A Musical Aside: The Fascinating Colours of Harmony | Modes and How to Utilise Them to Create Harmonic Interest

A complete aside indeed. What the heck does this have to do with pony fanfiction? Should I even post this here? But why the heck not? There are music lovers everywhere. So far as interests go, it's pretty ubiquitous – unlike our particular object of adoration on this site. So what the heck, as I said. This may well be of interest to a whole bunch of you, and it might mean nothing to a whole other. We'll go with it. I find it fascinating, at any rate. And useful too, as it's the sort of helpful stuff I just love to stumble across. I'm really bigging this up, aren't I?

Let's cut to the chase. There's a whole lot of fantastic music being composed by highly talented, creative people who put their soul into every bar, even if they or others don't think that they do. You will not hear me denigrate any of it. There's just a certain comment I seem to make to myself pretty often: I'm... not really feeling the harmony here.

Because there's only so many times you can hear the secondary dominant of chord vi in, say, C major (anime openings are obsessed with this). If you want to hear how that sounds in the real world, it's an E major chord that'll usually lead you to an A minor chord, and then you do another progression or two that'll get you back home to a C major chord. Try it on any instrument, if you have one. See if you recognise the sound.

And it's something that is actually, the more I think about it, pretty upsetting to me personally – because I know how good these guys are. I can hear how sick they are from their music. Fantastic textures, mind-rippling sounds, infective beats. And I think to myself, 'Wow, this could be one of the greatest things I've heard if... if only they had something harmonically interesting.' And I hate that I think that sometimes because who even cares? It's obvious the music does the job for so many people. Clearly, it's a popular sound that's getting attention. And that's great.

But what if YOU want to add that tasty spin to your music? What if YOU are sick of trying to find chord progressions online because nothing you're coming up with is sounding right for you at the moment? And that's what I'm going to try and cover here, in the simplest possible terms. I really, really want to make this as easy to understand as possible because that's how it's going to help more people. It could straight up help people who want to do something beyond the four chords they've learned on guitar INSTANTLY. All that hard-working, creative people need are the tools for the job, and boom, you're off.

So as I said in the title. Modes. And how you can use them creatively and individually, without worrying about what other people are doing, to create harmonic interest. And melodic interest, for that matter. I might add that here or discuss it in a different blog post, one about scales.

But what the hell are 'modes'? What the hell, for that matter, is harmony? Great questions that you should never fear to ask. If you don't know, you don't know! No shame!

Harmony: Anything that's not one note on its own. 2 notes. 3 notes. 4, 5, 6, blah, blah, blah. That's it, really. No need to overthink it.

Modes: A bunch of scales that have been around for a while. That's it. No need to overthink it. And I'll tell you how to construct all of the 'ecclesiastical modes' (who cares about the smart-sounding name). Because with only seven scales, you can change the game FOREVER in terms of harmony. You will be able to make conscious choices instead of relying purely on instinct, on what sounds good.

So now that we know what harmony is, let's expand on our knowledge of modes by naming the seven I mentioned. They have odd, scary names that put a lot of people off instantly. There are talented musicians attending prestigious colleges/universities who don't want to have anything to do with them. I've met at least one.

Here they are. Brace yourself.

1. Ionian
2. Dorian
3. Phrygian
4. Lydian
5. Mixolydian
6. Aeolian
7. Locrian

Ugh. What the hell is the point? Stupid modes. Here's the easier way to understand them. The easiest way. You know a piano has a repeating pattern of white keys and black keys? Starting on C, we move on to D, then E, F, G, A, B and then it's back to C again, an octave (just a music term; ignore it if you don't care) higher – that's the white keys. And the five black keys are... oh, who even cares, you know they're there. And they don't matter for the purposes of this demonstration.

What's Ionian? If you start on C and play through all the white notes until you hit the next C, you've just played Ionian! And if it sounds familiar, it is! You've just played what's pretty much always referred to as the major scale. You played the C major scale, or C Ionian.

