Getting ready for the mode lessons

You'll need a little bit of music theory background before you go into mode lessons:

• What chords and chord extensions are
• How to hear notes as scale degrees
• How Roman numeral notation works
• What I mean when I say "mode"
• Which modes you'll actually hear in real life, and what "modal interchange" means

This page covers just those prerequisites (this isn't a whole music theory class).

You also need something to play chords with: keyboard, guitar, DAW, etc.

A couple things you don't need:

• You don't need to read sheet music. There's no sheet music on this site.
• You don't need to be good at an instrument. The chord progressions you'll be playing will be very simple.
• You don't need to absorb all this before starting. This page is designed as a reference you can come back to as you learn.

FAST PATH

If you want to jump ahead to the first lesson —

1. Know what a minor 7 chord and a dominant 7 chord are. Prerequisite 1: chords
2. Have some sense of what "the root" means — the home note, the one you hear every other note against. Prerequisite 2: Hearing scale degrees
3. Know that the roman numeral "i" means "minor chord on the root" and uppercase IV means "major chord on the 4th scale degree". Prerequisite 3: roman numerals

Then get started: the Dorian i7–IV7 lesson

(If the lesson uses a word that you don't know — for instance, "avoid note" — it's defined on this page.)

What you're really studying

“Music theory” sounds like it should mean the theory of everything in music, but in practice it mostly means the study of harmony: chords, and the way songs move between chords. It doesn't mean rhythm, production, or melody writing (though melody is one of the main ways harmony gets expressed).

The goal is to hear harmonic moves in real music, in real time, by name — and make those moves in your own music, on purpose. Notice what I'm not saying: I'm not saying "you'll know facts about scales," or "you'll get good at doing music theory exercises on paper," or that you'll know some sort of "right answer" when the music is written down in front of you. I mean you'll be able to hear what's happening, and choose chord motion that expresses the energy you want.

You do that by studying modes — which are defined below. More concretely, you're ear-training on the common vamps (short chord loops) and turnarounds (resolving phrases) inside each mode. There are around a hundred of these common moves, nearly all of them living in six core modes that most popular music is written in. It's not something you can tackle in an afternoon, but it's a bounded amount, and each move you learn becomes something you'll start hearing everywhere.

The concepts on this page are scaffolding to help you organize what you're hearing. What you're actually studying is ear training.

Prerequisite 1: chords

Intervals are named distances between notes, counted in half steps (a half step is the smallest distance between two notes; on a guitar it's one fret, and on a piano it's the next key whether black or white). We'll use intervals to build chords here in this section, and to put names to scale degrees in the next section. Skim this list and come back to it as needed.

Chords are mostly stacks of thirds: that is, combinations of minor 3rd and major 3rd intervals. This is called tertian harmony. There are other kinds of chords — sus chords, quartal voicings, and more advanced types; but tertian harmony is the overwhelming default for most music, so that's mostly what the lessons study.

The fundamental chord unit on this site is the seventh chord: root (the note the chord is built from and named after), 3rd, 5th, 7th. Most books teach triads (root, 3rd, 5th) first, and sevenths later as an "advanced" add-on. I do it the other way: the seventh chord is the primary object, and I treat triads as a reduced, cleaner voicing of a seventh chord (a "voicing" is a choice of which chord notes are played and how they're arranged). Even when a band's guitar player, for instance, is just playing a triad, the 7th exists in the surrounding musical context: a melody can use it, a background riff can use it, it might be played in surrounding measures, and so on. In fact, in a lot of songs, you might just hear the root of the chord in the bass underneath a melody; even then, you'll still feel the energy of the whole chord.

For example: triads are more common than seventh chords in rock music. But if you take a rock song and play all the chords as seventh chords, it'll sound texturally thicker but it'll sound like the same song. There are a few important exceptions where the 7th changes the chord more substantially, but the lessons will flag them.

There are twelve basic types of seventh chord, though for now you only need five. Let me spell these using intervals — each interval here is the distance from the root of the chord. Recommendation: skim this list and return to it later.

