Modal Harmony vid series

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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You're just shifting the goal posts. I never said the video was about the history of modes or where they came from. The topic is modal harmony and how it is used. Of course the information comes from America, because I'm American and most of the books I read are in English and from America. There is plenty of musical justification, you just don't seem to know it or like it. What I showed is how many people use harmony and how it is generally taught. You seem to think all music is classical. It's not. You seem to think you know everything about music theory. You obviously don't. Search modal harmony on the web and see if anything comes up. I didn't just make this stuff up. It's taught many places. Music theory isn't physics, it is descriptive not prescriptive. I'm showing people how other have created music and the theory behind it. My video isn't about Messiaen or how he did things. He isn't the first or last word about modes. Modal harmony is used in all sorts of music and I've given numerous example of it. You still don't understand the difference between harmony and tonality.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuolhPePpiA

This is a mode. This is how people use it, in their context.
Play fair and square!

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Chandlerhimself wrote:You're just shifting the goal posts. I never said the video was about the history of modes or where they came from. The topic is modal harmony and how it is used.
You can't talk about something if you don't know what is and where it come from. And I insist - there is no such thing as modal harmony. What you are using is plain and old TONAL harmony. You simply don't get it. It's a common widespread error that comes from jazz, and from bad informed people with lack of knowledge on the subject.
Chandlerhimself wrote: Of course the information comes from America, because I'm American and most of the books I read are in English and from America.
Problem is modes weren't born in America, and americans in general know nothing about them. There is no practice, there is no tradition, there simply are no sources.
Chandlerhimself wrote: There is plenty of musical justification, you just don't seem to know it or like it. What I showed is how many people use harmony and how it is generally taught. You seem to think all music is classical. It's not. You seem to think you know everything about music theory. You obviously don't. Search modal harmony on the web and see if anything comes up.
I don't think all music is classical. Actually, modal music isn't classical music (many of it is ethnic or popular), and modes were used in what you call "classical music" only during the middle-ages and renaissance period, and some XX century composers picked them but in a different way. What I think is that jazz (with few exceptions) has nothing modal in it. Pop/rock even less. Therefore, your "modes" aren't modes at all. I am aware there are many people making the same mistake of you, but the fact there are many doesn't mean you aren't wrong. What's sad is that you aren't aware nor do even care. Again - playing from E to E doesn't mean you are in the "phrygian" mode. It's much more probable that you are in A minor.
Chandlerhimself wrote: I didn't just make this stuff up. It's taught many places. Music theory isn't physics, it is descriptive not prescriptive. I'm showing people how other have created music and the theory behind it. My video isn't about Messiaen or how he did things. He isn't the first or last word about modes. Modal harmony is used in all sorts of music and I've given numerous example of it. You still don't understand the difference between harmony and tonality.
I'm not saying you invented that stuff. You are simply spreading the error, and that's what I pointed. Your video is about harmony. The problem is that you are calling up things you know nothing about (modes). I understand it perfectly. It's you who don't understand (actually know nothing) about modes, except what "jazz theory" says about them (which is plainly wrong), and mixing concepts. I could give you lots of examples of real modal melodies that came to us through the middle-ages and renaissance, and how they have been treated/harmonized, and how that is not modal harmony but plain harmony. But I suspect I would be wasting my time. The problem is I'm aware of many styles of music (not just "classical") that spread more than 800 years, while you are stuck in a particular genre spreading little more than 50 years. In your video, you call up some song writers that supposedly wrote in this mode or that mode. Well, for the major part, they didn't. They may have used some melodic passages that may resemble a mode, but the whole is as tonal as anything else. Like I said, to have a mode you can't just play from D to D, or from E to E. Yes, there are some works from Miles Davis that may be considered modal, but in those he almost didn't use harmony (probably because he felt that, if he used harmony, he would destroy the melodic atmosphere created by the mode). Don't take my words on it - read what is in the Wikipedia: "Slow-moving harmonic rhythm, where single chords may last four to sixteen or more measures; Pedal points and drones; Absent or suppressed standard functional chord progressions; ..."
Fernando (FMR)

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You seem to be under the impression that music theory is like physics. Music theory is used to describe what people have done and give people a way to understand it and duplicate it. Of course different music genres have different rules, which is why they sound different. I shouldn't have to explain this, but you seem to think that the rules of classical music or Renaissance music apply to pop,jazz, blues, rock, etc. Of course they don't.