Do the same from D to the next D. All the white notes. Boom. That was Dorian.

You guessed it. The same from E to the next E: E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E. Phrygian.

Keep doing it, and you'll get:

1. Ionian: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C
2. Dorian: D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D
3. Phrygian: E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E
4. Lydian: F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F
5. Mixolydian: G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G
6. Aeolian: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A
7. Locrian: B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B

So what, I hear you ask? Didn't I just play the same thing, the exact same thing, over and over? Just starting on a different note? And the answer is yes. And that's the beauty of tonal music: when you have a key centre, a tonic, a harmonic home to return to, the exact same thing in a different order is no longer the exact same thing.

Just ignore those stupid terms in the last sentence because they're not important. Now the thing is each of these modes isn't just C through the notes up to C, or G through the notes up to G. They're actually ratios of intervals, ratios of gaps between notes. And once you know the ratio for a specific scale, you can apply it to every note there is. If you start on, let's say, A flat (Ab), and you want to construct the Lydian mode, you just have to get the ratio right. Here's how we do that.

The smallest gap we work with between notes on a piano/guitar/whatever instrument (and the vast majority of music, which isn't microtonal) is a semitone. That's the smallest step you can make from one note onto another. C to C# is a semitone. E to F is also a semitone. The other important gap we're going to need for these ratios is a tone. A tone is just the gap when you move up by two semitones, like C to D. Or F to G. A tone is two semitones. A semitone is half a tone. Let's draw up the ratios for each mode. Semitones are 'S' and tones are 'T'.

1. Ionian: T, T, S, T, T, T, S
2. Dorian: T, S, T, T, T, S, T
3. Phrygian: S, T, T, T, S, T, T
4. Lydian: T, T, T, S, T, T, S
5. Mixolydian: T, T, S, T, T, S, T
6. Aeolian: T, S, T, T, S, T, T
7. Locrian: S, T, T, S, T, T, T

And that's it. You can now construct each of these modes starting on whichever note you please. Let's go back to that Ab example and walk through it. We want to get Lydian. Ab is our first note. Now let's go up according to the ratio. Our next note is a tone up from Ab: it's Bb. Next one is a tone up (or two semitones!) from Bb, which is C. Next one's another tone up: D. And so on. And we get this:

Ab, Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab

And that right there is Ab Lydian.

LET'S STOP THERE TO CATCH OUR BREATH. Are you lost? You may well be if you haven't encountered any of this stuff before but were nonetheless interested. DON'T PANIC. If it's unclear no matter how much you think about it, shoot me a message here on Fimfiction and I'll try my best to make it clear or point you to something, maybe a video or an article, that could help.

So what's this all in aid of? None of this is teaching me how to make harmony that's interesting! Ah, but it will! I'm yet to play my master hand! This is just the knowledge you'll need to understand that hand, which is coming. (And it's good revision if you know all of this stuff already.)

So. How does this help us? Well, let's first get into defining the harmonic 'feel' of each of these, believe it or not, highly familiar scales before unlocking the secret to utilising them effectively.

Lydian is a bright-sounding scale thanks to its 'fourth', the fourth note in the scale. It's an 'augmented fourth', a 'sharp fourth' or a 'tritone'. And there are other ways to describe it too (Lydian fourth, funnily enough, being one of them).

Let's compare that to Locrian. Very dark in comparison. This is partly due to its 'fifth', the fifth note in the Locrian scale. It's a 'diminished fifth', a 'flattened fifth' or... a 'tritone'. This is annoying because a tritone is the same thing as a sharp 4/diminished 5. It's all so horribly confusing. But ignore that. The basic takeaway from this is not why but that it sounds a particular way. Locrian is a dark, unsettling scale. Lydian is a bright, evocative scale.

Now you may not feel that way! And that's fine! Maybe you hate Lydian and think it's horrible. Maybe you think Locrian is the most beautiful scale you've ever heard, so bright and light and positive! Doesn't matter. All that matters is that you know they are DIFFERENT.

