Ok...last week there was a discussion that involved the early Gregorian modes, which were used by the monks in their chants. Since these modes are usually the first chapter of any book on western music theory, I sort of took for granted that we all knew that it is commonly taught that these modes had their origins in Greece and that our major-minor scales have these modes at their roots.
So I spoke rather haphazardly, since I figured I was just rehashing the obvious
here is Wiki's entry on church modes for anybody who is interested. This is basically what I had shoved down my throat when I was in music school, so here is a good synopsis of essentially what I had taught to me...
if there is actually more modern schalarship on this subject, I would actually be interested knowing that. It seemed my long held belief seemed to run against a few people's ideas about the development of our scales, so I would actually be interested if our collective understanding of this has changed since I was a bright eyed young fella in school
I still do contend that Dorian and Mixolydian modes that we use in our music are these very Church modes I had to learn in school. They have the same names and same interval structures, so I have to say they are the same
thanks yhallhouse...I was starting to think there was some new revelation out there that everyone else had heard about while I was up getting another pint or something like that
For more, do a search on 'modes' in these discussions. Also, one of our members did an introduction they had online. I'll see if I can find it and add the link here, but I suspect you'll find it in one of the many previous discussions we've had on the subject of modes...
well, mix has a good section on his site, but I don't really need churched up on the church modes, I know them all really well. I mean, they make a big deal out of them in jazz because of the chord-scale relationships in improvising and all that
but somebody told me that they aren't church modes and they aren't Greek, which was Greek to me at the time
I do know that alot of our ideas about history have changed in the last 30 years, so I thought I'd ask
Nate, I wasn't giving you a hard time. I even called it a "typo", which I have numerous occurrences of... I just found the irony to be worth commenting on
I have a feeling that these 'modes' and their use in music, predates the categorization by the Church. After all, the physics of a six hole flute dictate a limited number of notes and scales. And six hole flutes have been found that predate historical records. For all we know, some of our trad tunes may predate any of the ancient cultures that we know of. We quibble about whether tunes are Irish or Scot, perhaps both of them borrowed from earlier times, people who predated the Celts and the Picts.
It says there were 8 mediaeval church modes, not 7 (in fact there was a 9th with an equal claim to recognition). And it correctly doesn't list major and minor among them. (That page also has one screaming historical booboo - I am not about to get into the Wikipedia tarpit and try correcting it).
I'm always open to new information but so far you haven't given me any.
The slowplayers link is well presented and accurate as far as it goes (and leaves out a lot of irrelevancies that *need* to be left out), but without any mention of gapped scales it isn't a whole lot of use for traditional music.
ALBrown, look at what I say about the Greek aulos and you will see the problem with that statement about six-hole flutes...
Jack, with all respect, I don't know who you are. There's nothing in your member profile, and you just linked me to an article authored by yourself. If you are a professional academic or something, then please forgive me, but I can't just chuck my musical education into the bin because of something I ran across on the mustard board
I'm really not even arguing all that much beyond the fact that it is commonly taught that the church modes were from greece and our major-minor scales have their roots in them (major is Ionian and natural minor is Aolean)
whether that is true or not, it is commonly taught
I do agree that it is easy to find corollaries in other music systems, but the natural overtone series being what it is, that shouldn't surprise anybody
Don't tangle with Jack, Nate. If ever a bloke knew what he was talking about... This isn't the only website which harbours scholarly contributions about traditional music.
Sorry Jack, I thought you were just some nut busting my chops
I did not know that the names came from greek guys who were writing about middle eastern scales. That's interesting and it makes sense. I thought it came from greeks writing about thier own system that the Roman world coopted and so was latched onto the the church because they were the only guys who could read greek in the 8th century...or something like that
I did once run across the idea at school that the greeks thought each scale created a particular emotional reaction, and so each city state had its own "mode" that it wrote all its tunes with
I guess that would explain why the phrygians were so miserable all the time
but I can't remember what that source was
so anyway, sorry about getting up on my hind legs there
And Mix does a great job of keeping it simple - which for guitar accompaniment (his main focus) is centrally important. He's clearly a man with a mission - to get guitarists playing with good taste - and more power to his elbow. Traditional music really, really doesn't need any more Berklee cultists with their "chord-scale relationships".
"I did once run across the idea at school that the greeks thought each scale created a particular emotional reaction, and so each city state had its own "mode" that it wrote all its tunes with"
You're thinking of Plato's Republic. The translation "mode" is misleading - Plato had in mind something more like "genre", it was as if he was talking about the effect the blues or hip-hop had on people. Which isn't quite as daft.
