Guitar Modes
How You Can Learn To Play Guitar Modes To Expand Your Playing
Do you want to learn to use guitar modes to expand your playing? Learn to invoke emotions that the major and minor scale may not do. If you listen to some of the really great virtuoso guitarists (and even many of the better non-virtuosos), they can invoke all sorts of emotions and feelings. They sound remarkably simple, but when you go to learn them yourself, you realize they aren’t playing in the major scale, minor scale, or pentatonic scale that most guitarists are familiar with.
That is because they are using their knowledge of music theory to play a wide variety of scales and modes. Whether it is the dreamy Lydian mode, the darker Locrian mode, any of the other modes of the major scale, and even other scales and modes entirely. All of these modes can invoke feelings that just aren’t possible with just a handful of guitar scales.
For a jazz guitarist, learning all the modes of the major scale is absolutely indispensable, but they are quite common with quite a few rock guitarists as well. Listen to Deep Purple solos and you can hear Ritchie Blackmore seems to use modes more frequently than even the pentatonic scale.
Take a look at virtuosos like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani and quite a number of their songs don’t just use modes, but are literally based in a mode, as opposed to the major or minor scale. Even Yngwie Malmsteen has said that he primarily swaps between the natural minor scale, Phrygian mode, harmonic minor scale, and Phrygian-dominant mode for his solo work.
That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of guitarists that stick to just the basic scales, but I like the idea of having all those options available to me and choosing not to use them rather than not using them because I didn’t know what they were. Modes are kind of like the tools for a guitarist, a hammer is the best tool for a nail, but when you have a screw, a hammer could work, but a screwdriver would be better.
If you put a lot of effort into it, you might be able to write a dreamy sounding song with the minor scale, but it is a whole lot easier to get that feeling using a Lydian mode instead. Naturally, I had a lot of interest in learn to use modes. For years, I tried to learn from the wide range of guitar books out there, but I found more frustration than improvements to my own playing. Learning modes from guitar books is probably is even worse than average.
The way music theory defines modes and scales is completely arbitrary, especially when you consider the modes of the minor scale are actually the same as the major scale. It just can make learning the guitar scale modes seem confusing and frustrating when you spend a lot of time and realize you haven’t actually learned to use the musical modes in playing.
It was only later when I started to use online guitar lessons that I realized learning to play modes in music is no more difficult than learning to play the major scale or the minor scale in the first place. The books I read focused more of the arbitrary relationships between the musical modes and their corresponding major scale, but did little to focus on the relationships between the major modes that actually dealt with playing the fret board patterns along the neck.
One of the beauty of the sites I have listed on this page is that they focus on the aspects of the music modes that actually relate to how they are played. I have no doubt that other guitarists are like me in being more concerned about how to play and use the guitar modes rather than memorizing some random definition differences that only matter to some Ph.D. in music.
The rates for these lessons are very reasonable, especially when you consider you only pay a small monthly fee and you can use them as often as you like. You can also cancel anytime so once you have mastered the skill of playing guitar you don’t have to pay for lessons you no longer need. Initially, I was considering hiring a private instructor, but with my schedule that just wasn’t practical. It was a stroke of luck when I found about online guitar lessons which could allow me to learn whenever I wanted day or night from the comfort of my own home.
All I had to do was log in on my computer and look up the lesson I was working on. Whenever I had a problem, I could just rewind the lesson and keep running through it until I had it down perfectly. I found these sites listed below to be a great way to learn guitar modes and to improve my own playing. For a very reasonable monthly fee, I had full access to the site and could learn at my own pace with the full support provided by the providers.
You can always cancel at anytime if you find one or the other site less helpful for you personally. These sites taught me a whole depth of techniques that every guitarist should know.
Through these online guitar lessons I was able to learn a wide variety of guitar modes and scales that really expanded my playing. I didn’t just learn the major scale modes, but I was also able to learn the melodic minor modes for guitar and the harmonic minor mode, as well. These lessons also focused on the practical aspects of playing, for example, the only harmonic minor mode commonly is Phrygian-Dominant, and knowing that saves learning a group of modes that likely would never get touched while playing.
I sincerely think you should check out these sites and see how they can help you. Both sites do have free lessons, so you can see for yourself what they offer before you actually subscribe. Modes can seem quite daunting at first, but once you start learning them, you will realize the Phrygian Mode or Dorian Mode or Mixolydian Mode are no more difficult than the Major Scale or the Minor Scale.
Good luck.
Your friend,
Dene