Yes. Despite being the same thing in one way (we demonstrated this using the white notes), when you make a specific note a home note, a tonic, you change how we perceive EVERYTHING. You see now about that tritone thing? It's a BRIGHT note when we're in Lydian because our TONIC is forcing our ear to hear it like that! It's a DARK note when we're in Locrian because our TONIC is forcing our ear to hear it like that!

THAT'S ENOUGH CAPS. Point is, once again, that they sound different. And you can arrange each of these modes in a hierarchy of difference, which I will now do. I'm calling it the 'bright-dark' hierarchy. The scales closest to the top of the list are bright, the topmost being the brightest; and the scales closest to the bottom of the list are dark, the bottommost being the darkest.

Lydian (major)
Ionian (major)
Mixolydian (major)
Dorian (minor)
Aeolian (minor)
Phrygian (minor)
Locrian (minor)

You'll notice I've added major/minor beside their names. And that comes from what kind of scale they are, which is determined by the 'third', the third note in each of these scales. A third can be either 'major' or 'minor'. But that, again, doesn't really matter. What's the main point again? That each of these modes are harmonically different.

Now, at long last, we shall find out how to utilise these differences.

If Lydian is the brightest, then all of its notes are the 'bright notes'. Right?

If Locrian is the darkest, then all of its notes are the 'dark notes'. Right?

Do you see what's happening? See what's forming in your mind? Did we just create a musical colour palette? I think we did.

So, let's experiment with our new palette. Let's use the key of C. Let's make C our home note, our tonic. If none of this made any sense to you, at least this might be a very useful example to get you to start using your colours.

Whenever you play a C chord, followed by an F chord, followed by a G chord... what do you notice? It's. All. The. Same. Colour. Every single note in these chords... belongs to C Ionian! That's all! Not a single harmonic shade beyond 'pretty bright', 'pretty bright', 'pretty bright'. Over and over and over again. How. Tedious. Now there's so, so, SO much you can do with one colour, do not get me wrong. But it does get boring. Eventually it does. And sometimes you just want something else. How can you do that? Let's use the palette.

We know C is our tonic. So that means I can use ANY NOTE I WANT to create colour. Seriously. First rule: everything harmonises with everything. It's going to be bright, or dark, or a combo of both. It all works though, contrary to the rules of certain systems, where it doesn't work. But this is a harmonic system of its own, and the rule here is it ALL works.

Let's make something darker. What's dark? Well, I know straight up that Locrian notes are the darkest, so let's nick one of them. I'm playing a C chord, which is C, E and G. Let's spice it up with a Locrian note. We'll need to construct the Locrian mode starting from C and ending on C. Let's check the ratios and do it. And you get:

C, Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C

Nice. So, we're swinging in C Ionian (playing a chord with the notes C, E and G) and we want something darker to interrupt our harmony. Let's throw in a note that isn't already in the scale. So we don't want another C or another F. Let's throw in a Bb. And let's also add an Eb. And now we're playing this chord: C, E, G, Bb, Eb. Straight away we're darkening. We're no longer sitting in C Ionian because we're adding notes that don't belong. See all the other modes? The quickest way to change up a sound is to change the scale you're using to one of them, and that way the chords change too. But the easiest way to do it is to... completely ignore all the modes except for Lydian and Locrian.

WHAT?!?!? What the hell was the point of all that waffle then? Well, you need to understand to be able to apply. My great fear at this point is that I've lost a lot of you despite trying my best to make it simple. That's what's so annoying about knowing something well. You forgot how it's like not to know it, and that impacts how you talk about it. And people just end up giving in to their weariness.

Back to Locrian and Lydian. This is the long and short of it. If you want to darken your colour, use more notes that belong to Locrian and use fewer notes that belong to Lydian. If you want to lighten your colour, use more notes that belong to Lydian and use fewer notes that belong to Locrian. This is not an all or nothing. It's a very delicate gradient scale that you can fine tune and make ambiguous or blatant.

