Scale Modes are Weirder Than I Thought 

I think what gets lost in teaching music theory-and a lot of people who should know better are guilty of this, from neighborhood piano teachers to contest judges to MIDI chord pack bros-is that theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. Scales and harmonizing existed before a bunch of university boffins gave them fancy Greek names, and the fact that some note combinations make harmonies that people like is a weird mix of acoustic physics and cultural upbringing. You don’t need to know any of it to make music, but it can save you a lot of time if you do. So music theory is bullshit, but it’s bullshit that *works.*

I’ve watched hundreds of videos on modes and this was by far the most fun

Great stuff Jeremy! One little thing to add: you mentioned that A Minor is the “relative minor” to C Major. In that same way, this “you can play all the modes with just the white keys” means that F Lydian is the “relative lydian” to C Major. We don’t seem to use names like “relative dorian” or “relative phrygian” very often, but they work just the same as “relative minor.” 😁 And a little tip for writing with modes: most of the modes have just one note different from a major or minor scale. This is the note that gives each mode its unique character. Jeremy mentions that in Dorian you get a major subdominant (IV) chord. That happens because the characteristic note of Dorian is the sixth degree (which is sharp compared to natural minor), and that six degree is in the subdominant chord. When writing in modes, it’s usually useful to emphasize the characteristic note of the mode by using it in the harmony. The characteristic notes of each mode, when compared to major or natural minor, are: Dorian (minor): raised 6th Phrygian (minor): lowered 2nd Lydian (major): raised 4th Mixolydian (major) lowered 7th (Let’s not talk about Locrian!) Great video Jeremy!

The fox face was oddly hypnotic and I had no choice but to watch this straight through in one sitting, though I would have anyway because modal theory is freaking awesome! Yeah definitely learned some things but still loved hearing the parts I already knew. Decades ago I knew nothing and was writing a song I thought was only in C major but was informed it was actually A minor and I thought, “neat! Why not try writing with the same notes but move the root to different notes.” Then I was writing in all the modes but only much later in a jazz history class in college learned that church modes are a thing. Mind blown again. This video explained the names and various other facts that are blowing my mind yet again. Thank you!

I wrote a little midi daemon which reads two keyboards, one "hint track" for key/scale/chord info and the other for performance info, and merges them into a single output stream. Tap 2 or more notes at the same time on the "hint" keyboard to set a new key, scale, or chord (or tap 1 note to transpose)... and then the white notes on the performance keyboard get automatically remapped to fit. This makes improvisation really easy, even for songs with complex key changes and stuff, because the hint track can be sequenced to keep the performance track always in tune. The program also shows the current status for both on a screen, like the name (if any) and tonic for the current scale, and the name (if any) for what is currently being played. So I had to build a big table of nearly every possible combination of notes, find out which ones have names, and make up labels for the others. Someday I really should clean it up and put it on github or something.

Thank you Professor Fox!🦊

If you want examples of every single mode, there's an album by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard called "Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, And Lava" (see if you can notice the gimmick in the title)! Each song is written in a consecutive mode. So the first is in Ionian, then Dorian, and so on! Very good songs and a wonderful implementation of this bit of music theory! One CW though: The song Hell's Itch contains descriptions of self-harm.

Hot tip for anyone thinking about playing with modes: they make key changes easy and smooth as butter! By keeping the scale the same but temporarily changing the root note, you can inject certain feelings into a song, like an adventure without ever leaving home. Or, if you're modulating to a scale that's further away, you can borrow chords from the different modes of your current scale to ease the transition. It's really something you get a feel for the more you play around with it, give it a try and see what you come up with! (I actually found this out by accident - I needed a filler track for an album, so decided to take one of my old compositions and move it around to different modes. But I discovered by playing it in F Dorian, I was able to PERFECTLY transition into the next song in E flat Major, since you know, both scales are all the same notes!)