• Major 7 (maj7)
  • Root, major 3rd, perfect 5th, major 7th
  • Shorthand: maj7, e.g. "Amaj7"
• Minor 7
  • Root, minor 3rd, perfect 5th, minor 7th
  • Shorthand: m7, e.g. "E♭m7"
• Dominant 7
  • Root, major 3rd, perfect 5th, minor 7th
  • Shorthand: just "7", e.g. "G7" or "C♯7"
• Minor 7 flat 5 (a.k.a. half-diminished)
  • Root, minor 3rd, flat 5th, minor 7th
  • Shorthand: m7♭5, e.g. "Bm7♭5"
• Diminished 7 (dim7)
  • Root, minor 3rd, flat 5th, diminished 7th (9 half steps — the same distance as a major 6th, but it acts as a 7th)
  • Shorthand: °7, e.g. "C°7" or "dim", e.g. "Cdim7"

To play one of these, just search "[chord name] guitar" or "[chord name] piano". Or, build it from the interval table, counting up from the root by the distances listed above.

A warning about how to study these: "the minor 7 chord", for instance, is a chord shape, and in practice it's an abstraction over dozens of specific chords that sound and behave differently depending on where they sit.

Which brings us to —

Prerequisite 2: Hearing scale degrees

A scale degree is a note's numbered position relative to the root — the home note, and the one every other note is heard against. There are seven slots, numbered 1 through 7, where the root is 1. In C minor (C D E♭ F G A♭ B♭) for instance, D is the second scale degree, A♭ is the sixth scale degree, and so on.

Scale degrees can be lowered or raised by a half step, and when that happens we write them with a flat or a sharp. A plain number means the note as it falls in the major scale (that's just the reference point everyone uses for notation's sake).

So the 6th degree, for example, can be a natural 6 (written as just 6, or sometimes ♮6), or a ♭6 a half step lower. The ♭6 is the note a minor 6th interval above the root and the natural 6 is a major 6th above it. And these are two different sounds! In C minor, the 6th is a ♭6 (A♭), and in C major it's a natural 6 (A). Which version of each degree a mode uses is a part of what defines it.

Each of these is a recognizable sound. Once a root is established in your ear, every note has a specific position relative to that root. The 2 sounds like the 2, the 5 sounds like the 5, and the ♭6 sounds like the ♭6. What's important to understand here is that they are not just names we assign to the notes on paper, each one sounds like a different thing, and you can learn to hear them directly.

You already respond differently to different scale degrees when you listen to music, whether you can identify them consciously or not. Learning to recognize them is called scale-degree ear-training.

For most people, this takes practice. Even experienced musicians may not have trained it explicitly — especially if most of their musical experience has been based around reading sheet music. You don't need a reliable sense of every possible scale degree before continuing. That is: if degrees 2 and 5, for instance, already have recognizable relationships to the root in your ear, that's enough to move on. If not, spend 15-30 minutes with the exercise below.

Exercise option A:

1. Put on a drone (a held note on an instrument, a "drone in D♭" YouTube video, or a sustained pad in a DAW) and play or sing the root. Then play or sing the note one whole step above it.
2. Go back to the root, and then go between the two notes a few times. That second note has a particular sound because of where it sits relative to the root. You're hearing scale degree 2.
3. Now try the same thing with the 5th. It sounds like something different but it's just as recognizable.

If the idea isn't coming through, try this whole exercise with a different root drone, or a few. If you hear what the 2 sounds like above a few distinct roots, you should be able to get a sense of the 2 as an abstraction.

Exercise option B: For a more structured method, I like tonedear.com's scale degree training tool. I used this in my college ear training class.

Once you have that basic sense of scale degrees, you're ready to move onto whole chords, which brings us to —

Prerequisite 3: roman numerals

Musicians need a way to talk about chords independent of key — that is, independent of which note is the root — so that the chords you learn for a song can be transferred to different keys.

Roman numeral notation is the most common way to do this. The roman numeral that's used is the scale degree that the root of the chord sits on. Since there are seven scale degrees, roman numerals go from I to VII.

