Is ABC song in XYZ mode?

[AROIOS]

I often see people refer to Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" as a song in Lydian mode, or Sweet Child O'Mine a song in Mixolydian.
 

My problem is: What the heck do they even mean for an entire song to be in XYZ mode?
 

Take "Dreams" for example. Two chords, Fmaj7 and G comprise the whole song. To my crude ears, they are simple IVmaj7 and V of C major or A minor.
 

What I have a problem with is people calling the song F Lydian. Sure, we can solo over that Fmaj7 chord using F Lydian scale. But for a song to be in "F Lydian mode", I expect 1) F to be the tonal center of the song; 2) a prominent #4/#11 note in some form of F major chords. And both conditions are not met in "Dreams".
 

For comparison, I'm fine with people calling the Simpson's theme, or Joe Satriani's "Flying in a blue dream", "a song in Lydian mode". Their main themes both feature prominent #4/#11 note from the root. But even then, it's seems more technically accurate to call these songs "featuring Lydian mode", rather than "a song in * Lydian mode".
 

What's your take?
 

 

 

 

[analogika]

It's absolutely important, because it completely dictates what you can play over it — passing notes, solos, alternate chord voicings, etc. 

 

Try playing F ionian over that Mac song — the Bb sticks out like a hangnail. 

 

The only issue I'd have is that it's not clear whether the tonal center of that song is the lydian F or the mixo G. 

[stoken6]

"Dreams" is weird. I don't hear it in C major, and not completely in A minor. It's more of an F tonality or a G tonality, and the closing chord is F major, so I would vote for the former. 

 

It's not like "I wanna hold your hand", where the opening chords are quickly established as IV and V of the tonic. 

 

I quite like describing key centres [centers] in this way - "Dreams is in F lydian", "Sweet Home Alabama is in D mixolydian", etc. - as it avoids confusion over whether the declared key is the opening chord or the (implied/inferred) I chord.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[AnotherScott]

5 hours ago, stoken6 said:

"Dreams" is weird. I don't hear it in C major, and not completely in A minor. It's more of an F tonality or a G tonality, and the closing chord is F major, so I would vote for the former. 

What I think is weird about it is that, at least to me, it IS in C major/ A minor, but the tonic chord hardly appears, if at all The dance remix Stevie Nicks did never goes to the Am. The Fleetwood Mac version goes to it once, during the guitar lead (at 1:52 in the video in the OP). But note, when he does go to that Am, how much it feels like an "anchor" or "home" chord (or the relative minor of same). Sure they end it on an F, but if they ended it on a C or an Am, it would actually feel more "complete" than it does ending on an F. It's cool that they "leave you hanging" at the end, ending the song on a comma instead of a period. But the song  never actually feels like it's in F or G. Unless maybe you're making a modal argument, I think you have to go with C/Am.

 

5 hours ago, stoken6 said:

"Sweet Home Alabama is in G mixolydian"

Dem dere's fightin' words. (And yes, I'm among the many who feels the song entirely in D major, and would have agreed with the producer or whoever it was who thought the guitarist was whacky for playing a G major lead in the middle. To me it's more "Won't Get Fooled Again" than "Werewolves in London.")

[stoken6]

3 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

Dem dere's fightin' words. (And yes, I'm among the many who feels the song entirely in D major, and would have agreed with the producer or whoever it was who thought the guitarist was whacky for playing a G major lead in the middle. To me it's more "Won't Get Fooled Again" than "Werewolves in London.")

Dem dere's actually nonsense words. Of course Alabama's not in G mixo - there's a f#####g F# in the very first chord. D mixolydian is what I meant. I'm embarrassed enough to have edited my post above. 

 

"Werewolves" - now that's in G mixolydian. 

 

Cheers, Mike.

[MathOfInsects]

Dreams is in C, it just never goes there. That Am in the solo is unequivocally a vi; not a iii walking down to a I, not a i giving way to a VI. Play Dreams for five hours and at the end of the 5 hours, hit a C chord, and that song will sound "complete." No other chord in the progression functions this way. 