Fun presentation. Couple of things: 1) I think it's fine to just think of a mode as a rotation of a "parent scale". That Phrygian Dominant you like is the 5th mode of Harmonic Minor (which, as you point out, has a minor 3rd in it). 2) As you showed, most of us learn the major scale (Ionian) pattern by the intervals *between* the notes, i.e. W-W-H-W-W-W-H, but ultimately I think it's good to learn the names of intervals (from a given root/tonic), so that you can understand that natural minor is characterized by a minor 6th and minor 7th (m6,m7) while Dorian minor has a major 6th and minor 7th (M6, m7). Harmonic minor has a minor 6th and a major 7th (m6, M7). Etc. I think that's easier than trying to memorize that Dorian is W-H-W-W-W-H-W 3) On the other hand, that last sentence does show that Dorian is a palindrome.:) 4) The so-called Greek modes can be arranged from light to dark in the following order: Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian, Locrian. I remember this as LIMDAPL. Starting with Lydian, you lower, in order, 4-7-3-6-2-5-1. (ie the 4th, then the 7th etc). The cool thing is when you reach the darkest (Locrian) and lower the 1 (root/tonic) you get Lydian a step lower, i.e. you can start the cycle all over again. Hope all that made sense.

I don't know what I love more about this video - the fact that Jeremy is, I think, the person I find most helpful at learning a topic from; or the fact that he's just fully leaned into his furryness now with the talking fox

you being a flute player makes so much sense. Big flautist vibes from this channel.

It gets even more perplexing when they talk about it in jazz. They're like: oh yeah, play the mixolydian with a dominant 7th. Play the dorian with the minor 7th. And as a pianist you are thinking .... you mean I just keep playing the same major scale?

I do it like Desert level scale: phrygian dominant Arabian vampire tower scale: harmonic minor Water level: ionian Level that requires a flashlight cause it's really dark: locrian Mushroom forest: mixolydian Tavern music: Dorian Yup... Music theory...

The talking fox never ceases to be funny.

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned already, but when I was studying this in school, we discussed how the thing about disliking the augmented second in the harmonic minor scale at least partially had to do with vocalists. They believed that it would be difficult for vocalists to sing that interval in tune, so many of those especially old conventions exist around performability on their specific instruments. A lot of things in music are holdovers from practicality of how things used to be, and that still exists even in the production world today, which is always fun for me to discover

Awesome! Particularly helpful to hear all the modes in C next to each other at the end. Next do the chords that are diatonic to the scale, and how you can use them in composition!

Cuppla things. The modes have a pretty deep relationship to counterpoint. If you're new to studying functional harmony i reccomend stepping back a bit and digging deeper into counterpoint. A lot of the "weirdness" starts making a lot more sense. Also, and this isnt necessarily a callout because it's an issue in music theory, but we collectively need to formalize some scale names and genre names that don't utilize slurs for romani people.

Short, to the point, nice, simple. And I love the fox animation.

One of my favourite things about the modes of the major scale is that, just like a major key will have chord qualities of major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished, so the modes of the major scale follow the same pattern. The D Dorian is an altered minor scale, E Phyrigian is minor, F Lydian is major, etc etc, following the same formula as the chords of the major scale.

I love the animated fox, it's awesome

More videos in this format please! You've got a hit, this was amazing. Really, really good, even with basic concepts it was fun and I loved the conversational style.

This taught me more than any music classes ever did - your charisma and fursona are icing on the cake. Awesome video!

this is stuff that never made sense at school, but now it does. i'm gonna rewatch this lots of times until it sinks in. thank you!

That was pure love J. I wish I had you in my life 30 years ago. Beautifully done. More enjoyable than any music theory professor I ever had. Love ya man!!! Big up!!!

Thanks so much! I have read so much about it and never really "got" it. Your explanation that they can be found by moving the root up the keyboard was enlightening (at least for me).

I really enjoyed this video! I enjoyed this while I was drinking my morning coffee, then suddenly felt the need to start taking notes and now here I am learning before breakfast. Thanks for making this!

