 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this tutorial, we are going to dive into one of my favorite modes or scales if you want to call it that, the Dorian, the Dorian mode or the Dorian scale. I've used it a lot in my music, I've used it a lot in my classes, I tend to prefer this among all the other scales with a minor third as we'll talk about later in the theory. Now what we are going to do here is hopefully help you to compose music, to develop chord progressions, melodies and also practice them on the piano or pretty much any instrument and hopefully grow as a producer, a composer and an arranger and this scale is very useful if you want to create some new stuff, some new cutting edge music which no one has really heard because it's not major or minor which is what most people compose on. It's a very film score kind of scale, you'll find it in a lot of movie theme scores, you'll find it in a lot of brave songs, in a lot of rock songs and in a lot of songs where the perspective is one to many, it's one person trying to write to the whole world maybe this song where Michael Jackson is just trying to tell all of us to stop polluting the earth and things like that in earth song. So generally speaking the scale is used for a brave kind of sound, it's used for the rock genre, the funk genre, the blues genre, it's used a lot in fusion music, a lot of Indian music, whether it's Karnataka or Hindustani seems to use this mode a lot and we also use it in jazz, we use this sometimes more often than even the natural minor scale or the harmonic minor scale, we prefer the Dorian more at times. Now before we get started it'll be really nice if you get your keyboards out, get a book out so you could perhaps write down the chord progressions and the essential theory, also pianos to help you play as I slow down a lot of the melodies, we've also notated a bunch of these melodies for you, all of these are my compositions or riffs as we release them as, you'll find them as a full video on YouTube, the links will be in the description, you can check it out and I'm gonna brainstorm those compositions, so it'll also be easy for me to teach one being I have made it so I can tell you what was going on in my head, what was I thinking as I was writing that kind of music, so before we get started it'll be great if you could consider hitting the subscribe button, hit the bell icon for regular notifications and the notes and the chord charts and a lot more are waiting for you on Patreon, not just for this lesson but for a lot of the other lessons, let's get cracking. So let's first get the theory stuff out of the way, the Dorian scale, let's take the key of D, so any Dorian scale would be a flat 3 as well as a flat 7 with respect to the major scale or with respect to the natural minor scale you raise the 6, so usually when we notated on sheet music for example you're notating D Dorian, all your B's would be written as B natural in your notation scripts because staff notation tends to support only the major and the minor, the major and the relative minor, even for harmonic minor you'll have to put a sharp that's why they say the 7 is raised in harmonic minor in the Dorian the 6 is raised so this would be natural, this would be the natural minor where you flat the third, you flat the 6 and you flat the 7 with Dorian you raise the 6 versus the more melancholic, the more pensive minor Dorian's a lot more brave to me whenever I use it from a story perspective it's always a weaker force from their perspective trying to you know fight or you know be part of or take down a stronger force it's always a brave scale to me I hear this a lot in movies and with the movies I watch it's generally some battle going on or some fight so right so Dorian has a flat 3 and a flat 7 the 6 is normal left alone or with respect to the natural minor you play it just like a natural minor but raise the 6 not that this one that's your Dorian in there now coming to the chords of the Dorian to harmonize the Dorian we have one minor a two minor a three flat major we actually play around with them you get a very funky kind of sound very jazzy if you add the 7s or the 9s you know here we go so anyway moving back to the triads one minor two minor three flat major four major it's the only minor sounding scale which has a four major all the others the natural the harmonic well not the melodic melodic also has a four major you have a one minor going to the four major so this is a very important cadence as we call it in the Dorian the four to the one that's the four cadence going to the one okay and then we have our five minor okay so one minor so far we have one minor two minor three flat major four major five minor then you have your six diminished you need to remember that in the Dorian scale one two three four five the six is always diminished we rarely use it though but it's there and then you have your seven flat major so which are the major chords in the Dorian scale the four the three flat and the seven flat so just off the top if you want to get a very brave sound you can just imagine a story which starts off by being pretty sad so you have your minor bass you're setting the bass as your tonic minor and then there's a bit of hope developed there with the four major and then you can just do a four to one cadence and you pretty much have the essence of the Dorian making it very different from both major and minor which I think is very important when you're learning a new scale this is the cadence and then we can gang up some of the other major chords that's your three flat D minor and then you have a very nice rock progression that's your one minor three flat major seven flat major and then your four major however you can even do some minor to minor stuff like I showed you for the door stuff you can also do two minors and then end with a major that gives you a very brave sound you know it's pretty much the word I'm gonna use a lot in this lesson that's what the scale means to me five minor four major and then if you want some more positivity go to the three flat major seven flat major and then end with your four major right so this is about the Dorian scale and the reason I really love this scale is first of all that brave mood or that brave emotion and it also is a