As usual, I've been thinking a lot about modes, and how to use them over a given chord.
One thing that's been evolving in my playing for quite some time; I have had countless guitar teachers tell me that switching modes over chords is a mistake. I've never understood it; if you stick entirely to a key center, you're going to miss out on a number of harmonic opportunities in any piece where all the chords aren't diatonic to a given key, and even if they are, it'll prevent you from taking interesting turns in your phrasing, be it composed or improvised (i.e., playing the octatonic scale built off the third of a dominant seven chord...I mean, there is a diminished triad in a dom7 chord, why not make it shine?). In a piece that gets a little more interesting, sticking to a key center often boils you down to pentatonics with an occasional passing tone, and that's where I've seen many guitarists stay for the long term.
Nothing wrong with it, but me, I'm going to try and work with the underlying harmony as much as possible. Tones that are common to chords are of course important, for voice leading and such, but otherwise, I want as many colors in my improvisational palette as possible at any given time.
The first thing you realize when you go this way; you need to match chords to scales and modes. The more evolved version of this is, knowing where all the chord tones, and extensions, are, in a given mode as well. And then add ear and taste, so that you're not just burning through modes over chords all the time, and you've set yourself up with some work, to say the least.
To get it rolling though, you learn things like, "Well, over a minor 7 chord, at a fundamental level, I can use Aeolian (or Dorian, we'll start with Aeolian). Mind the 6th degree as it can destabilize the underlying harmony."
So, you know your minor 7 bar chord, fifth fret, all six strings. As it rings out, you play A Aeolian from the low E string root (fifth fret) to the high E string root (fifth fret again). Sounds great. Aeolian and minor 7. Easy. Fifth fret...fifth fret. Same registers, you know how your modes connect. Pat Martino eat my dust.
Enter drop 2, drop 3, open, quartal, and who knows what else, chords. Now you're playing chords all over the neck, and you're not even into the inversions yet. An A minor 7 chord, just root position drop 2 chords, can have the roots on three different strings, which puts them in three different parts of the neck (six if you count the octave). No more fifth fret...fifth fret.
Hmm...a little thought shows you that, hey I can still use the Aeolian form starting at the chord root, no matter where it is. Just remember how the B string tuning effects the pattern. Problem is, now you don't have the perspective of the whole neck, just a fragment of a pattern. It's a great step, and a necessary one, but losing site of the whole neck is frustrating, and frequently you find yourself jumping back to your familiar position, or locking into a key center again, or worse, just burning through some approximation to land on the tonic.
To that end, I decided to find out where, exactly, these pattern fragments fit into the standard vertical modes we all know. For example, say you're playing A minor 7 as a drop 2 chord, which means you have a 1,5,7,3 degree stack starting on the seventh fret of the D string. What's the entire vertical pattern? It's not going to be Aeolian. Yes, the fragment starting from the seventh fret on the D string will be. But what about the A and E strings, and what full horizontal mode patterns connect to the left and right?
Answer: The full horizontal pattern the Aeolian fragment is in, is Locrian, starting on the second degree of A Aeolian (so B). If you know your modes, that means that Aeolian is to the left, Ionian is to the right. Suddenly that little drop 2 chord is sitting in a very large and familiar area for improvisation.
What if you play the A minor 7, drop 2, root on the A string? Answer: Phrygian. Which again, sets you up for Dorian to the left, Lydian to the right.
Where do I get this? I mapped it all out on paper. I created a reasonably high quality version of the first one; drop 2 chords, root position, major7, dominant7, minor7, min7b5, dim7. For each, I show the chord form, then below it, where it plugs into the overall horizontal pattern, what mode that is, and what all the degrees are (with the chord degrees differentiated).
There's a lot of ways I can take this; instead of assuming Aeolian for minor chords, use Dorian (probably my next one). Instead of assuming Ionian for major chords, assume Lydian (though either of these become pretty obvious from looking at this chart, raise the sixth for dorian, raise the fourth for lydian). Then, do the inversions. Then, do the Drop 3s.
Do I plan on memorizing all this? Errr....no. The idea is really to give me starting points and clues, which over time, I'll internalize into an ever-expanding framework. But, writing it all down and adding it to the practice regimen has already proven valuable to me. I'm thinking about modes over chords, and scale degrees. Jazzy.
Learned some pretty interesting things too...did you know that Melodic Minor seems to be a straightforward scale to play over minor7(b5) chords?
Note 1: regarding Melodic Minor, I know there are names for all the modes. They seem to change depending on what you read or who you talk to, with the possible exception of Aeolian Dominant. To that end, for my personal sanity, I just think of Melodic Minor as a b3 version of the standard Ionian mode, and refer to the subsequent modes as "Melodic Minor Ionian" (root mode), "Melodic Minor Dorian" (second mode), etc.
Note 2: For the diminished 7 chords, you'll see two "7" indicators, one filled with grey. Because the symmetrical scales (whole/half and half/whole) have 8 notes (a bb7, which is a chord tone, and a 7), I differentiate the two by color. The grey one is the "extra" note.
The Drop 2 Chord Mode Map, Root Positions, can be found at:
http://www.tcoz.com/fretboardframework/Drop2ChordModeMap_RootPositions.pdf
As always, thanks for visiting.
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