Read what is says on wikipedia ""Slow-moving harmonic rhythm, where single chords may last four to sixteen or more measures; Pedal points and drones; Absent or suppressed standard functional chord progressions; ...". It doesn't use standard functional chord progressions because it's not standard functional harmony. It's modal harmony. It's still harmony.

"In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches (tones, notes), or chords.[1] The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them."

There are simultaneous pitches. There are chords. There chord progressions. There are principles of connection. It is harmony. There are many sources including Wikipedia that use the term. You have given no proof that it doesn't exist, whereas I've given several. The burden of proof is on you. I never said that it followed older rules, I admit that it doesn't. I'm only referring to contemporary usage, which is now more wide spread than what you're referring to. You don't seem to understand that there is more than one type of music theory and that there is a difference between tonality and harmony. Please research these things instead of arguing that everyone else in the world is wrong except you.

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thanks for creating the series, will check it out

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Musical Gym wrote:thanks for creating the series, will check it out
Thanks. I know this thread is going a bit off track, but I hope it will help people make some music. I'm going to try to add to it in another video and show how people use modal harmony in the context of a whole song.

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OK, this will be my last reply. I promise I'll leave you alone after this. I didn't want to offend you, and after all I ended up giving you some free advertising.

First: Strictu sensu, any simultaneous sounding notes is harmony. So, a duet is harmony. A round (or canon) is harmony. But when we use the term Harmony, we are not meaning that, rather the principles of chord organization and progression, meaning functional harmony. You know that, and I know you know that.
Chandlerhimself wrote: You seem to be under the impression that music theory is like physics. Music theory is used to describe what people have done and give people a way to understand it and duplicate it. Of course different music genres have different rules, which is why they sound different. I shouldn't have to explain this, but you seem to think that the rules of classical music or Renaissance music apply to pop, jazz, blues, rock, etc. Of course they don't.
Of course they do. Music theory is MUSIC theory. Chords are chords, no matter where they are used. Harmony is harmony, no matter where and how it is used. Jazz didn't invent anything (although many pretend that it did). At best, it came up with different ways to do what have been done for almost 300 years (tonal music). It's no physics, you're right. It's much simpler.

Read what it says on wikipedia ""Slow-moving harmonic rhythm, where single chords may last four to sixteen or more measures; Pedal points and drones; Absent or suppressed standard functional chord progressions; ...". "It doesn't use standard functional chord progressions because it's not standard functional harmony", you say. First, I don't know any other kind of functional harmony that's not standard. Even chromaticism or progressive tonality use standard functional harmony, for the simple reason there is no other type. You insist in mixing concepts. The key word here is "functional". Without functions, you don't have any way to define what chord should follow another chord (to go where?). Therefore, if you use chords, you use them as vertical structures that simply add colour, timbre. It's no longer harmony, because harmony depends always on any kind of intrinsic logical organization, and in the modes the organization comes from the melody (the MODE) - it's horizontal, no longer vertical. Also, that's why (to avoid the "standard functional harmony" - tonality) that Schoenberg started to use quartal aggregates. Bartok used them for the exact same purpose, although with different organization principles. Got it?
Chandlerhimself wrote: "In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches (tones, notes), or chords.[1] The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them."
You seem to not even read what you quote. In your "modal harmony" what are "the principles of connection that govern" chord progressions? Care to explain? I'm curious...
Chandlerhimself wrote: There are simultaneous pitches.
Maybe or maybe not, depending if you consider a drone or a chord that lasts for 16 bars as "simultaneous pitches".
Chandlerhimself wrote: There are chords. There are chord progressions.
Again, it depends. If each chord lasts 16 bars, and you have like two chords, can you still talk about "chord progression"? Progression to where?
Chandlerhimself wrote: There are principles of connection.
Which are...? Again, I'm curious. But when you classify a dominant seventh chord in third inversion as a slash Lydian chord (C / D Major) I think we will have very strange principles.
Last edited by fmr on Wed May 04, 2016 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Fernando (FMR)

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@fmr: The narrow definition of "harmony" that you're espousing here is simply not supported by any modern music scholarship on the matter, and by that I mean from the 20th century onward.

