irish modal music

rkottke · April 27, 2004, 12:58pm

I would like to know more about “Irish Modal Music”. Can anyone point me to information on it. TIA

Bretton · April 27, 2004, 2:03pm

Irish Modes and the “D” Tin Whistle
http://www.geocities.com/novairishsession/modes/modes.htm

Grey Larsen’s “Modal Scales in Traditional Irish Music”
http://www.greylarsen.com/services/tunebank/modalscales.pdf

If you do a search of the C&F archives you’ll find more. It’s been discussed before.

EDIT: Sorry, wrong link for the Larsen site. Fixed now.

-Brett

amar · April 27, 2004, 3:25pm

i found a very educational link too: http://www.standingstones.com/modeharm.html

rkottke · April 27, 2004, 5:57pm

Thank you for the responses. Its the three links mentioned in your replies and Grey’s two books that really got me into trying to understand modal music. But for some reason, mental block on my part or something similar, I just cannot get the concept down to an intuitive level.

ErikT · April 27, 2004, 6:44pm

Here are a few thoughts that might help.

A mode is an organization of sound. Here’s an analogy that might help:

There are eight food stores on a street. At one end you have an Asian food store, then as you move down the lane you get to Indian, then as you continue perhaps a vegatable store then a meat store and you work your way to the end where there’s a big general staple store.

If I were to watch where you spend the most of your time shopping, I could get a feel for what you like to eat. Sure, you may have to visit the vegi stand once in a while, but if you’re always in front of the meat market I’ll get the feeling that you’re not vegitarian.

Modes are similar. They use the same eight shops (notes - 7 plus the octave) but depending upon which ones you hang out at most, there will be a specific flavor to the sound that you play. Do you hang out at a minor third a lot? Is the 7th a whole step or half step. These will determine whether your tune sounds bright or sorrowful. Whether it creates anxiety or establishes peace.

So as for reading the mode, knowing what notes are in each mode will only come with a lot of repetative practice in each of those modes - I know that I still have to think about it. The basic major mode (Ionian) has the following construction: Whole Step, Whole, half step, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half. (WWHWWWH) You’ll notice that this is two sets of WWH joined by a Whole Step*. This is the major scale. The Natural Minor (Aeolian) starts on the last W in the above series, so it looks like WHWWHWW.

The thing to keep in mind is that the steps are the spaces between notes and the notes themselves are between the W’s and H’s above.

So for the key of D, with two sharps, the Ionian looks like: DEF# G ABC#
The Aeolian looks like BC#D E F#GA. Other modes just start on other letters, but the key is the same.

Did I just make this more difficult? Hmm, maybe.

Erik

p.s. off topic. If you take the last three notes in the series and put them at the beginning of the scale and then sharp the seventh, you get the next key in the circle of fifths (go in reverse for flat keys).

For example: in the key of D the notes are DEF# G ABC#.

Take the last three: ABC#
So we know that the next key is A.

If we start with ABC# the next notes would be D EF#G but we need to sharp the 7th so we end up with a G#. Thus the major key of A is ABC# D EF#G#

Colin · April 27, 2004, 7:03pm

ErikT wrote:
"A mode is an organization of sound. Here’s an analogy that might help:
There are eight food stores on a street. At one end you have an Asian
food store, then as you move down the lane you get to Indian, then as
you continue perhaps a vegatable store then a meat store and you work
your way to the end where there’s a big general staple store.
If I were to watch where you spend the most of your time shopping, I
could get a feel for what you like to eat. Sure, you may have to visit the
vegi stand once in a while, but if you’re always in front of the meat
market I’ll get the feeling that you’re not vegitarian. "

…mmm. ErikT, I’m not so sure you helped with your modal analogy …
but you certainly got me thinking about cooking up a curry tonight.
Thanks!
I guess modes could be described as the spices of the traditional music
world and each has its own distinctive flavour.

Colin

Darwin · April 27, 2004, 7:16pm

Here’s another try.

