fmr wrote: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.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?
That's actually a totally sensible analysis, and in line with how pop musicians use what they call "modes". What gets called "E phrygian" is really just E minor with F in the melody on Emin chords, and borrowed chords selected to use F and avoid F#.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.
Okay.So, again, this is not physics. This is much simpler. It's E minor, nothing else.
No, I think it is semantics because calling this sort of thing "modes" is accepted terminology in pop music, even though it totally conflicts with Gregorian modes and other pre-"tonal" stuff.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.
So I propose a translation grid, from "common lazy pop musician terms" to "actually accurate but somewhat wordy formulation":
pop: "lydian scale/mode"
accurate: major (with lots of #4 accidentals)
pop: "mixolydian scale/mode"
accurate: major (with lots of b7 accidentals)
pop: "dorian scale/mode"
accurate: minor (with lots of #6 accidentals)
pop: "phrygian scale/mode"
accurate: minor (with lots of b2 accidentals)
pop: "locrian scale/mode"
accurate: "that weird synthetic scale that I like to play over m7b5 chords"
This way, the next time a guitarist will pop up and say "my song is in G dorian", you will use this grid to translate that incorrect pop terminology into the factually correct "my song is in G minor and it uses a lot of natural E notes and not that many Eb notes in melody and chords", and spare us another thread derailment of this kind. Ok?
But hey, what do I know? I am just a poor guy that don't play pop. 
And then he plays the whole mode 
I can't even understand how people do videos to "explain" stuff like this 