You need to find the nearest copy of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and find Carl Dahlhaus's (a German, btw) entry on "harmony" and there you will see that your conflation of the concepts of tonality and functional harmony with the larger subject of harmony is not supportable.

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stringtapper wrote:@fmr: The narrow definition of "harmony" that you're espousing here is simply not supported by any modern music scholarship on the matter, and by that I mean from the 20th century onward.

You need to find the nearest copy of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and find Carl Dahlhaus's (a German, btw) entry on "harmony" and there you will see that your conflation of the concepts of tonality and functional harmony with the larger subject of harmony is not supportable.
You should read that yourself. What is written there is much closer to what I've been saying than to what have been replied. The subject is broad yes, I may have been narrowing the expression "harmony", yes, to have things more clear, and using terms that were not used in other places, but basically, what I've been saying is the same.

But I said I am done with this subject. I have better things to do than preaching to the deaf.
Fernando (FMR)

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I don't really want to get involved in this discussion, but I feel I have to say this:

1. It's great that people make the effort to make videos to help others, and I want to totally support that.

2. It's a real shame that other individuals have to come and spread this negative atmosphere and get into this kind of semantic discussion about it to seemingly just display knowledge.

A cool initiative could be running the risk of ending up in a locked thread because of that kind of stuff...

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The "discussion" and the "problem" here is not semantic. It's conceptual. There is a misuse of a concept, as simple as that.
In an historically informed view of music theory a mode cannot have harmony or be harmonized as simple as that. If it is a mode is melodic, it's use is melodic.

If you stack triads under that mode you build an implicit hierarchy of attractions and functions and suddenly you have tonality.

So, bottom line, in music theory there isn't "modal harmony". You either have a mode or you have tonal harmony.

If you REDEFINE the concept "mode" to just mean "a scale" like many seem to have been doing, they are just misusing a concept. IF you want to build a "new music theory" why not use a new term for it? Instead of "mode" call it "tone row" or whatever. You have a method for harmonizing "tone rows". In Music theory thare are already a bunch of valid terms and concepts to describe what you're doing.

It is like we all know what an orange is. And suddenly now I decide to say, I'm sorry an Orange is a vegetable. And as such it can be sliced and poured into a vegetable soup along with onions, carrots and spinash.

Of course, you CAN do that. But to anyone that learned that orange is a fruit, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to call an organge a vegetable and doesn't make sense to use oranges in vegetable soup because historically they have never been used that way. Oranges are fruits. You already have the term "fruit" to describe an orange, so use it. And say "I like to use oranges in vegetable soups".

As such, modes are melodic. And doesn't make sense to "harmonize" them. When you do it, you turn them into a scale with a hierarchical center. As such, you turn them into a tone row.

The moment you peel and squach an orange you have juice. You don't have an orange anymore.
The moment you harmonize a "mode" you don't have a mode anymore. You have a tonal scale.

Why not call your videos just "harmony using exotic scales"? or "harmonizing synthetic scales"?
Play fair and square!

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Panda wrote:I don't really want to get involved in this discussion, but I feel I have to say this:

1. It's great that people make the effort to make videos to help others, and I want to totally support that.

2. It's a real shame that other individuals have to come and spread this negative atmosphere and get into this kind of semantic discussion about it to seemingly just display knowledge.