The basic idea is that given the common seven-tone scale, composed of a series of “half-step” and “whole-step” intervals, the half-steps and whole-steps appear at different places in the scale.

In Western music, an octave actually covers 12 half-tone intervals before it repeats. If you play an open string on a guitar, fretting it one fret at a time up the neck will change the pitch of that string by one half-tone at a time. When you reach the 12th fret, you are playing the open-string note one octave higher.

By omitting 5 of the tones, you get the standard seven-tone “octave” scale. Say you start on D:

1 D
(D#)
2 E
(F)
3 F#
4 G
(G#)
5 A
(A#)
6 B
(C)
7 C#
8 d

The notes in parens are the omitted tones. The remaining notes are numbered in sequence. Notice that this results in half-tone intervals between notes 3 (F#) and 4 (G), and between 7 (C#) and 8 (d), with whole tones between the remaining adjacent pairs. A scale with the half-tones in those positions is called the “Ionian mode”, but is more commonly referred to as the “major scale”. Because the starting and ending notes are D, we refer to it as “D Ionian” or, more often, “D major”. It’s the position of the half-tones that determines the mode, not the starting and ending notes. The term “key” usually refers to the combination of starting note and mode, as in “D major”.

A standard D whistle is made so that it will play the numbered tones from 1 through 7 just by covering all the holes and lifting one finger at a time. By over-blowing, you can go through the process again and get a second octave (on most whistles).

If you use that same whistle and consider the low E as the first note of the scale (starting with the 6th hole uncovered and going into the second octave), you get the following:

1 E
(F)
2 F#
3 G
(G#)
4 A
(A#)
5 B
(C)
6 C#
7 d
(d#)
8 e

Now, the half-tone intervals occur between notes 2 and 3, and between notes 6 and 7. A scale with the half-tones in those positions is called the “Dorian mode”. Because the starting and ending notes are E, we can refer to it as “E Dorian”.

The two other most common modes in ITM (shown for a D whistle) are:

Mixolydian (half-tones at 3-4 and 6-7):

1 A
(A#)
2 B
(C)
3 C#
4 d
(d#)
5 e
(f)
6 f#
7 g
(g#)
8 a

Aeolian (AKA minor) (half-tones at 2-3 and 5-6):

1 B
(C)
2 C#
3 d
(d#)
4 e
(f)
5 f#
6 g
(g#)
7 a
(a#)
8 b

If you take the D major scale as a reference, you can say that the Dorian mode starts on the 2nd note of that scale (E), the Mixolydian starts on the 5th note (A), and the minor (Aeolian) starts on the 6th note (B).

If you take the G major scale as a reference, it starts on G, the Dorian starts on the 2nd note (A), the Mixolydian on the 5th (D), and the minor on the 6th (E)–all using the same notes as the G major scale:

G A B C D E F# g

If you can play a song on your D whistle with no cross-fingering, and the last note of the song is E, it’s probably Dorian. If the last note is A, it’s probably Mixolydian, and so on–D for major, B for minor. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a good place to start. It’s possible to figure out the exceptions, but it takes some experience–or a better theoretical approach than I can come up with, not having any formal musical training, myself. When in doubt, I rely on my guitar.

ErikT · April 27, 2004, 7:23pm

Indian curry or Thai?

Colin · April 27, 2004, 7:31pm

ErikT wrote:
"Indian curry or Thai? "

Indian - probably a spicy Beef Madras with some nice, fresh, hot naan
and rice.
I’m starting to get hungry now …

Colin

ErikT · April 27, 2004, 7:33pm

Ohhh, I love naan. We had an Indian friend that made us eat with our fingers…

That’s it. We’re doing Indian for lunch!

ErikT · April 27, 2004, 7:35pm

rkottke, would you please change the topic to Irish Modes and World Cuisine.

Thanks, Erik

Colin · April 27, 2004, 9:12pm

ErikT wrote:
“Ohhh, I love naan. We had an Indian friend that made us eat with our
fingers…
That’s it. We’re doing Indian for lunch!”