This is so awesome! Thx for explaining so well and calming

I learned about these back when I crammed 3 years of theory into 6 months for college entrance exam and was fascinated by it. My favorite is the Lydian mode which, from what I remember, is used a lot for more spacey vibes. It's my go to playing around mode, playing Lydian C, so... C in F position. Idk why but it sounds so beautiful. Also this is such a good way of explaining it. I was trying to talk to my brother in law about these modes and just couldn't find the right way to explain it.

Absolutely awesome video. Someone just showed me for the first time that the modes are just that array of WWHWWWH, and then you just take the note from the front and slap it on the back to move to the next mode and suddenly the whole thing made so much more sense. I would love to see more like this, it was fun, informative, well laid out, and really showed good examples of how it works.

i would really love more of these music theory videos! you explain it really well

It's always good to review this stuff and get excited about it all over again

Awesome stuff as always Jeremy... love the presentation style and content! xD

Nice coincidence! I've just been looking into the topic Some interesting things I have found so far: The modes can be sorted by how many sharps and flats they have compared to the major scale Moving to the next mode while keeping the same root note is in a way equivalent to moving in the circle of fifths It even works between lydian and locrian, but the root note has to shift by a half step The dorian mode seems to be the most neutral as it has three modes that have more sharps and another three that have more flats than it It is also the only symmetrical mode as in you get the same whole-/halftone sequence moving either up or down the scale from the root Heptatonic scales have 7 notes and so there are 5 unused notes in an octave Moving to the next key in the circle of fifths removes a note from the scale and adds a new one You can figure out in which order the notes of a scale are replaced by going around the circle enough If you use a major scale, you'll notice the original root note changes quite quickly, and instead the 2nd note of the scale remains the longest Now, if you instead use the dorian scale, you'll get something more logical The root stays the longest, the next are the fourth and the fifth, then second and seventh, and the first ones to go are the third and the sixth note of the scale This order is in line with how stable the notes of a scale are usually tought as, which I find really cool By the same logic you can also figure out which out-of-key notes are "the least out of key" I guess we should have D dorian at the top of the circle of fifths

My most popular song is in Locrian scale and it is often used in Heavy Metal because of how the tritone is utilized there (Enter Sandman intro is an example of Locrian in popular music)

I sincerely appreciate this so so much! Please keep doing this, it's so lovely and it really help

What a wonderful and helpful video. Thank you Jeremy!

Learning and using modes is key when it comes to writing more spicy flavours of music. Like how some Phrygian modes are used in alot of egyptian music, Celtic / Medieval music can be nailed just jamming in A dorian and some mixolydian modes etc. Its very handy stuff to know.

