Hi Lee,
I just bought your book on guitar theory and I must say it’s brilliant. I’ve learned so much from it.
I’ve been playing since I was 17, and have got to the point where I can solo quite happily
with decent technique but I always felt a bit in the dark when it came to music theory. The book has certainly helped me with that, as I can now understand how scales and chords are inter-related.
I have question for you around the area of modes. This has been an area I’ve bashed my head against for ages and on the net, it’s touted as the key to unlocking new territory, so I’m keen to ‘crack’ it.
Most guitarists start out with a riff. They then build a song around it, and add a solo.
What they don’t do, is say ‘Today I will write a riff in D mixolydian’ etc
My problem is that I would like to try using different modes over the riffs I create,
but I don’t know how to identify the modes which would work over that riff.
Invariably I end up soloing with good old pentatonics, which can feel like a rutt.
Can you suggest a technique which would help identify the modes which work with a riff?
Cheers
Derrick
Hi Derrick, thanks for the kind words.
I’m not sure if I understand your question properly. I could only say it depends.
If you already have a chord progression then that would likely dictate the mode / key centre. You can find a bit about that here.
https://www.guitar-chords.org.uk/modes/modes.html
If all you have is a riff, then determining what it is would probably depend on where the key centre lies and how many notes are in the riff. Listening to it might make it obvious where the root / key centre is and from there you can figure out the intervals against the root. Either way you need to figure what note the root is, most of the time it should be fairly obvious – if not then try imagining the riff played to end a song, where does it want to end? That should be the home note.
Let’s say it’s “C”. Now figure out what intervals the other notes are in relation to C. If you have a b7 (Bb) then it could belong to any mode other than Ionian and Lydian because all of the others have a b7. We can narrow it down like that. if it also has a b3 then it could be Dorian, Phrygian or any of the modes that have both.
Your riff might not use all seven notes so you may end up with a choice of mode. You won’t always end up with something definite so you could just mess around and choose what you think sounds best and then build the rest of your song around that. You might also find that by the time you’ve added chords and bass etc., that things have changed. At the end of the day, it’s really down to what the song is doing as a whole including all instruments. In other words you might start with one idea but by the time you add everything else, it might change slightly.
Not sure any of that helps, let me know if not.
Thanks Lee. It has helped a little. certainly it’s given me a few pointers as to how to flush out what might fit over the riff. I think the best way might be to reverse engineer the riff , and then simply try a few things…. Cheers for replying!