OK - I’ll meet you tomorrow. Let’s meet halfway. I guess that would be
somewhere around Edmonton, Alberta you reckon ?

Colin

Caj · April 27, 2004, 10:27pm

Intuitive level, hmmm. Maybe using examples is best:

There are four modes you need to care about. Two feel positive, two feel negative. Play these scales on yer whistle:

                Positive                          Negative

Ionian:        DEF#GABC#D            Dorian:     EF#GABC#DE
Mixolydian:    ABC#DEF#GA            Aolian:     BC#DEF#GAB

Hear how differently they sound? It’s the same 7 notes cycling through in the same order, but the feel depends on where you start, where the downbeat is.

Chances are if you play an Irish tune that start with lots of Es, it’s going to be in a minor key. Often that minor key is E Dorian, with 2 sharps. Sometimes it is A dorian, with 1 sharp.

Examples:

The Lilting Banshee (AKA Bobby Casey’s jig) starts:
EAA EAA | BAB G3 Sounds like a minor key. That’s in A Dorian because those first few notes are part of an A minor chord (ACE).
A Dorian has one sharp, scale == ABCDEF#GA
Morrison’s Jig sometimes starts:
E3 BEB | EBE AF#D Sounds like a minor key. That’s in E Dorian because those first few notes are part of an E minor chord (EGB).

In Dorian tunes you will often see chords that hop back and forth 1 step. For instance E-minor (EGB) then D-Major (DF#A) over and over. In A dorian tunes, the chords often hop between A-minor (ACE) and G-major (GBD). Look at Morrison’s above for an example. Es and Bs at first, then DF#A.

Caj

eskin · April 27, 2004, 11:55pm

Here’s a page I put together a while back on DADGAD guitar modal backup, complete with some prototypical modal tunes in .abc format.

Here’s the prototype tunes I listed, with their .ABC notation:

This file contains “template” modal reels that can be used for practicing DADGAD
backup patterns for D Major, D Mixolydian, E Dorian, G Major, A Major,
A Mixolydian, and A Dorian modes.

Michel Eskin

Last updated 16 January 2004

D Major
Primary chords are D Maj, G Maj, and A Maj (I Maj, IV Maj, V Maj)

X:1
T:Speed the Plough
R:reel
D:Molloy, Peoples, Brady
D:Paul McGrattan: The Frost Is All Over
Z:id:DADGAD-Template-1
M:C|
K:D
d3A BAFB|AF~F2 EFDE|F2AF G2BG|ABde fgfe|
d2dA BAFB|AF~F2 EFDE|F2AF G2BG|1 ABde fddc:|2 ABde fdde||
|:fa~a2 afdf|gefd edBd|faab afdB|ABde feeg|
faaf afdf|gefd edBA|F2AF G2BG|1 ABde fdde:|2 ABde fgfe||

D Mixolydian
Primary chords are D Maj, C Maj, and A Maj (I Maj, VII Maj, V Maj)

X:4
T:Collier’s Reel, The
R:reel
D:Josie McDermott
D:Declan Masterson
Z:id:DADGAD-Template-4
M:C|
K:Dmix
FD (3EFG ~A3B|cAdB cAGc|Add^c d2 (3efg|fdec dcAG|
FD (3EFG ~A3B|cAdB cAGc|Addc ABAG|1 EFGE FDDE:|2 EFGE FDDg||
|:fd (3efg fdec|Addc Adde|fd (3efg fdec|AGAB c2cd|
eaag efge|dfed cAGc|Addc ABAG|1 EFGE FDDg:|2 EFGE FDDE||

E Dorian
Primary chords are E Min, D Maj, and B Min (I Min, VII Maj, V Min)