There is a little bit of bimodality in the melody, which favors Am pent, rather than C Major pent. But the harmonic weight absolutely and unambiguously pulls to C.

 

I think there are exactly 0 F's in the melody, so if you play F Lydian to solo with, you end up highlighting what is otherwise an "avoid" tone in that song. This is another clue to the underlying tonal center of that song.

 

HOWEVER: the harmony is unequivocally F Lydian to the "appropriate" G chord in that key--a G with an E and an F in it (a 13 chord).

As for the OP....what is the question exactly? Are you asking WHY we would need to know this? Or HOW one knows it?

[timwat]

Theory is just a means to an end. The end isn't to be "right" - the end is to be able to play something great, that sounds great, that supports the song and all of that.

 

A few gifted folks don't need any formal knowledge of theory, or in some cases even how to read music - great music just flows.

 

The rest of us benefit from a more structured analysis of why it "works" or why it sounds that way. But ultimately, does what you play sound good?

 

Sometimes, trying to defend the "right" answer about theory can be like arguing why this brand of graphic calculator is better than that other brand to solve a math problem. It can be an interesting conversation in isolation, but solving the problem is all that really matters.

[El Lobo]

I'm enjoying this discussion. I know music theory and the names of the modes and how they'er derived. But my experience playing is that I don't know the name of the mode I'm in, I only know which notes work and which don't. I've played Dreams in jams before and I just think of it as a 2-chord song. I can solo over those changes credibly but I have no idea what mode I'm in or even what key I'm in. I just know what works. 

 

Edit: and just as I post, there's timwat saying it better than I said it. 

[timwat]

FWIW, I was taught (in a great jazz program I had not right being in) that generally all this theory happened after the music was already created. It's an attempt to explain why all those guys sounded they way they did when they changed the face of music. 

 

But it might be argued those guys weren't exploring theory in some classroom, and they weren't trying to defend some thesis in some college course. They were trying to make new music (sometimes, using recognizable popular songs of the day) that hadn't been played before, and that would still earn them a living.

 

A lot of guys I run into are skilled players who know all the right theory answers...but on the stage, they sound like they're in the classroom. They don't work as much as some other guys who may not remember what note gets flatted in the Phrygian mode, but they can consistently move an audience. I've been that first guy too, and I'm trying to grow past that and be more that second guy.

[MathOfInsects]

It's true, "theory" is a thing we (today) often use to analyze a thing that exists, not usually to put that thing into existence. (This has not always been true though.)

 

I think there's room on the bandstand for both "brain" players and "feel" players. And the fact is, if you grew up in the West, your "feel" is already shaped by certain "brain" decisions made centuries ago, since our scale system is purely a set of mathematical decisions made by humans (that is, not "of the earth" in some way). Ours is one of many approaches, and is the outlier in many ways, so our comfort with it is already a "brain" matter. In fact, we in the West have certain "affinity" centers in our brains for the 12 tones of our octave, just as those in other traditions have similar responses to their building blocks.

Same is true for the "brain" player, who is also deploying those sounds in ways that "feel" right for the underlying song (usually!). 

In the end--feel or brain--the only part that matters is the ears.

[AnotherScott]

I agree with both of timwat's posts. Theory is descriptive, explaining why something works (or doesn't), but in a creative field like art or music, should not be prescriptive, telling you what you should do. What you should do comes from... doing. Theory can also be useful in giving people a common language to discuss things. But ultimately it is academic, and has little if any bearing on your ability to create. 

[GovernorSilver]

It makes the most sense to describe a song as "in mode X" when the song is known to be deliberately structured on a mode, such as "Maiden Voyage" (Mixolydian in 3 keys, Dorian in C#) or "So What" (Dorian in 2 keys).

 

If the song was instead built on functional harmony, it's less useful to force modal labeling onto it, and may even add confusion.

[KuruPrionz]

57 minutes ago, timwat said:

Theory is just a means to an end. The end isn't to be "right" - the end is to be able to play something great, that sounds great, that supports the song and all of that.

 

A few gifted folks don't need any formal knowledge of theory, or in some cases even how to read music - great music just flows.