Here's how this notation works:

1. Uppercase numerals for chords with a major 3rd (IV7), lowercase for minor 3rd (iv7).
2. Triads are just bare numerals (i, V, ♭VII, etc.); seventh chords have an extra part denoting which type of seventh chord it is (i7, V7, ♭VIImaj7, etc.).
3. A flat or sharp in front of a numeral (♭VII, ♭II) works the same way as it does for scale degrees: the chord's root is lowered or raised from where it falls in the major scale. The major scale being used as the reference is just a notation convention (more on that in a moment). It also has nothing to do with whether there are flats or sharps in the chord's note names: if E is your root, for example, the "♭VII" chord is a D major chord.

In the key of A major, Bm7 is the ii7 chord; in F major, Gm7 is the ii7 chord. Bm7 and Gm7 contain different pitches (obviously), but they play the same role in their respective major keys. The ii7 has a recognizable sound that transfers from key to key, and that sound is what the Roman numeral refers to, and what the lessons train you to hear. You're not trying to identify Bm7 or Gm7 by name; if you're just listening to a song on the radio, you might have no idea what key it's in, even if you're an experienced musician.

Some examples of chord symbols, just to give you a basic idea of the notation (don't worry about what each of these chords are right now):

• Minor seventh chords: i7, ii7, ♭vii7, ...
• Major seventh chords: Imaj7, IVmaj7, ♭IImaj7, ...
• Dominant seventh chords: IV7, V7, ♭VI7, ...
• Minor 7 flat 5 chords: ii7♭5, ♯iv7♭5, vi7♭5, ...
• Diminished 7th chords: i°7, ♭vi°7, ♭iii°7, ...

A remark on notation: treating Ionian's scale degrees as the "natural" ones is a convention — it's an origin point we all coordinate on so that there's one common system of notation (like how we coordinate on A440 tuning by default). It's not a claim that the major scale is the parent of other modes. Some music theory does treat it that way, but I don't, and How this is different from other music theory explains why.

Prerequisite 4: chord extensions (briefly)

In the lessons, we'll talk about a melody note's vertical relationship to the chord underneath it. For this purpose, every melody note falls into one of these three categories: a chord tone, a chord extension, or an avoid note. This applies even when the note is short-lived: a passing tone, a grace note, etc.

Chord tone means a note in the underlying seventh chord: the chord's root, 3rd, 5th, or 7th. If you continue that stack of 3rds, you get 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths, which we call chord extensions. You don't need the full taxonomy right now, just two things:

1. For these lessons, treat an extended chord as a variant of the seventh chord it extends. For example, Bm11 is Bm7 with added color; they have the same underlying chord identity.
2. Avoid notes (a jazz term) are notes that clash against the underlying chord and disrupt its character when you emphasize them, such as when you land on one at the end of a phrase or hold it for a full bar. "Avoid" is a bit of a misnomer — they're common as passing tones, where the clash can add some interesting tension or spice.

What is a mode?

Here's the definition we'll use on this site:

A mode is a harmonic environment: an ordered set of pitches, one of which is the root, along with everything those notes imply — which chords exist, which is the one that feels like "home", what kind of pull each chord has, what loops and moves are idiomatic, what notes melodies tend to emphasize, and which neighboring environments are available for "borrowing" more notes and chords.

Seven-note modes are the most common, and they form the basic framework we use throughout this site. Modes with more or fewer notes are best understood in terms of seven-note modes: combinations of them, omitting notes from them, or adding notes to them.

A mode is not merely a scale formula. If someone says "Mixolydian is the major scale with a ♭7", that's true, but it's just a way to spell Mixolydian. By itself, this doesn't give you any of Mixolydian's practical vocabulary.

So what does learning a mode as an environment entail?

What learning a mode is like

Two things to understand first:

Chords live inside modes. You'll never just hear a Cm7. Instead you'll hear the ii7 in B♭ Dorian, or the ♭vii7 of D Phrygian — and those chords sound like different things; they're different aural experiences, with different roles and different energies (even though they're both the same notes, C E♭ G B♭). This is why the lessons are organized by mode rather than chord type: the mode is the surrounding context that tells you where each chord fits in.