The modes all finally clicked for me, both in my ears and in my hands, when I practiced them this way in tandem: 1) Parallel from the same root note, which is what you did toward the end, when you play all the modes from C for example. This forces you to understand what notes alter from the primary "major" / Ionian scale played from C, which also allows you to really hear what these alterations do to the scale, rather than playing them "derivative" which means from each scale degree (as is typically taught and as you illustrated each mode in the beginning). 2) Perhaps most helpful is to play them NOT in order of how they are viewed from derivative scale degrees (that is the modes built on C, D, E etc), but rather, the modes in order of their alterations. Doing so allows you to play a master scale template so to speak, and alter only ONE note at a time, so it's far easier to grasp and also hear the differences as you go. I prefer to do this from what I would call Brightest to Darkest, and in parentheses are the notes you would alter as you go, thinking of alterations from the template major scale (all white keys starting on C for example), and each one sequentially building off the previous one: Lydian (#4) Ionian (nat4) Mixolydian (b7) Dorian (b3) Aeolian (b6) Phrygian (b2) Locrian (b5) This will also allow you to observe the specific notes which give each note their specific flavor and quality. Observe as you go that all of these alterations create new half-steps intervals (as located in the parentheses). It is these half-steps which give each mode their character - so much so that I often think of these modes as their alterations instead, which has made it far easier for me to learn and hear them in other songs too. Because each mode can also be quantified as having a primarily major, minor, or diminished quality, it's easier to categorize them as such: Lydian - Major with a #4 Ionian - Major with all natural/unaltered notes Mixolydian - Major with a flattened 7th Dorian - Minor with a flattened 3 Aeolian - Minor with a flattened 6 Phrygian - Minor with a flattened 2 Locrian - Diminished with a flattened 5 How is that helpful? Well, it makes it that much easier to do modal mixture, where you can bounce between modes in your song for added colorations. So you can be playing your major scale and know that when you sharpen the 4, you'll get a bright and wondrous Lydian sound. And let's say you switch over to your relative minor (Am for simplicity of all white keys) - by default this is Aeolian, which we can describe as having that somber sound due to its flattened 6th. But then try raising the 6th and seeing what happens - you'll suddenly get a brighter minor sound, one which is less doleful, perhaps even a little quirky = Dorian. But maybe you want to go even darker and edgier, so simply flatten the 2 = Phrygian. In this way when I play Phrygian I'm really just thinking of a minor scale with a flat2. So in other words, rather than having to memorize the specific formula for each mode, it's far easier and more musical to understand how they alter from the major and minor scales. You can also observe certain things about playing them from "brightest to darkest," such as their tonal colors. Notice how Dorian is in the middle - now go play Dorian and look up tunes written in Dorian - interesting that it almost feels at times kinda major, and kinda minor (which you can hear really perfectly if you play a simple chord progression between minor i and the major IV, such as between Dm and G major). As a mode it's one of my favorites because it really is the best of both worlds and can straddle the line nicely of being a little bit dark yet also a little bit hopeful and playful too, yet not too sweet either ;) One last thing, on the topic of minor scales as you mentioned with harmonic minor & melodic minor, one of the most helpful lessons I ever received is to think of them less as individual minor scales, and more like alterations on the natural minor scale = or more like, the minor scale includes all of those altered notes, and context dictates how they are used. Melodic minor is especially misleading how it is taught which is that it is its own separate scale which always ascends with the raised 6th and 7th, and descends with the flattened 6th & 7th. In musical reality, composers didn't think of it so literally. It's most likely taught this way to make it easier to learn the fingering for muscle memory. But real music uses all altered forms of the minor scales and will frequently mix and match back and forth within a single passage. In fact sometimes they will RAISE the 6th & 7th on the way down! How is that possible you might think? If that sounds confusing, it's more helpful to understand *tendency tones*, and that is that the 6th and 7th scale degrees have magnetic pulls to our ears in one direction, or the other. A flat or natural 6th wants to pull toward the 5th scale degree; but when raised it points in the direction of the tonic. So with that in mind, if you see a composer raise the 6th but the direction of the melody is descending, you might observe further on they are going down to the tonic at the bottom of the octave, or they are going down and then back up toward the tonic above, using that alteration as a turnaround basically. And crazy enough, sometimes the 6th will raise, but not the 7th, and it never resolves to the tonic - which takes us back to that Dorian sound which is exactly what that is (minor scale with a raised 6th but flat 7). Point is, all of these minor key alterations are best understood through the lens of tendency tones and their magnetic pull - where do you want your melody or chords to go? Alterations create not only spicy color but also movement. When practiced as I recommended above, altering just one note at a time from the C major scale, it will be the easiest way to train your ear for what these modes sound like and are capable of doing. Then, once you feel more comfortable, you can enter the even wackier world of altered modes! Two fun and still very musical ones are Lydian Dominant (#4/b7) + Superlocrian. Hope this super long essay helps someone out there! 🤪

Thank you for this! I've known this to be the case, but always forget the order. This video is a super helpful mnemonic and review. Going to change up this Phrygian track I'm working on and have it jump up to Lydian at the end. Thanks!

I didn't know I could use 20minutes of my time on earth to learn about scales. You made me do it. And I'm glad I clicked. I believe that's the kind of video I can go back to in 1 year and understand even deeper. Thanks a lot.

This is the best way ive ever had the modes explained to me!! When I was learning light music theory as a guitarist, playing the different modes using the same notes was how I was taught the scales. It's interesting to hear a different perspective on the structure of the music ^w^

Wow - amazing find, demonstration of the modes, and a little bit of etymology thrown in? Nice! 💚

I would love to see more of these.

