 Hi and welcome to another music theory lesson. This is for the advanced music theory curriculum as part of the NCSSM piano and guitar class and today's lesson is sort of a primer on understanding the church modes. Now I gotta tell you this is one of those concepts that once you get it you're gonna be just shocked at how easy it is and everything goes back to the major scale. If you think through all of the music theory levels that you've done with me, you know that I've said many many times if you really know the major scale pattern of whole whole half whole whole half you can figure out just about anything in music theory and this is another expression of that. There are some vocabulary terms here that you'll need to essentially memorize but once you start getting the idea of the church modes you'll be in great shape. So let's take a look at the church modes and see if we can explain this. The church modes are essentially a variety of variations on the major scale. Now if you look on your screen you're going to see that the Ionian mode starts on the first step of the major scale and if we're using just white keys that would be the C and the interval sequence as we've always said with the major scale and you look to the right you'll see whole whole half whole whole half. The T's represent whole steps the S's represent semitones or half steps. Okay so T represents the word tone or whole whole step whole tone. Okay so whole whole half whole whole half. Now as we move on and that's known as the Ionian mode and we know that as the major scale. The Dorian mode is when we use all the white keys from D to D and the tonic of the Dorian mode essentially is the second step of the major scale. So think of the pattern if you were to start on D and end on D using all white keys the pattern would be the one that you see on the right whole half whole whole half whole or if you compare that second line with the line above it you'll notice that we've essentially just shifted the whole step half step pattern over by one. Okay so we're staying on all white keys from D to D that's known as the Dorian mode. When we move to the Phrygian mode it's just as if we were starting on the white key E and we again shift the whole step half step pattern to the left by one and now the pattern is half whole whole whole half whole whole. I'm hoping at this point you're starting to get the idea. The Lydian mode begins on the fourth step of the major scale. The Mixolydian mode begins on the fifth step of the major scale. The Aeolian mode begins on the sixth step of the major scale and you ought to be looking at that when going well wait a second I know the Aeolian mode it is the same as natural minor and that would be true okay whole half whole whole half whole whole. That ought to really resonate for you so hopefully you'll begin to see these patterns and of course the Locrian mode starts on the seventh step of the major scale and in that case on the white keys it would be a B and the whole step half step pattern continues to shift to the left like so and if we were to do that even one more time we would begin here on the whole step and you would notice that we would have whole whole half whole whole and half which would give us which would get us right back to the major tonality okay so at this point I hope you understand at least the vocabulary terms as they're associated now let's go to the staff and take a look at the two ways that we're going to be doing this we can really do things two ways one is we might say okay give me a let's say a Dorian mode based on any given pitch so let's let's put start with a note G and we want to establish a scale that's a Dorian mode based on the note G well the first thing we know is we have to represent every single letter so we're going to go ahead and do that okay G A B C D E F and G we've got those represented now let's go to the Dorian mode here and we see that our whole step half step pattern is whole half whole whole half whole so we're going to go back G to A well in fact let's just do this whole half whole whole whole half whole whole half whole okay now G to A is a whole step we don't need to change anything A to B flat gives us our half step okay B flat to C is in fact a whole step C to D is in fact a whole step D to E is in fact a whole step E to F is in fact a half step and F to G is a whole step so this would be the G Dorian scale okay so that's how we would establish a Dorian tonality or a Dorian mode from any given pitch so that's the first thing we could do or we might find ourselves in a different situation where we have something like let's do this I'll give you a scale A B C sharp D E F sharp G oops A okay and let's write those down A B C sharp D E F sharp G A now you've got the scale and now I give you the assignment tell me what is the mode okay what's the mode and the way you would do that is find your whole step half step pattern so we would go here and go okay A to B whole step B to C sharp whole step C sharp to D half step D to E whole step E to F sharp whole step F sharp to G half step and G to A whole step okay so we've got the pattern whole whole half whole half whole go back up here whole whole half whole whole half whole and we can see that that pattern matches up with the Mixolydian pattern and so what we have here is an A Mixolydian scale and I might even put the natural sign there because one of the characteristics of the Mixolydian scale is that it's just like a major scale with a flatted seventh I happen to know that so I'm ready to go and you'll see that that's actually the case so here is our Mixolydian scale now just one other little thing just to take it just a step further you'll notice that in this particular scale we have a C sharp and we have an F sharp and you know that two sharps is typically the key of D major and the Mixolydian scale if we go back here as you can see starts on the fifth step of the major key and sure enough the A Mixolydian is the fifth step of the key of D major so everything matches up here and we can really see what's going on in your work with modes you will have two different situations you'll either be asked to write a scale based on a starting pitch or you will be asked to take a look at a mode or a scale and determine what mode it is either way I think now you've got the tools to do that good luck as you dive into the church modes these are very useful in a lot of ways and are used all over the literature from early medieval music all the way into contemporary composition so good luck and we'll look forward to seeing you again