 

The rest of us benefit from a more structured analysis of why it "works" or why it sounds that way. But ultimately, does what you play sound good?

 

Sometimes, trying to defend the "right" answer about theory can be like arguing why this brand of graphic calculator is better than that other brand to solve a math problem. It can be an interesting conversation in isolation, but solving the problem is all that really matters.

I may ruffle some feather here (what else is new?) but attempting to apply European music theory to American popular music may not be the best approach.

American music is rooted in blues music which is further rooted in African music that was in turn influenced by Middle Eastern music. Middle Eastern music has more notes in an octave than European notation allows for, so does blues and jazz. In the States, the piano ended up being used by default because many venues had one available so a keyboarist could just show up and play - and pianos are loud enough to work in a crowded speak-easy. 

 

A 12 note tempered scale fails to provide the same expression. Nobody has to like that but it doesn't change the truth of it. 

 

Listen carefully to Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday, Dixieland trumpet/trombone and all sorts of American music. "The notes that are wrong" are part and parcel of the sound of many songs, Dreams included. 

[El Lobo]

I agree with everything that y'all are saying. Except maybe for "Sweet Home Alabama." I just hate that song. 🤠

[KuruPrionz]

4 minutes ago, El Lobo said:

I agree with everything that y'all are saying. Except maybe for "Sweet Home Alabama." I just hate that song. 🤠

I've only played it a few hundred times, all of them wrong. 

I can't say I've grown to dislike it because I hated it the first time I heard it and that has only gotten worse...

[MathOfInsects]

40 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

I may ruffle some feather here (what else is new?) but attempting to apply European music theory to American popular music may not be the best approach.

American music is rooted in blues music which is further rooted in African music that was in turn influenced by Middle Eastern music. Middle Eastern music has more notes in an octave than European notation allows for, so does blues and jazz. In the States, the piano ended up being used by default because many venues had one available so a keyboarist could just show up and play - and pianos are loud enough to work in a crowded speak-easy. 

 

A 12 note tempered scale fails to provide the same expression. Nobody has to like that but it doesn't change the truth of it. 

 

Listen carefully to Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday, Dixieland trumpet/trombone and all sorts of American music. "The notes that are wrong" are part and parcel of the sound of many songs, Dreams included. 

 

Much truth here. And there does seem to be some commonality between the terraced vocal approaches of Arabic music and the expressive approaches to melody we hear in some African diasporic musics. 

BUT...it turns out it is VERY difficult to trace the music we sort of culturally want to be "African," to the very large and varied continent of Africa. Of course the route is obvious, it's just that it's fairly hard to point to direct musical precursors, particularly along the central-west coast of Africa, where our (the US's) human-trafficking victims originated. 

There was an "unspoken-of" population of Native Americans on US plantations and through the slave-south, both during and after the slavery era. There are some political reasons for that unspokenness. And it's actually quite easy to find minor pentatonic scales, expressive "swoopy" approaches to melody, repeated lyrics, and vocables, among the Native American nations most closely related to the regions where our blues traditions arose. It is also indisputable that "Patient 0" in the sound of what we now call blues, was Native American (and maybe not even black, except by "one-drop" appearance). 

So it seems very likely that we will face a reckoning or rewriting of this particular history or tradition, over time. Basically it will take white folks (Academics) developing the same fascination with/romanticization of disaffected Native Americans, as they have always had with marginalized black folks. 

 

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

 

Much truth here. And there does seem to be some commonality between the terraced vocal approaches of Arabic music and the expressive approaches to melody we hear in some African diasporic musics. 

BUT...it turns out it is VERY difficult to trace the music we sort of culturally want to be "African," to the very large and varied continent of Africa. Of course the route is obvious, it's just that it's fairly hard to point to direct musical precursors, particularly along the central-west coast of Africa, where our (the US's) human-trafficking victims originated. 