There are idiomatic chord-motion paths within each mode. By paths I mean: vamps, turnarounds, and various longer progressions. How many? Each mode has a different number. Mixolydian, for example, has about a dozen within the mode, and about a dozen more once you count borrowed chords (more on that below). There is always a long tail of unusual-but-interesting ways to move through a mode — popular music is extremely broad and people are very creative — but even those will make more sense once you're familiar with the common ways of moving.

You should gradually get a sense of each chord's individual character, through seeing where each shows up in the mode's common paths. The most basic kind of common path is the two-chord vamp. Most two-chord vamps involve the mode's root chord (the chord built on the mode's root note) and one of the other chords. By studying these vamps, you'll be studying each chord's relationship to the root chord, and what motion to and away from the root chord sounds like.

Then you'll study more complex progressions, such as longer vamps, turnarounds, and other idiomatic types of chord motion. These will teach you the motion tendencies embedded inside the mode, and the pulls among the mode's chords.

Knowing a mode means learning to hear and use all of this. A mode as a whole has a recognizable sound, but learning it happens at a more granular level. Hearing "this song is in Mixolydian!" is the first layer. The goal is to also hear which path through Mixolydian a passage is taking; and when you're writing music, to choose amongst those paths yourself.

In principle, you could build every chord in a mode, systematically explore different motions, and gradually discover many of these relationships yourself. You could also analyze a ton of songs to see the paths musicians repeatedly use. Many serious musicians essentially do this over time (by practicing and studying hundreds of them). But there's no reason every student should have to rediscover each mode from scratch. That's what the lessons on this site are for: you still have to practice, but the central vocabulary is mapped out for you.

The modes you'll mostly see

What modes are there, specifically, in common use?

Textbooks tend to give you two different answers to this question:

1. Two: Ionian (major scale) and Aeolian (minor scale)
   • (Often this answer is implied rather than said outright)
2. Seven: Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian, and Locrian (the rotations of the major scale)

Neither of these answers is sufficient to describe the actual harmony of popular music. Instead, here's what I find, across every song I've analyzed since 2024: there are six core modes that serve as the home environments for the large majority of popular music. Here they are, spelled relative to the major scale and minor scale:

You'll notice I'm not saying what each mode sounds like. In the lessons, I do occasionally throw out loose pointers ("Dorian is a brighter, groovier minor"), and these are fine as fuzzy quick approximations. But you've probably heard the major scale called "happy" — does "happy" describe every song ever written in Ionian? Not even close. The goal is to get to know each mode's sound directly, in your ear, through many different harmonic paths.

Notice that this list is not the seven rotations of the major scale. Lydian and Locrian are excluded here; they're both excluded because Lydian almost always shows up as a borrowed color over an Ionian base (it's really bright) and Locrian mostly as a borrowed color over a Phrygian base (it's really dark, think industrial and metal). See the modal interchange section below for how borrowing works.

In addition, Phrygian Dominant is a core environment, and it isn't a rotation of the major scale at all. It has a reputation as an "exotic" scale — and that reputation exists because it's arguably the single most common mode across a lot of Eastern European and Middle Eastern music traditions — but it's also all over metal, hip-hop, surf rock, and pop (see the Phrygian Dominant lessons).

Beyond the core six, there's a middle tier of twenty or so modes you'll hear as borrowed colors and occasional home bases, and a long tail beyond that of rarer colors. The lessons will introduce those to the degree that they earn a spot. What does "borrowed colors" mean? That's what the next section covers (and it's what this site is named for).

What modal interchange means

Modal interchange is when a song borrows chords and notes from other parallel modes — that is, modes with the same root note. For example, a song in C Mixolydian will often grab a ♭III chord (E♭) from C Dorian in order to introduce some drive.

Conceptually, each mode has a handful of modes that are direct neighbors, which means you get there by raising or lowering one scale degree by a half step. For example:

• C Mixolydian → change 3 to ♭3 → C Dorian
• C Mixolydian → change 4 to ♯4 → C Lydian Dominant
• C Mixolydian → change ♭7 to 7 → C Ionian (aka C major)

And look at the list of modes in the previous section: Dorian and Aeolian have one note different between them (the 6th scale degree), so they're neighbors. Aeolian and Phrygian differ by the 2nd scale degree, so they're neighbors.