As an example, I'll use a chord progression I made for a piano piece of mine using this technique.

My first chord (the notes are given in the order they are played): C, G, B, E, B
2nd chord: C, F#, A, D, A
3rd chord: C, F, A, D
4th chord: C, G, A, E

Just like that we have subtly moved through a variety of colours whilst playing EXACTLY THE SAME THING in the bass for each chord: C.

In the first chord, we're playing Lydian notes. Each of those feature in Lydian (and in other bright modes). But it's not so bright because we don't have the Lydian fourth – yet.

See the next chord? You'll notice that F# is the Lydian 4th in the context of C. And instantly, I've brightened things up even more. It's a note that's distinct to Lydian, whereas the notes in the previous chord all belong to Ionian too. A and D are both bright notes, and with the Lydian 4th, they sound even brighter.

Now chord three. Why does it darken? Because I flatten the Lydian 4th, reducing it to an F. F is a Locrian note. But the other notes atop C – A and D – are both Lydian notes. So we're still bright... but not so much anymore. We've darkened again. We started off pretty bright, brightened, then darkened. And all by adding and taking away a couple of notes.

Chord four is back to the beginning, but instead of having the B, I use the A. The B is a bright note. The A is also a bright note, but it's got a different sort of brightness. And that's what it's all about. Using your ear as before, but making conscious choices while you do.

And this is just a simple example. You can get crazy-detailed with the notes and the shades, and it becomes a harmonic orgy. But look how easy it is to play around with these scales to create harmonic interest. You just have to mess around while using your head. And that way you can escape the tedious repetitions of the same damn colour again and again and again.

Anyway. I think I've lost steam now and the trail of thought. But I hope this is comprehensible. It's horribly confusing, the theory of music. It's just... horribly confusing. And then one day, you just get it. It dawns on you, and it's glorious.

But here you are. How to use modes to create harmonic interest. Please, someone, tell me I helped them. I really hope I did.

Comments

[Super Trampoline]

I’m going to sleep right now because I have to be up at 4:30 AM but I look forward to reading this soon!

[Acologic]

Some notes that I'll stick here.

An even easier (and arguably more effective) way to work with this is to abandon your caring about what the tonic is and to treat your bass note as the 'tonic' point of reference. This frees you completely in terms of creating your own chord progressions. If you want the bass to move from, say, Bb up to C, and you want a dark chord built on the Bb and a light chord built on the C, just do that using the dark/bright notes covered above. Ignore scale degree altogether when it comes to chord progressions and concentrate instead on voice leading, moving each note in your chords smoothly to another. I work this way when I'm really trying to get harmonically spicy. It's yielded some really tasty things – and they don't sound trite as certain jazz progressions (which do indeed change colour) do.

Point is there are a lot of conventional chord progressions that do change colour, and that's great – but they're nonetheless ubiquitous and you might be fed up with them. Examples include the case of the secondary dominant I covered in the third paragraph. Another example would be the famous 'Ab, Bb, C' sound, where you build major triads on each of these notes and resolve on C. But I would recommend you avoid these if you're trying to be harmonically distinct and different*. There is another side to this approach that I mentioned in relation to melody. I've decided I will cover this, as it's something utilised by the grand master of harmony that is Debussy and pervades much of his work.

I'll add as well about the chord names that are noticeably absent from here. And that's because they're not important to the process. You don't need to know what it's called; you just need to know what it consists of and how you can make/unmake it. If you want to know what they're called, there are some videos on YouTube about chord naming, but the helpful ones can be really hard to find. If I find one, I'll link it on this thread.

If you have any questions, just stick them in this thread or message me. I'll be happy to answer.

*You can actually use this motion on the bass and, using your colour palette, recolour the harmony! So you will still have that very solid ascending resolution to C in the bass – but your colours are different. A great method to utilise a universally known chord progression in a novel way.