A cool initiative could be running the risk of ending up in a locked thread because of that kind of stuff...
Thank you. I hope my videos will help people make music and understand how to get the sound in their head onto paper, tape, etc. I really don't want to argue with people about this type of thing, but I feel I shouldn't just let people say nonsense that will stop people from wanting to learn.
stringtapper wrote:@fmr: The narrow definition of "harmony" that you're espousing here is simply not supported by any modern music scholarship on the matter, and by that I mean from the 20th century onward.

You need to find the nearest copy of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and find Carl Dahlhaus's (a German, btw) entry on "harmony" and there you will see that your conflation of the concepts of tonality and functional harmony with the larger subject of harmony is not supportable.
Thank you.


I understand that others learned harmony in a different way than I have. That's fine and I have no problem with you talking about the differences. However to say the things I'm talking about are wrong and/or don't exist seem silly. If you don't like the concepts, please go to the universities that are teaching them and the books that spread it and complain to them. The terms are at least 50 years old, and I didn't invent them. If I used new terms that I made up, no one would understand what I was talking about. The few people that understood would be saying things just like the people in this thread complaining. "Why don't you just call it modal harmony", "Stop stealing other people's ideas", "That's just quartal harmony, stop making things up", "Those are modes not synthetic scales, synthetic scales are things like the diminished scale not modes".

This discussion is similar to arguing if cucumbers and tomatoes are fruits or vegetables. Biologically they are fruits, but for culinary uses they are vegetables. Most people accept this and move on with their lives, but of course some people just like to argue for no reason.

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There is no such thing as modal harmony. The term 'modal' relates to counterpoint.
The masters of modal counterpoint were Bach and Mozart.
Of course the term got corrupted: there is not written any relevant music in the 19th nor 20th century as it comes to modal counterpoint.

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To fmr:

What do you call a song in the key of E, where the notes used are E F G A B C D (F# does not appear), is NOT in the key of A (E is clearly the tonic of the song), and uses otherwise normal chords and normal harmony and normal voice leading techniques? How do you suggest we call this? Please give us a term.

I'm tired of the pointless semantics discussions every time someone talks about this so please give us a word for this that will not make you go into a fit?

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MadBrain wrote:To fmr:

What do you call a song in the key of E, where the notes used are E F G A B C D (F# does not appear), is NOT in the key of A (E is clearly the tonic of the song), and uses otherwise normal chords and normal harmony and normal voice leading techniques? How do you suggest we call this? Please give us a term.

I'm tired of the pointless semantics discussions every time someone talks about this so please give us a word for this that will not make you go into a fit?
Your question is so simplistic that's only excusable to someone who knows nothing about music, and is now learning the first things about tonality. If it's in the key of E and uses the E chords, then it's E minor. The fact that F# doesn't appear means nothing. If F natural appears, it means nothing again. You could even not have neither. If the relevant chords are there, then you have E minor. If you use the normal chords, as you say, then you most probably have a chord with B and D#, and maybe F natural. That chord belongs to E minor. Problem is that people, strangely, are convinced that, by the fact a certain tonality has certain common notes, it cannot have other notes. Man, it MAY HAVE other notes. since the eighteenth century, with Bach, for example, that the tonality has many "foreign notes" appearing. It may have them and still be on a certain tonality because IT'S THE HARMONY THAT DICTATES THE TONALITY.

If you were used to read and play pieces a little more complex than what it seems you are, you would notice that foreign notes are very very common in tonal pieces. Yet people never tried to find strange names for the pieces, they explain the foreign notes in the context of the harmony progression, as passing notes, notes relevant to the base tonality or to some momentary modulation to other tonality, or simply melodic embelishment.

So, again, this is not physics. This is much simpler. It's E minor, nothing else.

Putting in other terms. What would you call a song that has E, F, F#, G, A, B, C, C#, D, D#? The chords used are clearly normal chords, belonging to normal harmony. The tonic of thew song is clearly E. Would you call it some strange name, based on some exotic scale you happened to know that has more or less the same notes, or simply E minor?

This is not semantics, this is Music 101.
Fernando (FMR)

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