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I can't seem to find a straight definition for both.

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18 Answers 18

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More reading: Wikipedia - Musical Mode

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@Xzoechord: The C Aeolian mode would use the same set of notes as the Eb major key! The A Aeolian mode would use the same set of notes as the C major scale and key. See also… – Ulf Åkerstedt Sep 14 '12 at 15:33




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Major pattern in half/whole steps:







5th mode of harmonic minor in half/whole/aug steps



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A mode is a type of scale.


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Think of C Major:

C D E F G A B.

Notice how there are 7 notes.



So using the notes of C Major we get:



Try to stay with me.



So let's say I have a lot of notes:



F G A Bb C D E F





Phyrgian: 1 b2 3 4 5 b6 7

Lydian: 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7

Mixolydian: 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7


Locrian: 1 b2 3 4 b5 b6 7

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UT = C

RE = D

MI = E

FA = F


LA = A








But that's another story.

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         h            h  
     h            h  
 h            h  
             h        h  
         h         h  
     h         h  
 h         h  
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A good explanation of this is given here:

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  • D is the tonic
  • A is the reciting note (listen 1:34)


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I'm a composition student at UCLA who is in the process of writing his dissertation, which on one level, has a lot to do with modes - so it's on my mind a lot these days (which led me to this site). Here are my thoughts:

Robert Fink's answer (above) is an excellent answer. This is the type of answer you would get from someone who has studied music for a long time, the type of answer you might expect from a musicologist. Partially I blame music history textbooks for the confusion surrounding "mode" because within the textbook the above answer does exist, but is spread across many chapters and therefor it is somewhat hard to connect the dots, in fact I think many music students would have a difficult time providing an accurate definition of "mode."

It might help to explain the Greek system of modes (tonoi) first since as far as we know this is where it all started (for Western Europe anyway). As I understand it, the ancient Greeks thought of modes as a series of descending tetrachords ("a descending succession of four tones"). We of course think of scales and modes as ascending, which results from medieval scholars misreading ancient Greek texts. There were 3 different tetrachords, which they called "genera": chromatic, diatonic and enharmonic. I'll focus on "diatonic" since it is the tetrachord that most closely resembles our modern-day scale. Diatonic was comprised of 2 descending whole-steps followed by a half. Today, we could think of this as E-D-C-B. According to Ptolemy's "Harmonics," which is possibly the most accurate description of modes (no one has really figured it out 100% of the way), these tetrachords would be connected to form a mode (just like they did in the Middles Ages and Renaissance). Here is the ancient Greek dorian mode: descending E-D-C-B-A-G-F-E: two descending diatonic tetrachords separated by a whole-step. You can see how off the medieval scholars were when they translated the Greek (not that it was their fault, they did their best), our dorian ascending, D-E-F-G-A-B-C-(D) sounds much different than their dorian. The Greek system of modes was very complex so for the sake of time and space, I'll stop there.

The point of the previous (and somewhat tedious - sorry) paragraph, is that perhaps the best way to think of "mode" as it's been used for millennia, is to think of trichords, tetrachords, pentachords, or hexachords that are connected by an interval (like a whole-step or half-step) or that overlap to create a "larger scale-like structure." So dorian as Robert Fink pointed out is two hexachords that overlap, but are really thought of as two tetrachords:

overlapping hexachords: [C-D-E-F-{G-A]B-C-D-E}  which result in
       two tetrachords:    D-E-F-G -A-B-C-D.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, composers started using "synthetic modes" (because they are not derived from the mojor/minor/modal system). The first were whole-tone and octatonic (8-notes). Whole-tone is created by connecting nothing but whole-steps for example: C-D-E-F#-G#-A#-C. Octatonic is created by connecting whole-steps and half-steps or vice versa, for example: C-C#-D#-E-F#-G-A-Bb-C. But, like the Greek and medieval modes, you could also think of them as connected trichords or tetrachords:

whole-tone as trichords: [C-D-E]-[F#-G#-A#]

Octatonic as trichord or tetrachord: [C-C#-D#]-[E-F#-G]-[A-Bb-C] or [C-C#-D#-E]-[F#-G-A-Bb]-[C-C# etc..]

In both, notice that the whole-step (W) half-step (H) interval pattern is maintained: whole-tone - [W,W]-W-[W,W], octatonic - [H,W]-H-[H,W]-H-[H,W] [H,W,H]-W-[H,W,H]. (Note: the two "synthetic modes" above are symmetrical, so they can basically be divided up in any way and still maintain a clear interval pattern - it's what makes them so interesting and so boring).

The hexatonic mode followed somewhat later and is created by alternating half-steps and minor-thirds: C-C#-E-F-G#-A-C and could be divided like this: [C-C#-E-F#]-[G#-A-C-C#] or [H,m3,H]-m3-[H,m3,H]-m3-[H,m3,H] etc…..

Later form the 1920s/30s on, composers like Bela Bartok, Olivier Messiaen Witold Lutoslawski and Henri Dutilleux (among many others) created their own "modes." Lutoslawski for example would have done something like this: P5,M3,m2,P5,M3,m2-etc.

So, I think that in the most generic sense, a mode is "some pattern of intervals, that may or may not be separated by another interval," like the Lutoslawski example, or even something as complex as:


This has in my experience been the way that most of the composers I talk to today conceive of "mode" as a concept. The reason we think of the "dorian mode" as being a C major scale that starts and ends on D is because we have been playing historical "telephone" (like the kids game) for 2500 years; the Greeks say into one end of the telephone in 500 BCE "here is dorian" and 1000 years later western europeans say that it's phrygian and call something else dorian, another 1500 years later Russians and French impressionists and jazz guys say "remember those old scales that started on different degrees of C major, those sounded cool"

So yes, in jazz theory it's appropriate to call all-the-white-notes from D to D "the dorian mode" because that's how they thought of it, but it's not appropriate to think of it that way if you're studying ancient Greek or medieval music - it's all about context.