There was an "unspoken-of" population of Native Americans on US plantations and through the slave-south, both during and after the slavery era. There are some political reasons for that unspokenness. And it's actually quite easy to find minor pentatonic scales, expressive "swoopy" approaches to melody, repeated lyrics, and vocables, among the Native American nations most closely related to the regions where our blues traditions arose. It is also indisputable that "Patient 0" in the sound of what we now call blues, was Native American (and maybe not even black, except by "one-drop" appearance). 

So it seems very likely that we will face a reckoning or rewriting of this particular history or tradition, over time. Basically it will take white folks (Academics) developing the same fascination with disaffected Native Americans, as they have with marginalized black folks. 

Also truth. Charley Patton was a huge influence in early blues, he had records. Robert Johnson (for one) listened to those records. Charley Patton was native but lived on the Thackery farm because old man Thackery had run the Ku Klux Klan off in no uncertain terms so his workers were safe there. 

 

Yeah, I saw Rumble. Much truth and eye-opening history in that movie. I've been a student of "American music" for a long time and Rumble put some pieces of the puzzle together. 

 

Yes, it's difficult to trace African music. Middle Eastern music travelled far and wide, the oud and the Indian Sarod have simularities but were both made from native materials so they have differences as well. Is it coincidence or influence (and from which direction?) that both the long necked baglama saz and the sitar have moveable frets? The saz I used to own had 16 frets to the octave and you could adjust them (I never did).

 

Bottleneck guitar? A movable fret on one finger, listen to Son House and what he does with that. Muddy Waters had his way of playing too. 

[MathOfInsects]

3 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

Is it coincidence or influence (and from which direction?) that both the long necked baglama saz and the sitar have moveable frets?

Completely because of shared Muslim lineage. Arabic and Indian musics are basically the "whale and hippo" of the music world. 

[analogika]

1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:

Listen carefully to Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday, Dixieland trumpet/trombone and all sorts of American music. "The notes that are wrong" are part and parcel of the sound of many songs, Dreams included. 

I'm not gonna disagree with most of what you write — one of the eye-opening moments in my musicology studies was listening to ca. 1890 wax cylinder recordings of spirituals that had a clearly intonated third right between our idea of the major and minor thirds. 

But there really isn't anything about "Dreams" that doesn't fit perfectly within the Euro-centric harmonic framework: arguably, it's "dreamy" quality is well reflected in the fact that it constantly balances between the subdominant and the dominant, without ever resolving to a tonic. 

[KuruPrionz]

8 minutes ago, analogika said:

I'm not gonna disagree with most of what you write — one of the eye-opening moments in my musicology studies was listening to ca. 1890 wax cylinder recordings of spirituals that had a clearly intonated third right between our idea of the major and minor thirds. 

But there really isn't anything about "Dreams" that doesn't fit perfectly within the Euro-centric harmonic framework: arguably, it's "dreamy" quality is well reflected in the fact that it constantly balances between the subdominant and the dominant, without ever resolving to a tonic. 

Of course, the bed of the song is keyboards, bass and drums, plodding along. Easy enough to parse that, even if I don't read or write music. I'm not disputing your assertion, I'm sure it is accurate. 😋

If you play keys you'll cop Christine McVie's part. Listen to Stevie's singing and Lindsey's guitar work, they are what give the song it's character. I've managed to never play this song but Lindsey's guitar work would be an interesting thing to duplicate. Since I don't write music I don't know if it could be transcribed accurately. 

I suspect one would need to listen and copy some of his flourishes to get them to sound right. An under-rated guitarist beyond any doubt. 

Here is Fleetwood Mac's official video of the song. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ywicffOj4

[El Lobo]

30 minutes ago, analogika said:

But there really isn't anything about "Dreams" that doesn't fit perfectly within the Euro-centric harmonic framework: arguably, it's "dreamy" quality is well reflected in the fact that it constantly balances between the subdominant and the dominant, without ever resolving to a tonic. 

While I agree with that description, I'm sure Stevie Nicks was not thinking about that when she wrote the song. As others have said, music theory is used to explain something after the fact. This wikipedia entry describes how the song was written and how it evolved into what became the finished recording of the song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_(Fleetwood_Mac_song)

[Docbop]

Dam it doesn't anyone have Rick Beato on speed dial.   LOL

 

 

[Bill H.]