I'd love to see more videos like this! I did already know this one but as a non-trained musician/long time technical nerd/ producer who's been learning theory for a few years now, its super valuable. If you need more ideas for vids, I'm still trying to understand the emotional directions/progressions and their deeper relation to modes, modal interchange. Like "this chor progression crosses 2 modes a and b, resulting in the feeling of x". I feel the need to build a library/encyclopaedia.

This video made me sit at the piano and just playing with these different modes, it’s a great way to get out of always playing the same patterns. Thank you for the inspiration!

Love this style of video!

more like this please!

Thanks for this video, I learned a lot!

i'm really surprised that you have missed that when you've been in music for so long. it's probably the first thing beyond minor and major i learned when playing guitar as a kid. when making music, i do find western theory pretty limiting nowadays. i lifted my favourite scale from indian classical music (and have yet to find anyone else making use of it in the west).

The Locrian mode is quite interesting. It sometimes sounds like a spookier flamenco scale, though it also evoke a mundane-like tone, or it can be emotionally ambiguous and transcendent.

The best scales explanation I have seen so far 🙏 thank you

You should check out the album Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. It has one song in each mode and also it just slaps generally.

Turtle loves music fox very much. Thank you for the lesson ❤

You are so smart and this is so cool and I did not understand a word of it but it was a very fun watch! thank you fox

Another great watch (and listen)! Not scale modes, but Equal Temperament vs Just Intonation blew my mind when I learned about it. Could be something for a future video with Raposa. Cheers from Lisbon, Portugal

Really enjoyed this cheers

What the melodic minor scale is trying to accomplish is smooth voice leading, for both versions of the 7th scale degree. It's not necessarily trying to get at the concept of "only these notes while ascending and only these ones while descending;" rather, it's just a convention due to the more common ascending resolution of the leading tone toward the tonic, as opposed to the subtonic (which is what we call the 7th scale degree from natural minor) which is just as happy to move up to the tonic as it is down to the 6th. Essentially, the scale is encapsulating the harmonic vocabulary needed to use both versions of the 7th degree effectively in compositions with smooth voice leading, but it isn't meant to suggest that the raised 6th and 7th degrees are only to be used while ascending, and that the 6th and 7th from natural minor only while descending.

Amazing video. Really engaging and easy to understand even for people like me without any music thoery background.

This is the best fuckin music learning experience I've ever had, thank you Mr. red fox. keep it up!! In college i remembered the modes and their order by corresponding them with the phrase "I Dont Particularly Like Modes A Lot"

Woah! That was great. I learned a lot from this video. And I really liked the fox guy!

I’ve heard about these modes for years but was too scared to look into since I still struggle with basic modes but this is the first video that gave me a pretty solid foundation. Thanks.

Phrygian Dominant is such a beautiful scale. Phrygian Dom also can be used in harmonic minor where there are two 1.5 steps. Between 2 and 3 and between 6 and 7. A melodic minor for phrygian dom could also be employed.

Wow this is new for me as well - and great explanations!

A fun example of mixolydian: Scottish trad has a lot of mixolydian tunes which have parts of the melody with their 1 on scale-tonic, and parts of the the melody with their 1 on scale-VII, adds a fun dynamic jumping feeling to them. (EDIT: I guess this means you could say the two resolves to mixolydian but dances between mixolydian and lydian) Mixolydian being the “dominant” scale means you can also then from the mixo tune to a tune in the relative ionian/major to get that whole V-I resolution thing going on a set level, all while playing on a diatonic instrument like the penny whistle or pipes.

