Understanding Modes from the Tonal & Chromatic Perspectives

The concept of modes can seem challenging, but when you thoroughly understand it you are free to explore all the different possible sounds that scales can make.

By visualizing the notes of a scale around a circle, you can easily see what it means for one scale to be the “mode” of another. All you need to do is turn the circle and place a different note wherever the root note was before. With all the same notes, you have a different sound because you are starting and ending at a different place in the pattern of notes.

The tonal perspective is how I refer to looking at a single key and playing all the notes in that key from each different starting note. The chromatic perspective is how I refer to taking the intervals of a mode outside of the context of it’s parent key, and comparing the different modes from a static root note. The two perspectives combined are important in order to understand and be able to use the modes effectively.