Of course, longer progressions can also be created, where three or more chords come before heading back to Dm.)
So far, so good. The student had discovered a way to explore songwriting using a very different sound, not at all like the sound of the songs previously written in the key of C major. And this new sound seemed a lot like minor, because the home chord was Dm.
But is this really minor? From a technical music theory perspective, the answer is no. The situation we were just describing is actually called the Dorian mode.
Thinking About Modes
Modes are a very old idea, going way back to ancient Greece. Basically, it means this.
If you start with a major scale, and you number the scale notes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you can create a song and then write it down using numbers. For example, you might create a musical line that goes 1-3-5-3-4-2-1.
Now suppose you wanted to hear something a little different, so you played the same sequence of notes while shifting them all one scale note to the right. The numbers would now be 2-4-6-4-5-3-2.
Lastly, suppose you said, “I like this new sound, but I don’t want to call it 2-4-6-4-5-3-2. I'd like to call it 1-3-5-3-4-2-1, just like it was originally. But, so as not to confuse this with the first version, I’ll say I’m playing in “that interesting musical place where every note in the major scale has been shifted one scale note to the right.”
That’s kind of a long phrase, but it explains what happened. The ancient Greeks gave it a name we still use today. They called it the Dorian mode.
Moving a step further, if we focus our attention on chords instead of notes, the statement might go something like this. “I created a song using the chords available in a certain major key. I can number the chords I, ii, iii, IV, V, and vi. (I might even include the vii dim chord if I want to.) Now I’m going to introduce a transformation. In every place where I originally played the I chord, I’m going to play the ii chord instead. In fact, I’m going to shift all the chords in a similar way. So a chord progression like I - IV - ii - V - I will now be played ii - V - iii - vi - ii.
Finally, what if you didn’t even bother writing the original song in C? Suppose you started with the collection of chords found in the key of C, and made Dm the “home chord” from the beginning of the project, starting with Dm and coming back to it often enough to establish that sound in the listener’s mind.
You would be playing and writing in the Dorian mode.
Thinking Logically About the Possibilities
Let’s think about this. We started with the major scale and numbered the notes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Then we created a musical phrase. After playing the phrase in its original location, we shifted it one scale note to the right. But we could have shifted it two scale notes to the right, or three, or four, or five, or six. That means there are seven possible starting points for our phrase, and each one introduces us to another mode. Here’s the list.
IONIAN
Played in the original major scale.
DORIAN
Played one scale note to the right.
(The original note 2 is now note 1.)
PHRYGIAN
Played two scale notes to the right.
(The original note 3 is now note 1.)
LYDIAN
Played three scale notes to the right.
(The original note 4 is now note 1.)
MIXOLYDIAN
Played four scale notes to the right.
(The original note 5 is now note 1.)
AEOLIAN
Played five scale notes to the right.
(The original note 6 is now note 1.)
LOCRIAN
Played six scale notes to the right.
(The original note 7 is now note 1.)
Notice that each of these modes uses the same collection of notes, but the numbers associated with each note change depending on which note we decide to call 1.
In the same, way, the chords we used when playing in the major key (the Ionian mode) are the same chords we’re going to use as we move to the other modes.
Let’s give each mode a picture, adding in the Bdim chord for completeness. (Notice that the “home” chord changes, but the collection of chords stays the same.)
IONIAN
Dm - Em - F - G - Am - Bdim
C
DORIAN
C - Em - F - G - Am - Bdim
Dm
PHRYGIAN
C - Dm - F - G - Am - Bdim
Em
LYDIAN
C - Dm - Em - G - Am - Bdim
F
MIXOLYDIAN
C - Dm - Em - F - Am - Bdim
G
AEOLIAN
C - Dm - Em - F - G - Bdim
Am
LOCRIAN
C - Dm - Em - F - G - Am
Bdim
Why Is This Important?
There are several reasons why it’s important to think this through.
First, as a songwriter, there will likely come a time when you will want to explore writing in a key that sounds different—perhaps not so “major key sounding.” Knowing that you can use the same chords you were using, but choose a different one as the home chord, gives you freedom to explore a different sound right away.
Second, as a music student, it helps to understand where things come from. The whole world of major key chord progressions can be thought of as coming out of the Ionian mode. The world of minor key chord progressions comes out of the Aeolian mode.
And, so we don’t miss this important idea, let’s say it in another way. We don’t want to somehow absorb the misconception that the world of music is either major or minor. It’s more than that. It would be better to say something like this. “A long time ago, musicians and mathematicians were studying sounds and frequencies. When they starting putting together sounds that had certain frequency relationships, it led to the major scale. This major scale was eventually associated with the word Ionian. It had seven notes before the pattern repeated an octave higher. Renumbering the seven notes, so that each one gets a chance to be note 1, gives seven different scales (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian). The major key chord progressions we use all the time come from the Ionian mode. The minor key chord progressions we are interested in learning more about come from the Aeolian mode.”
One More Thing
We followed an example where a student played chords found in the key of C major, but the same logic can be applied to any of the major keys.
In the following table, you can use any row you like as a collection of chords. The chord you choose from that row to be the home chord determines which mode you are exploring.
Choose a row. That will give you a group of chords to work with. Select a home chord from within that row.
If you choose:
I - Ionian, ii - Dorian, iii - Phrygian, IV - Lydian, V - Mixolydian, vi - Aeolian, vii° - Locrian
Let’s Review
In this discussion, we set aside for a moment our current goal (of exploring minor keys) to ask whether there is anything else, besides major and minor, that might be part of the bigger picture.
It turns out that major and minor are two “pathways” or “landscapes” that come out of two of the modes—Ionian and Aeolian. These two modes are part of a larger group of seven modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian).
The modes were developed around the idea that if you have a seven note major scale, and you number the notes 1 through 7, you can shift the numbers to the right, giving each of the seven notes a chance to be note 1. You can then create a musical phrase and play it in your choice of seven different places.
Similarly, the seven chords associated with the original scale can also be seen as a collection of chords, any one of which can be considered the starting place, or home chord, for a song. Because some of these chords are minor chords, it’s possible to create a minor-sounding song by choosing one of the modes that has a minor chord as its home chord.
When you feel you understand these concepts, you are ready to move on to Part Fourteen.
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