To me, Dreams is kind of a precursor to much of what's happening in today's music - where a harmonically related melody is placed atop a repeating chord structure in a way that never resolves. The young seem to be drawn to ambiguity (in more ways than one but I'm not going there) and indeed Dreams is one of the very few songs from the 1970s that is sung by those under 30 in my karaoke show. They seldom know the name of it  but I've come to understand "There you go again" or 'Thunder only happens" as Dreams. 

 

My ears hear it in C/Am, with no modes needed to explain it's tonality. But I listen to this kind of stuff all the time. If I were to mix it as a DJ it would be in those keys.

[analogika]

1 hour ago, El Lobo said:

While I agree with that description, I'm sure Stevie Nicks was not thinking about that when she wrote the song. As others have said, music theory is used to explain something after the fact. 

While that may be the case with this particular song, people do use it all the time while composing to come up with interesting ideas that might work. 

[AROIOS]

16 hours ago, analogika said:

Try playing F ionian over that Mac song — the Bb sticks out like a hangnail. 

Being able to solo over a IV-V progression using Lydian mode of the 4th from the tonal center is one thing; designating the tune's tonal center as that 4th note is a whole other.

 

Mechanically, soloing in F Lydian over "Dream" is no different than soloing in C Ionian, or G Mixolydian, or D Dorian, or A Aeolian... you get the idea. But calling a song whose tonal center is arguably not F, and definitely lacking that distinctive #4 Lydian sound as F Lydian, is pretty contrived as far as I'm concerned. I would have simply called it C Ionian or A Aeolian.

[AROIOS]

12 hours ago, GovernorSilver said:

It makes the most sense to describe a song as "in mode X" when the song is known to be deliberately structured on a mode, such as "Maiden Voyage" (Mixolydian in 3 keys, Dorian in C#) or "So What" (Dorian in 2 keys).

 

If the song was instead built on functional harmony, it's less useful to force modal labeling onto it, and may even add confusion.

I think we are on the same page.

[AROIOS]

14 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

...

HOWEVER: the harmony is unequivocally F Lydian to the "appropriate" G chord in that key--a G with an E and an F in it (a 13 chord).
...
As for the OP....what is the question exactly? Are you asking WHY we would need to know this? Or HOW one knows it?

Yes, the harmony fits F Lydian. The reason though, IMO, is because the progression is IV-V in a song whose tonal center is C (if you consider the song major) or A (of you consider it minor); not because its a Imaj7#4-II progression in a song in the key of F. Not to mention that the defining #4 note ("Lydian" ) is missing entirely whenever the Fmaj7 is played in that song. We almost have to avoid playing it (B) until we get to the G chord.

As I replied analogika above, the harmony not only fits F Lydian, it fits C Ionian, A Aeolian, and G Mixolydian... equally well. The only rationale for people to call the song "F Lydian", and not "C Ionian", "G Mixolydian", or "A Aeolian", seems to be merely that the song starts on F.

My question is more of a bit of a rant over the ambiguity around the common expression "*** song is in *** mode". It seems most of the time, what people are really saying is "you can solo in *** key *** mode on a certain part of that song".

[AnotherScott]

5 hours ago, AROIOS said:

My question is more of a bit of a rant over the ambiguity around the common expression "*** song is in *** mode". 

 

It sounds like you hang out with a classier crowd of musicians than I do. Outside of maybe a forum like this one, I haven't heard that "common" expression outside of a music class. The fanciest key-related discussion I'd likely have with musicians IRL might be at a gig/rehearsal when someone asks "what key?" for the next song, and for clarity, my answer might be "D, first chord A." Or maybe, "it starts on the 5." If someone sees Dreams is the next song on the list and asks the key, my answer would be "starts on F" and that's as far as the discussion would go. ;-)

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

If someone sees Dreams is the next song on the list and asks the key, my answer would be "starts on F" and that's as far as the discussion would go. 😉

 

Or needs to, who hasn't heard this song umpty bajillion times? 

