Do you remember the >Naturals of Singerpore ? You know, the famous happy bunch who toured the world, performing their annual play “Solfege” with grand success at various venues? And then they ran into this theatre called the Dorian Mode, a place for “pleasant sadness”, where they surprisingly didn’t get that standing ovation? Well, the reason for that mysterious failure was because of this thing called the Mode.
Cheer Up! Imagine that you’re kind of sad because you just lost your favourite pair of true-bass headphones, and your friend puts on VH1 and starts playing Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass”? You’d be thinking, turn that off, can’t you see I’m grieving ! See, when melody clashes with mood, it jars. And that’s why the pensive audience at the Dorian Mode theatre didn’t enjoy the Naturals’ happy sound.
The Mode is basically a specific bunch of musical notes that form a scale. And if you hear a melody or tune that uses these specific notes, you get into a unique mood. This is the really cool thing about Modal music. Just by using a certain set of pitches, you can produce an emotional atmosphere! Indian classical raaga s use this same effect. But these use a different type of classification called Melody Type, which generate moods based on unique patterns and sequences and not just musical intervals or pitches.
Now, how do you produce a Mode? Easy. Just take the C-major scale on your piano. You have C, D, E, F, G, A and B, right? Now, instead of starting from C, fix your Tonic at, say, D. Now, play all the same notes from D to D.
Did you feel the mood change? You just played the contemplative Dorian Mode. If someone in Chennai, who listens to Carnatic music, asks you what you played, wink and tell them it was Kharaharapriya. Michael Jackson's ‘Earth Song’ is a cool example of the Dorian.
Shift your Tonic to all the above notes and check out the effect. Tonicise E, and you’d get the regal sound of the Phrygian Mode (which is Hanumatodi in Carnatic music). A song worth listening to in this Mode is Bjork’s ‘Joga’.
Make F your Tonic, and you have the carefree joyfulness of the Lydian Mode (Kalyani). There is this awesome cartoon called The Simpsons whose theme song was in the Lydian.
Start from G, you can douse yourself in Mixolydian Mode (Harikambhoji). You will get the Mixolydian feeling of yearning in Lorde’s ‘Royals’.
Play an octave of natural notes starting from A, you’d get the energising Aeolian Mode (Natabhairavi).Heard Emimem’s anthem, “Lose Yourself”?
The Ancient Greeks gave us the first known Modes. Once Pythagoras discovered the octave, using the Circle of Fifths, they split the 8 notes into two halves — the upper and lower Tetrachords. The Church also used Modes big time (they were monophonic, remember? They had to play around with melodic variations in order to have fun). Now, with a little bit of mix-and-match, they got varieties of melodic groups. Like, mix the lower tetrachord of the Ionian with the upper T of the Dorian, and you get what? The Mixolydian.
So, check this. The best way to create new stuff...is.... to mix old stuff together in new and unique ways!