So the whole concept of modes found me like 15 years in to my music hobby. I was super used to thinking in the rigid western key signature way of thinking about scales. It was good to learn to prescribe music, but learning about modes changed how I think when I'm improvising and composing. Mixolydian mode is cool, but mixolydian flat 2nd is basically the recipe for any "epic" soundtrack. It's a super neat way to re-think how to catch a feeling in composing

Nice ✌ - in the same realm of 'blew my mind' is that this explained to me the Note names. Because if you keep in mind that for a long period of French medieval music theorising blabla they really liked Aeolien a lot (minor). So they would think of that as Home even more than we do today with Ionian (major). If you think of Aeolien as home and then start to name your seven notes you get: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. 🤯😎

Fun! I did not even think to question why the modes were named for.

Love learning about music with the wise fox.

A clear explanation - as good as any other I've seen.

This felt like a hack to me when a buddy of mine asked me to write a few tracks for a short film he was working on. He sent me a bunch of tracks that he was feeling inspiration from and asked me to make something of a similar vibe; so I took the melody lines from his inspo tracks, found what scale mode they were using, and then just... wrote a song in that key to get the right mode. Like, oh, this one song has a melody line that uses the Lydian mode - I'll just pedal point on F and noodle on the white keys til I find a good hook!

Thaaaaank you so so much!! Super useful! 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

Damn I need to take some notes! Great video

I think myxolydian with a flat 6 sounds really nice, for the same reason as why you like Dorian, but inverse. Myxolidian flat 6 is like inverted Dorian, with a Major root surrounded by minor chords. This can be useful to have a hopeful resolution on the home key.

The thing you didn’t know was the very first thing I learned about modes- and it made sense almost immediately. There’s even a really appropriate mnemonic to help you remember them: I Don’t Particularly Like Modes A Lot.

I'm actually making a scale mode's cheat sheet and this video is a great reference, thanks!

i remember when I realized this during my random dips into music theory. It was legitimately mind-blowing, and opened up my use of scales/modes in a huge way.

Gods I love the way you pass information on in these videos. Your excitement brings me along, and this is stuff I could never get from traditional music lessons. I've learned more scale theory in half an hour than the past 10 years lol. Plus; fox. Best animal. I'm not biased.

Thanks!

Aaking someone's fursona is so last year. I'm gonna start asking people what their mode is today

That was fantastic!

Ive learned more in 20 min than years!...You are funny and amazing! Love it!

pentatonic minor d# is just the black keys if I'm not mistaken, and it's interesting to know the scales or modes that share these keys and switch between em

LOL! The shifting ears...

I started on a folk instrument that had diatonic frets (appalacian dulcimer). so you are always playing in key. Because of the fretting the instrument is very comfortable in Mixolydian and Ionian but you could do other modes by just leaving out any notes that don't work or capoing (just like how you moved modes on the piano) or by changing the tuning of a string (usually to do Aeolian or Ionian in a different way). It has drone strings (I and V) and some melody notes can make very strong chords or partial chords (especially third, seventh, sixth, and fourth). The Strumstick is a related instrument and tuned the same way and a bit more approachable if you're looking for something easy to try (even easier than a ukulele)

Excellently informative and amazing fox training

First time viewer here. What a marvelous video. Love the fox and the work put in the video. I learnt a couple of things. I myself am a flute player (bansuri) that learnt to play with any music in improvisation, from a background of techno DJ, and without almost any music knowledge. It was my hypothesis that you can learn any music without theory. After 15 years of practice and improvisation with many people it kind of worked. But now I pick up some theory bit by bit. I learnt some guitar to understand chords. It's just a wonderful journey but I'm going coming from a chole different direction then almost any people I play with. It is such an interesting meeting in music every time. I sometimes play with excellent musicians. But I come at them with a freedom and instinctiveness that is often very new to them. I always learn from them little by little. I learn music from all over the world. And the classically schooled musicians often take great joy and inspiration from playing with me. The journey of learning about music this way is just so wonderful. It's not a dead thing on paper. It's always alive in relation to people, to nature, to life. And today I learnt some things from you. Specifically I love the origin of the scale names. I'll watch a couple of times again to understand principles more. Thanks!

Ahhh, all my music theory classes came flooding back, but they were never as lovely as having Jeremy-fox doing the teaching. Thank you. Also, I was reminded of this question: are emotional responses and ideas of tension following simple orders of tones and half tones learned or are they innate. These things keep me awake at night.