Lastly, thought's on scale vs. mode. Here are some generalizations that are to some extent, my opinions, or rather how I think of scale vs. mode:

  • scales have a beginning and an end (sort of). C major is based on functional western tonal harmony, that means when you ascend the scale and arrive at B, you're almost at "the end" of the scale "harmonically speaking." Syntactically speaking, B is the last chapter and C is "and they lived happily ever after." If you hit B and stop there, the audience will feel very uncomfortable, think of it as "harmonic edging."

  • modes, if not run through the 19th century, Western European functional harmony model (like they are in Jazz) have no beginning or end, they can keep going in any direction forever.

  • scales have functional degrees. So too do modes, but the system is somewhat more extensively worked out with scales. Modes have a final and a dominant, and melodic patterns as do scales, but scales have a tonic and a dominant, AND a subdominant, mediant, submediant, supertonic and leading tone.

  • modes tend to place more weight on intervals, scales on scale degrees and harmonic function.

Ok. I'm done. I hope this helps and doesn't make things more confusing. It definitely helped me clarify my thoughts on "mode vs scale" before I had to insert them into a section of my dissertation:).

Actually, there is one other way to think of a mode which is a very 20th century way of thinking about it, which is creating modes by "cycling" or "rotating" through all of the degrees of a given scale. This shouldn't be confused with the above explanation, they are related, but different.

Traditionally most people think of a mode as a scale that starts on a different degree of the major scale other than the tonic, so scale degree 2 = dorian, 3 = phrygian, 4 = lydian, 5 = mixolydian, 6 = aeolian, and 7 = locrian. When you do this, you are "cycling" through all the degrees of the major scale. This idea can also be extended to other scales, like the harmonic minor scale and the pentatonic scale. So you can have pentatonic mode 1 (major), pentatonic mode 2, pentatonic mode 3 (minor), pentatonic mode 4 and pentatonic mode 5.

With symmetrical scales such as whole-tone, octatonic, hexatonic (and all of Messiaen's "modes of limited transpositions," some of which are mentioned above), there is no point in thinking about them this way, as for the most part, starting on a different "scale degree" will result in a repetition of the original scale, i.e.: whole tone will always just map onto itself if you start on any "scale degree," octatonic has 2 modes, whole/half or half/whole and the situation is the same for hexatonic.

However, if you create a "synthetic mode" that is not symmetrical, then it is possible to think of it in the same way you might think of a C major scale, and rotate through the various modes in the same way that you can cycle through all of the "modes" of the C major scale.

For example:

Here's my made up mode - m2,m2,m3,M3

This will give you, starting on C: C,C#,D,F,A,A#,B,D,F#,G,G#,B,D# etc.


mode 2: C#,D,F,A,A#,B,D,F#,G,G#,B,D#,E

mode 3: D,F,A,A#,B,D,F#,G,G#,B,D#,E,F


The difference is the order of the intervals, nothing more:

mode 1: m2,m2,m3,M3

mode 2: m2,m3,M3,m2

mode 3: m3,M3,m2,m2

So, mode 1 stacks the small intervals to the left of the tetrachord, mode 2 places them on either side, and mode 3 stacks them to the left.

I'm of the opinion that this doesn't mean a lot unless you can apply some sort of functional harmony to the different modes the way musicians did to the different Impressionist/Jazz modes in the 20th century. Otherwise they are just set classes.

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After reading all the comments, I'm feeling so thankful to have known such great things. Though there is nothing much to add from here but I'd still like to add a little which I feel has some importance while going through the concept of modes. This is just to ease out the perceived complexity of modes and their application in practical guitar playing.

As we know that the major scale notes are spread out across the fretboard and we classify them into 5 positions as per the CAGED mechanism. No matter where we play a major scale on guitar across the positions and no matter which note we start or end it with, a major scale remains a major scale. So either we play a C Maj scale from C to C or from A to A, it remains a C Maj scale. Just by playing a C Maj scale from A doesn't make it an A Aeolion as a large number of guitarists tend to believe. The real decisive factor here is not which note we start our major scale with. The decisive factor is the backing track.

Now, as we know that there are 7 modes 'of' a major scale namely Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian; each starting with each of the seven notes of the major scale. So the C Maj scale has 7 modes on each of its notes which I named earlier. I don't feel that if we start and end C Maj scale on C then its C Ionian and if we start and end C Maj scale on d then its D Dorian. We have to see it in the following way. If a C Maj scale is played, no matter in what order, on a C Maj backing track then its C Ionian. If a C Maj scale is played, no matter in what order, on a D minor backing track then its D Dorian and so on and so forth.

So the main factor is the backing track. For example, if we play an F Maj scale on A minor backing track then its A Phrygian as A note is the third note in F maj scale. Further, we don't have to learn separate positons for modes. Lets say we want to play B Locrian. Now all you we to think of is that of which major scale, B comes at 7th position. And the answer is C Maj. So all we have to do is to play C Maj scale on a backing track of B diminished and we get your B Locrian. And we already know the major scale postions. That's the way I see it. Looking forward to the reviews of fellow friends here.

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You appear to be mixing up a 'scale' with 'notes that work in a particular key'. They're not the same. – Tim Oct 25 at 18:05

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