I've never intentionally played the song but I can hear it in my head from all the times its come on the radio. It's more or less a two chord song with distinctive "decoration" that describes the atmosphere. 

If somebody is going to think about which mode it's in, we'll be halfway throught it before they start playing. 

 

I have things to worry about, this isn't one of them. 

[MathOfInsects]

10 hours ago, AROIOS said:

Yes, the harmony fits F Lydian. The reason though, IMO, is because the progression is IV-V in a song whose tonal center is C (if you consider the song major) or A (of you consider it minor); not because its a Imaj7#4-II progression in a song in the key of F. Not to mention that the defining #4 note ("Lydian" ) is missing entirely whenever the Fmaj7 is played in that song. We almost have to avoid playing it (B) until we get to the G chord.

As I replied analogika above, the harmony not only fits F Lydian, it fits C Ionian, A Aeolian, and G Mixolydian... equally well. The only rationale for people to call the song "F Lydian", and not "C Ionian", "G Mixolydian", or "A Aeolian", seems to be merely that the song starts on F.

My question is more of a bit of a rant over the ambiguity around the common expression "*** song is in *** mode". It seems most of the time, what people are really saying is "you can solo in *** key *** mode on a certain part of that song".

There are many ideas being conflated here.

 

The F chord in Dreams is Lydian, in the sense that if it has a "4" in it all, that 4 is sharp. It doesn't matter if the melody ever gets there, any more than it matters if a melody hits a minor 3 when there's a minor chord. In fact the melody in Dreams never once hits an F; that doesn't mean it's not still an F chord.

 

Regardless of what you call it or how you think of it, you need to know the nature of the tones in the chord you're playing; in this case you need to know that for that F chord, the B, when played, is natural, and so is the 7th (the E). You wouldn't play those every time, but you still need to know what they would be, if you played them. (It is not, however, an avoid tone, as you stated. It's inherent in the harmony. You can practically play both chords with a G6 in the RH and only change the bass note.)

 

The song itself is not in F Lydian, and even if it were, no one would call or hand you the song and say anything about its mode. If anyone said anything at all, they'd say, "It's F to G the whole time. There's an Am in bridge. I'll show you where." But really they'd just launch into it, because come on. It's F and G.

Then to play the song, you'd play the F and G chords, and pretty quickly you'd hear that it's really FMa7-G6--meaning, you'd color each with an E. Then when you went to color those chords more, you'd notice that F's 4 can't be a Bb, because you'd play it and it would sound like puke and the bass player would smirk at his friend at the bar about it, and you'd realize, "Right, duh, the G Major chord makes it pretty obvious B's are natural in this."

You'd do the same when it came time to add a "7th" of any kind to the G chord: the existence of the F chord makes it pretty obvious that would be an F natural, not G's diatonic F#.

So now, with no "labeling" at all, you've arrived at a collection of notes that happens to span all the white keys. 

When it came time to solo, if you hadn't noticed this already, you'd hit an F in a run and realize it is furtherly pukalicious. (In real life you'd have already tried to play an F in your RH as you comped and heard the turdliness.) So you'd avoid it. As a result, you'd end up "inventing" a "mode" that contains all the white keys except F. Maybe you'd also notice that a natural resting place for your runs is the note A.

 

That's it. You'd just play the two damn chords. There would be no mention of mode of any kind, as there never is in this situation. And you'd discern that at least one of the notes that results from those two chords is an "avoid" tone as you soloed.

 

If, AFTER THE FACT, on some nerd board like, I don't know, say, this one, you wanted to figure out how that song "works" harmonically...sure, some terms like "Lydian" and "Mixo" might get tossed out, mostly by puppy-killing apes who don't know that this song is absolutely and unequivocally in C--not F rising to G, not G starting on F, not Am hanging out on F, etc. But that's not about "You can solo in...," because come on: everyone knows what you can solo in. It's all the white notes. It's the first thing everyone learns; it's the notes the toddlers hit with their tiny snot-covered hands. The conversation would just be about trying to decode what makes the song so ambiguous, which is what nerds do, even with two-chord songs, which is why we can't have nice things.