Sunday, November 16, 2014

Modal harmony and why you need it.


I'm sure some of you know what modal harmony is, but for those who don't I'll explain it quickly. It is harmony built on the modes of a scale(mostly the major scale). The reason you use modal harmony instead of normal major or minor harmony is that it has a different sound than more traditional types of harmony and in a lot of cases can give you a unique sound. Modal harmony is less widely used and understood, so by using it you'll have an extra technique in your a arsenal that will let you create new sounds that could differentiate you from similar artists.

Each mode has its own unique sound and that sound will conjure up certain feelings in people, so by using modal harmony is like adding more colors to your harmonic pallet.

There are lots of different ways to go about creating modal progressions, but there are 2 important concepts. Emphasize the root note and make sure you feature the 2 characteristic notes of each mode. The 2 characteristic notes are the notes that differentiate one mode from another. For example let's take the Ionian mode. Its 2 characteristic notes/intervals are the perfect 4th and the major 7th. No other mode has those 2 intervals, so using chords or riff that uses the 2 intervals will give you the Ionian sound. Of course you still have to use taste, but this is basically how you do it. I'll be making a series of YouTube videos on this in the future. So stay tuned.


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