very from a perspective of songwriting you write these kind of join my cult or clan kind of songs it's it's you against them kind of a thing you're always against the system so to speak with this scale and even if you take the lyrics of some of these songs you know by Imagine Dragons we have this song radioactive so if you read the lyrics it's very you know against the system or what Michael Jackson will do in earth song it's a one to many he's not even using lyrics in earth song at the chorus he's just going it's kind of obvious that the scale itself or the chords the chord progression of the scale is giving you the mood which Michael Jackson wanted you to feel right in earth song so most of the Dorian songs or the Dorian compositions are composed from a one to many perspective to kind of join my cult join my group we are against the system we are the weaker force against the stronger force it gives me that kind of a vibe it also has a very mystical touch to it if you use it in a more textural way or a more atmospheric way like you're discovering a new world kind of a thing very mysterious so it depends also on the rhythm how you use it the chords could be the same so this has some very interesting themes which are major and minor scale are never going to give you major and minor scales are more personal and more discreet it's very happy positive or very sad there's nothing in between the Dorian is that brave in between scale and it and a cousin scale of the Dorian is a is the mixolydian which I hope to cover in a in another video as well so do check out the mixolydian tutorials too so what I'm going to do moving forward in this lecture is play for you a few compositions and let's try and learn those melodies on the piano and then let's try and understand the chord progression so in a nutshell you need to know the chord theory of the Dorian which happens to be the one minor the two minor the three flat major the four major five minor the six diminished the seven flat major and finally the one okay so we have a few pieces for you which we've notated also for piano we learn them and we'll also dive into and study what chord progressions are used in the in the section of the song and if you want to listen to the whole thing you can consider visiting my riffs website which is riffs.jasonzack music dot com what will happen there is you have filters you can filter to Dorian which is the mode we have a filter there and you can filter it and all these riffs will pop up and you can even key in the the riff name or anything then we have a nice little story which can kind of inspire you or motivate you to learn it and with all the riffs there's a slow version so stay tuned after you watch it at the end there's a slow version so you can learn that on the piano and we are also introducing backing tracks for these riffs if you want to kind of make them your own you can write to us and we will also have this on the website very shortly so let's dive into some Dorian music right so in this rather energetic brave rock song it's on G Dorian so let's try and break this down now so it's on G Dorian and so what I'm doing here in this melody is I'm just hovering with D G D G D G F E D G D G D G F E D and I'm making sure that there's an E there that so when you're composing a Dorian riff or a Dorian melody try to keep in mind that you need to have that six natural I didn't do that would have made it minor and you can hear a huge difference I guess and even if you play G it still feels Dorian you don't need chords to make it Dorian just the melody alone will make it sound that way and to add some Dorian chords you can fool around here you can say one minor G minor I did a three flat major then I like to always do my four major makes it very epic and very brave if you want to learn this melody you could check it out in the notation we have it there for you so let's try and listen to a few more brave sounding riffs and try and dive into the chord progressions so this is another approach for the Dorian where I'm not using a chord progression I'm just using thirds and I'm droning just droning that D then and if ever you add a new bass note try and add it lower and lower on and then you can kind of compose further on the f Dorian I'm doing a three flat and then a three flat and then a seven flat let's break that down on the f Dorian key f minor would be a one three flat would be a flat and then if that would be a seven flat it's a more kind of a ambient rock kind of sound you know and then f minor a flat what I like about these sort of compositions if I start with Dorian I can kind of simulate in a song which which has two sections let's say an A and a B this could be the A and go to the B make it major you know make it very positive or you can even drift to minor maybe with brave you're going into the battle and you either kind of end up victorious or you end up defeated so it creates a story with an A and a B section so let's look at another Dorian riff which is a bit more rock sounding that's G sharp Dorian let's try and break that down so the G sharp Dorian so that's one minor three flat major and then you have your seven flat major and then ending on that four major which I always like to end on anyone who makes Dorian likes to kind of do a one minor go into a four major so the melody I have over that is let's learn that maybe a bit higher again again so let's now do chords in the left hand with an arpeggio pattern it's on three four this is the arpeggio pattern nice three by four go to pattern melody again let's move on so it's on B flat Dorian B flat minor F minor B flat minor okay that's four at the four I'm playing an F minor B flat minor D flat major which is a three flat major and I'm ending it with a four major but I'm suspending it to give it a bit more interest so the piano going on with the melody maybe some block chords in the left hand let's learn it D flat again D flat can go nicely to the next section that's F F Dorian that's one minor three flat major four major and there's an interesting chord here which I'll show you now a flat B flat E flat over G B flat F minor the G bass so that's F minor that's one minor three flat major and then a four major and then we do like this for Dorian as well so that's a two with a E flat slash