Ricardo -> RE: Modes (Apr. 13 2005 18:56:53)
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Miguel, you show an understanding of relative key signatures which is very good. Even still what Jon said is right. You have ask what is the context, the big picture. Alegrias in E, is simply that. Moving to A major chord, keeping the same notes (4#s), is just analyzed as the IV chord (E being I). But you are correct that A lydian would seem to have the same notes, or key signature. In Jazz you learn how to play on each chord, so that if you want you could look at E, A, B as a progression that uses scales E Ionian, A lyd., B mixo. Of course if you did this, many would argue "why? You are just playing E major over I,IV and V?". The reason you can see it both ways is in Jazz, you will later learn how to change your scales, or change key on each chord, based on the concept you understand modes as separate enitities from a parent scale. E lydian, A lydian Dominant, B phrygian dominant. Adding 7ths, 9ths etc (extenstions) will narrow your options for a type of scale, but still the idea is to NOT find a common denominator to relate as many chords as possible. This is so you can play on each chord of a chart while reading it, w/ out worrying about the "key". Anyway, back to Alegrias. Well, knowing your relative key sig and related modes can help you when composing or analizing an Alegrias in E. You may find a section that uses the tonality of C# minor. That would be a "relative minor" change or modulation. If you were to extract just that section from the whole piece, it would be easy to argue that music was actually "in C# minor". So if you could extract a section on the A chord only, you could argue that just that bit was "A lydian", but you see there is the big context of E major. You may also hear Alegrias move to G# phrygian tonality (like Minera). This is also a relative mode modulation. How long you stay in a tonality really makes a difference. Rondena is in C# phrygian ultimately, but because of the tunning and scale, it makes a lot of good use of D lydian type themes. You can't say the piece as a whole is in "D lydian", but the way that note rings under alot of falsettas, like a drone, gives the flavor of "lydian" a lot of the time. So that is understanding how the modes are "relative" or share a key sig. What about the other why I described? Alegrias in E, often moves to E minor or E phrygian, which is a Parallel Key change. You can see from my list above how closely related E Ionian is to E Aeolian (3 notes flat) and E phyrgian (4 notes flat). This is another characteristic of Spanish music and flamenco, changing a certain note (or a couple) to introduce a new modal flavor, over the same tonic. Keep in mind that this is easier to achieve if you use a dominant chord under the melody (B7 or B9 for E major, B(b9) for E minor, F major7 #11 for E phrygian). You can hear some modern composers (like Manolo Sanlucar for example), using other parallel modes like Mixolydian. Ricardo
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