X:6
T:Cooley’s
T:Luttrell’s Pass
R:reel
C:Joe Mills, Galway (1938)
D:Dubliners: 25 Years Celebration.
D:Noel Hill & Tony Linnane
D:Frankie Gavin & Paul Brock: Tribute to Joe Cooley
Z:id:DADGAD-Template-6
M:C|
K:Edor
EBBA B2EB|~B2AB dBAG|(3FED AD BDAD|FDFA dAFD|
EBBA B2EB|~B2AB defg|afef dBAF|1 DEFD E2ED:|2 DEFD E2gf||
|:eB~B2 eBgB|eB~B2 gedB|A2FA DAFA|~A2FA defg|
eB~B2 eBgB|eB~B2 defg|afef dBAF|1 DEFD E2gf:|2 DEFD E2ED||

G Major
Primary chords are G Maj, C Maj, and D Maj (I Maj, IV Maj, V Maj)

A Major
Primary chords are A Maj, D Maj, and E Maj (I Maj, IV Maj, V Maj)

X:9
T:Mason’s Apron, The
R:reel
H:This is the standard two-part version, with some variations.
Z:id:DADGAD-Template-9
M:C|
K:A
eg|:aA~A2 cBAF|EFAB cABc|dB~B2 BcBA|Bcde fefg|
aA~A2 cBAF|EFAB cABc|dcde fgaf|1 ecBc A2eg:|2 ecBc A2AB||
|:c2ec fcec|c2ec fcec|d2fd gdfd|d2fd gfed|
c2ec fcec|c2ec fedc|dcde fgaf|1 ecBc A2AB:|2 ecBc A2||

A Mixolydian
Primary chords are A Maj, G Maj, and E Maj (I Maj, VII Maj, V Maj)

X:11
T:Dinky’s
R:reel
C:Francie Dearg Byrne
D:Altan: Horse with a Heart.
D:De Dannan: .
Z:id:DADGAD-Template-11
M:C|
K:Amix
ed|:cdBc ABcd|egfd edBd|gB~B2 gBaB|gB~B2 gfed|
cdBc ABcd|egfd edBd|g2ge f2ed|1 cdBc A2ed:|2 cdBc A2eg||
|:aA~A2 aAbA|aA~A2 agef|gB~B2 gBaB|gB~B2 gefg|
[1 aA~A2 aAbA|aA~A2 agef|g2ge f2ed|cdBc A2eg:|
[2 a2af g2ge|f2fd edef|g2ge f2ed|cdBc A2||

X:12
T:Monaghan Twig, The
R:reel
D:Dervish: The Boys of Sligo
D:Paddy Keenan: Port an Phiobaire
D:Arcady
Z:id:DADGAD-Template-12
M:C|
K:Amix
cAAB cded|cAAG ~E3B|cAAB cded|BAGB d2ed:|
cdef gfed|(3Bcd ef ~e3d|cdef ~g3e|dBGB d2ed|
cded cded|cAAB cdef|~g3e deed|BAGB d2ed||

A Dorian
Primary chords are A Min, G Maj, and E Min (I Min, VII Maj, V Min)

Easily_Deluded_Fool · April 28, 2004, 6:36am

I’d just like to say thanks for the tunes

kevin_m · April 28, 2004, 7:18am

The whole thing reminds me of that old chestnut ‘can White men play the Blues?’
Eric Clapton isn’t Black or poor (certainly not poor now!),nor could he ever be-unless he did a 'Michael Jackson ’ in reverse ! -a white Englishman with a middleclass background,yet he identifies strongly enough with Blues music to the extent that he is recognised as a great musician by the likes of B.B. King-authentic ‘Bluesman’ or not.
I agree to a large extent that due to media exposure,increased communications, travel,multicultural society etc,we are becoming a ‘Pick and Mix’ culture,where increasingly,you can choose who you want to be-irrespective of your ethnic background or original cultural background.
This will no doubt increase in future until we are all as culturally ‘authentic’ or maybe ‘inauthentic’ as each another.
Wrong dmn thread-I knew I should have drank my coffee first before starting to type!(just got up) sorry folks!

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irish modal music

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