In table 4, below, I have turned letters into numbers. This will enable you to take any major scale, flatten the appropriate notes and convert the scale to a mode.

Table 5 (below) shows what happens when 1 is substituted for the note C.

Here is how the above table (5) looks in notation form.

Each of the modes in the above table derives from a major scale (see Table 6).

Applications

One obvious application of modes is when improvising to modal jazz tunes.

 

Here are three well-known examples of jazz compositions that are modal and therefore have no key signature.

• So What, by Miles Davis, is solely based on two modes: D Dorian and E^b Dorian.

• Impressions, by John Coltrane, follows the same format as So What.

• Another Miles Davis tune, Milestones, is based on G Dorian and A Aeolian.

There are also occasions when you might use modes in non-modal music.

• Use the Mixolydian mode when a 7^th chord is repeated for a number of bars

• Use the Dorian mode when a minor 7 chord is repeated for a number of bars.

A word of warning Although there is a scale or mode to fit every chord, building a solo based purely on a series of scales and modes will produce a mechanical and dull result. We will shortly be dealing with another approach to improvisation, based on what is known as key centres.

A key centre is a section of music in one key that groups together a number of chords relating to that key.

So, in short, there are more strategies than only soloing over the scale specific to each chord, and the use of key centres can often produce more cohesion in your solos. But more of this later.

For now, let’s return to the practical application of modes.