So, at the end of each mode's lesson module, we study the common paths from that mode that include borrowed chords. Borrowed chords are by definition not part of the mode in a strict sense (they use notes outside it) but in a practical sense, I consider borrowed chords as part of a mode's patterns, the common ones at least.

Songs also borrow from modes that are farther away (more notes changed), but most borrowing is from direct neighbors, and the far borrows make more sense when you understand the near ones.

How to use a mode lesson

The lessons are organized by mode, and within a mode's lesson module, there will be a lesson on each common harmonic move within that mode (I'll use the word moves to refer to vamps, turnarounds, and other short recurring progressions). Most of these moves will be vamps so I'll use the term vamp here.

1. Pull your instrument out (or open your DAW). The lessons are practice and listening material, with some supplementary reading attached.
2. Play the vamp yourself first. Loop it for a while in a comfortable key. Get it under your fingers and into your ears.
3. Then: read what to listen for. There might be some variations, key melody notes, etc. that I'll flag.
4. Go through the song examples. These will be timestamped clips from recordings. Hearing the move in the wild in different contexts should give you a better handle on what kind of energy it builds.
5. Spend about fifteen minutes on each lesson. Or more if you'd like. Repetition is the engine behind learning most things in music, and that's true here too: looping a vamp and improvising over it for a while is the best way to get it into your ear.

You're trying to build a loop where you play a vamp, start to recognize it by name (e.g. "the Dorian i7–IV7 vamp"), and then hear it in songs you know. Once you build that loop for a given vamp, here's what I'm hoping: your ear knows that vamp for the rest of your musical career, and you'll start noticing it in the songs you hear and play. The same strategy works for turnarounds (every turnaround is also a valid vamp and can be looped like a vamp).

If you really like a vamp and want to go one step further, try writing a verse or chorus over the vamp.

FAQ

How much musical experience do I need? Not very much! If you can play two chords in a loop — on any instrument, at any tempo, or sequence them into a DAW — you have enough technique to do the lessons. You'll probably get more out of them if you have some sort of regular music practice, but you don't need serious playing skills or theory knowledge.

How long does the whole thing take? As I write this, the lessons that are published are roughly ten hours of material, and when they're all finished I expect it to be more like thirty hours. They only depend on each other loosely, so you can go in order or you can click around.

I play a single-note instrument (horn, voice, bass). Can this work for me? Yes! Same modes and vamps, you just outline them in time (arpeggios, scale runs) instead of stacks. You can record the vamps into a looper (or make / find a backing track) and play lines over them.

Do I need perfect pitch? No. This whole curriculum is about training relative pitch — scale degrees and harmonic moves built on them. You'll never need to hear "that's a G"; instead you'll want to hear "that's the 4th".

Which mode should I start with? My pick is Dorian, and in particular I'd recommend starting with the Dorian i7–IV7 vamp. That vamp is extremely common, and it's got a lot of accessible musical richness with low conceptual overhead. After you're done with this, explore the other vamps in Dorian; this mode has quite a few distinctive vamps that illustrate its sound, and playing these is largely how musicians actually use the mode. If you're not familiar with Dorian, you'll be surprised how many songs you know use it.

Will analyzing music this way ruin the magic? It should change how you hear: once you've ear-trained on modes, vamps, and turnarounds, you can't really un-hear them. But what you're learning is structural: what paths through harmonic space are available, and what they each sound like. You're not learning what specific harmonic sequences are supposed to mean or make you feel. Your subjective experience is still your own. If anything, you should be able to experience music at a higher resolution. Learning to hear these structures more clearly can also make your own taste more legible: you may start noticing deeper patterns in what kinds of harmonic movement, ambiguity, tension, color, and contrast you respond to.

Let me be even more direct here: I think there's a very common fear that learning music theory will make you realize your favorite music is too simple, bad, or incorrect in some way. And that is not at all how this works. Simple chord progressions are great. What you're learning is to hear more clearly what music is doing, not to judge it by how complicated or sophisticated it is.