Thanks fox, master of modes! Finally this makes sense

You have absolved me of my ignorance (no sarc); I have been cured... thank you!

Lovely music, and great content :) Learnt quite a bit - have always played by ear and write stuff with whatever notes work for what I want, so theory is obviously limited. Enjoyed the background scenes from Horizon too - an amazing looking game. I read they compressed the day/night cycle to give more weighting and time to the awesome looking times, dawn, golden hour etc, vs the boring bits inbetween :)

I really wish that modes were always explained as just shifting up a note on a scale, because that makes way more sense to me. Thank you for the video!

Accidentally stumbled on F mixolydian today. So medieval / folky. Love Dorian too

Fun thing related to modes is using borrow chords from your root note’s other modes (e.g. IV min to I major). Lets you break out of typical chord progressions without going off the rails.

Doing the parallel modes at the end starting on the same root note I think exemplifies the use of modes the best because using modes is all about how relative they are to the tonic note, and the relationship the higher intervals you choose beyond that have to that note. That is where the color comes from, so if you're composing or improvising and the major or minor scale you're working in feel stale or like they aren't leaning into the particular emotion you're going for well enough you should try doing a different modal melody over the chord progression you have or change the chords to be more modal to fit the emotion better. I think it's important to note that if you just have the root note of the mode scale in you're bass (lowest note) you can sort of freely choose any of the modes to play over it, while keeping in mind the order of their brightness or darkness, but the more you define the chord in the lower register the more you are limiting what kind of mode you can use because you've already chosen several notes of the scale mode by the notes in the chord you're playing. That's why you run into Ionian and Lydian being considered major modes because they can be played over major chords, and Dorian, Aeolian, and Phrygian being considered minor modes because they can be played over minor chords, and then Locrian can be played over half diminished chords. There are more options beyond that, especially when you include other scales like melodic and harmonic minor, but that's enough to get anyone started in a practical sense.

Good stuff! Gotta get hip to LIMDAPL, which in addition to just fun to pronounce phonetically ("Limm-dapple", kinda sounds like a failed AI take on a smartphone drum machine...) is also a great way to remember the modes from "brightest to darkest." If you rearrange the modes into the LIMDAPL order, you can change from one to the next, only altering one note at a time, getting progressively darker: Lydian -> (lower the 4) Ionian -> (lower the 7th) Mixolydian -> (now it's minor time, flat the 3) Dorian -> (flat the 6) Aeolian -> (flat the 2) Phrygian --> (flat the 5) Locrian Useful for practicing them starting all from the same root note. I learned this from Rob Thomas (the jazz violinist, not the Matchbox 20 one), but am not sure where he got it. Still, cool!

once i learned all this stuff i concluded that one can play anything, and it will be some scale. it only becomes music if you could repeat it

Bartok pitch axis theory was my secret door moment

My favorite thing about modes is how they're directly related to the circle of fifths. Want to make C Ionian into C Lydian? Make the F sharp. Want to go full C Locrian? Flat a bunch of notes! Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb. Hey, wait! BEADG (CF)? That's the same pattern as on sheet music! And it works for sharps, too. Wonder what G# Phrygian looks like? Four sharps (FCGD) starting on G#. So neat!

It's a testament to your skill that you've made as much wonderful music as you have without knowing about this! I'm excited to hear what you'll make using modes. Try Mixolydian with a flat 6. It's like major on the bottom and minor on the top. Used in a lot of music by Nine Inch Nails and has a great quality that I describe as "sad with a tinge of hope."

I was within a couple months of a two-year music degree studying guitar when I quit school. I was taught modes as the major scale starting on a different degree. I was also taught them as modifications of the major scale - For example, Lydian is Major with a #4, Dorian is Major with a b3 and a b7, etc... But for better or worse, I always thought of Dorian, Phrygian, and Locrian as modifications of the natural minor scale - Dorian is Minor with a #6, Phrygian is Minor with a b2, etc... I suppose both ways of thinking about it have their strengths.