Imagine we're writing a tune in, for instance, C major. We have seven diatonic chords, or chords in the key.
And they can each come in many different forms, like power chords, triads,
seventh chords, extended structures, and various inversions.
This already gives us a ton of diverse harmonic possibilities. Here's one example of a diatonic chord progression we might come up with.
Not bad at all, but what if the song called for some more ~exotic colors?~
Well, one powerful technique
we could employ is Modal Interchange, or the borrowing of chords from parallel modes.
We refer to two different modes as being "parallel" to one another when they share the same
tonic, or home pitch. For example C Major and C minor.
Since these are different modes, they contain different diatonic chords.
This is where the magic happens. So our song is in C major,
but how would it sound if we took a chord from the parallel minor and inserted it into our major chord progression?
Pretty cool! That II-7(b5) chord injects just a little taste of Aeolian at a specific moment
into our progression. And that's just one example.
We can get different sounds depending on which chords we borrow and in what context we put them. Let's try another one.
Modal interchange can help us to capture a wide range of highly specific
emotions and atmospheres with our harmony. Now that we have the basic concept down, it's time to take it to the next level.
Here are the diatonic chords from the seven modern modes all running parallel to one another. Not only can we borrow chords from the parallel minor,
we can borrow any chords from any parallel modes. You can probably already imagine the number of possibilities here is massive.
Let's try borrowing one of Phrygian's chords for that progression of ours.
So that was an Ionian chord progression that used both Aeolian and Phrygian modal interchange chords.
We can make this stuff as complex
or as simple as we want.
And modal interchange is not limited to using borrowed chords only in major key progressions.
Here's a Dorian progression that uses a modal interchange chord from Locrian.
Now, how do we know what notes to use in our melodies on top of all these crazy chords? Well, this can actually get pretty
intricate, but for the purposes of this video,
we'll do the quick and dirty version. You want to simply stay in the mode from which any given chord is derived.
Let's go back to that
Ionian progression with borrowed chords from Aeolian and Phrygian. Since the I, IVmaj7(#11), and Imaj7 chords are
diatonic to C Ionian, our melody over these chords will draw from the pitches of the C Ionian scale. Again,
we can make these things as complex or as simple as we want. Let's try something like this.
Now, since we borrowed the bVII chord from C Aeolian, our melody will use the pitches of the C Aeolian scale for the duration
of this chord
And finally, since our bIImaj7 chord was borrowed from C Phrygian, our melody here will use the pitches of the C Phrygian scale.
Altogether, we have an effective melody that moves through several different colors while working well with our harmonic progression.
So, modal interchange really opens the door to a huge landscape of both harmonic and melodic possibilities. Now,
we've really only scratched the surface in this video,
so I recommend spending some time just playing around and exploring all these options.
Eventually, you'll find yourself with a pretty robust sonic palette. If you enjoyed this video and are interested in learning more about anything in the
wide world of music, I do one-on-one Skype lessons.
Just message or email me to learn more about that, and feel free to ask questions in the comments below as well.