G so E flat slash G in the key of F Dorian would be a seven flat major over a G it's a slash chord it gives you a lot more bite it makes it a lot more it pulls it's a lot more tense so to speak and there's a lot of hope in this chord I feel when you land it so you want to listen to a full song which I have composed with this progression you can check out redemption from one of my earlier albums we leave that in the description so this is more of a kind of a fusion riff I would say because it has a very rooted D at least in the A section and the melody is giving the Dorian and a nice turn around there which I'll show you let's try and learn that so it's on the D Dorian and I'm playing just a D in the bass would be nice till you get acquainted last time just with the D and when you play this D drone for a long while when you play a chord like that's a G over B now I did a B flat there so I'm kind of using the six Dorian and then kind of sliding it to the six flat which is a borrowed note it's a borrowed chord making it even more uplifting and then back to Dorian minor let's do that again that's G over B the borrowed chord B flat which is not part of this Dorian but it comes back to the D minor pretty well right let's try and break that so the lick was that climb that C sharp or a major over C sharp right so a lot of these epic brave sounding riffs which could be of any genre I guess this could be treated like a fusion song and the Dorian seems to work very well for this stuff so that's a four and one cadence Dorian cadence so four major one minor I chose this it's very easy to hear the Dorian and a nice nice swinging kind of rhythm get a bit folk like let's break that down four going to one minor some weird notes there you hear the whole composition I think it's pretty cool you might like it it's on our riff website this is on a rather odd time signature two three four five six one oh four five two three four five six seven one two you call this as a six by four the drummer and the bass player went crazy in this one it was a pleasure to make this song with a blessing chimanga band all the way from Simba way we collaborate with different artists from time to time so this is E flat Dorian just simple let me just show you what's going on there it goes and they do a nice harmony we play this to you bringing out that Dorian as a twin lead that'll be a three-flat going to a three-flat major going to the usual Dorian major which is the four major what you'll find very often with funky stuff is you go from a one minor to a four major and you can make those chords a bit more sophisticated with seventh extensions one minor seventh and the four dominant seventh let's break that down this is how I'm playing the one minor seventh a flat to the D flat and this is how I'm playing the D flat dominant so if you're having a problem playing seventh chords you can do what I do which is the root in the left hand remaining notes in the right hand and you can easily glide to the dominant so just vamping with a one minor and a four seven or a four major four dominant seventh would be very funky you can compose a lot of things let's kind of take it to the key of D and a couple of other keys just to show you this funky option that's a D minor 7 going to G dominant we will be doing a few funky videos as well on just the funk genre so do stay tuned and follow our channel you might want to hit that subscribe button that will be pretty helpful to find our lessons okay moving on yet another example which I do with this I kind of made the chords a bit more sophisticated last time I showed you 7s this time these are 9s and 13s and all those jazz extensions so what did I do do here that's a G minor 9th going to this rather sophisticated C 13th sound that's your 13th there because you have a flat 7 9th also it's a nice way to play a C 13 there's a lot of bass which goes on in funk music we leave that for another tutorial right moving on to some bluesy and some R&B soulful stuff we can't forget those genres let's do a couple of those and then sign off so this is very inspired by the doors they do this a lot the one minor and the two minor it just toggles between so that's pretty much what you do you just take a C minor and then a D minor can embellish it with 7th chord so that's one minor 7th two minor 7th pretty easy just one and two something bluesy on the key of D so you have that tritone which makes it bluesy but you sneak in the Dorian so this is an example which you can understand the use of the Dorian in a very blues riff or a lick kind of context so if you take that's pretty bluesy but but adding that braveness of the Dorian we can bring in the G major and toggle it very quickly back to the home use a lot by Pink Floyd I'm sure you know the songs Pink Floyd uses it almost actually stolen this from guitar players Pink Floyd check them out if you haven't already so in this tutorial I've tried to go over a few of my compositions on the Dorian mode and you'll find all these compositions available cataloged very well on our riffs website do check it out in the description or in the comments and you don't have to just find this you can filter and filter by anything you can even filter by emotion maybe you want a riff which is adventurous or you want to search for it without the musical words with some more English easy to understand words like brave brave will actually be there and we have a lot of other ways to select the riffs from a more musical metadata perspective you can find it by time signature by time feel by scale by key if you're a singer you can find it and like I said earlier these will be available very shortly for you to download and use into your in your own productions using a DAW of your choice it'll be available in a drag and drop kind of way so have fun with that and moving forward we will try and do a lot more of these riff breakdowns as a lot of you have requested for it in the comments and do check out the daily riffs which get released as well by hitting that subscribe and hitting the bell icon for regular notifications you'll be notified because we release one every day pretty much around the same time so try and listen to it and give the channel your support thanks a ton for watching the video cheers and catch you in the next one