The same idea of spurious geographical origins for modes is found in Middle Eastern music, where you have modes like "kurdi" (which is not and never has been the property of the Kurds) or "hijaz" (which can't ever have been specific to the Hijaz region of Arabia). We don't know where this idea came from, but my bet is the ancient Sumerians started it, with both the Greeks and the Arabs picking it up from them.
A couple of years ago I read a rather bizarre book called "The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society Through Musical Energy" by David Tame, which discussed the physical and emotional effects of different genres and even of individual sounds, from ancient China up to the present.
He presented some interesting ideas, but they were rather over-shadowed by his depressing prejudices. I'm sure he discussed modes, but I don't think he considered ethnic musics (for want of a better term), though there was so much steam coming out of my ears I might have missed it! Also the mistakes I spotted made me question the reliability of information that was new to me. Has anybody else come across this?
I do know that I recently bought a tuned wind chime that contains the eight notes of the Dorian scale, and since then, I have found that I feel kind of wistful when I sit on my porch. Maybe I need a good old major scale to cheer myself up!
Jack doesn't need any support from me. Suffice it to say that from my perspective his paper on modes (mentioned above) is all you need to know and then some. Historically I think it best for most purposes to think of the modes as defined by the western church and forget about the Greek connection. About all they really gave us is the names and even those were applied to different scales by the Greeks. Perhaps this is the place to mention again this lovely bit from Gustav Reese's Music in the Middle Ages ascribed to a lecturer on Greek Music at a meeting of the Musical Association of London "The only progessor of Greek I have ever known who was also a musician always refused on principle to give me any help with a stiff passage from a Greek author on music. His reply was always the same: 'Put that stuff away. Nobody has ever made head or tail of Greek music, and nnobody ever will. That way madness lies.'"
I hadn't heard of Tame before - those ideas come from Rudolf Steiner originally, I think, at any rate they're very much like what you hear from Waldorf-school types. From the bits quoted on the web I think I'll give it a miss. (It's a superficial line of thinking even considered in spiritual terms - the Tibetan Buddhist ritual music associated with the Book of the Dead also involves confronting horrific entities, but the idea is that you pass through that confrontation towards enlightenment).
This take on Plato's ideas on mode is a bit less silly:
but I'd like to see what a competent statistician makes of the argument. It would be nice if Persi Diaconis would take it on.
BTW I wasn't intending to get at Nate personally as I didn't remember who mentioned "chord-scale relationships" - I stand by my comment that their application to traditional music is entirely destructive, though.
"Church" Modes
"Church" Modes
Ok...last week there was a discussion that involved the early Gregorian modes, which were used by the monks in their chants. Since these modes are usually the first chapter of any book on western music theory, I sort of took for granted that we all knew that it is commonly taught that these modes had their origins in Greece and that our major-minor scales have these modes at their roots.
So I spoke rather haphazardly, since I figured I was just rehashing the obvious
here is Wiki's entry on church modes for anybody who is interested. This is basically what I had shoved down my throat when I was in music school, so here is a good synopsis of essentially what I had taught to me...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_mode
if there is actually more modern schalarship on this subject, I would actually be interested knowing that. It seemed my long held belief seemed to run against a few people's ideas about the development of our scales, so I would actually be interested if our collective understanding of this has changed since I was a bright eyed young fella in school
I still do contend that Dorian and Mixolydian modes that we use in our music are these very Church modes I had to learn in school. They have the same names and same interval structures, so I have to say they are the same
so what say you?
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
Yes, indeed, they are.
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by yhaalhouse
Re: "Church" Modes
thanks yhallhouse...I was starting to think there was some new revelation out there that everyone else had heard about while I was up getting another pint or something like that
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
I laughed out loud at the *irony* of the typo in the spelling of the word scholarship
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Reverend
Re: "Church" Modes
Schaller! ~ Yeah, I love it... Brilliant and on topic too...
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: "Church" Modes
For more, do a search on 'modes' in these discussions. Also, one of our members did an introduction they had online. I'll see if I can find it and add the link here, but I suspect you'll find it in one of the many previous discussions we've had on the subject of modes...
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: "Church" Modes
hey, I tried, ok? I just wanted to know if I got brainwashed at the university or if they were throwing strait dice with me.
I had to pay back those damned loans for years, you know!
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
well, mix has a good section on his site, but I don't really need churched up on the church modes, I know them all really well. I mean, they make a big deal out of them in jazz because of the chord-scale relationships in improvising and all that
but somebody told me that they aren't church modes and they aren't Greek, which was Greek to me at the time
I do know that alot of our ideas about history have changed in the last 30 years, so I thought I'd ask
....but please, don't let that stop the slagging!
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
hey ceol, you talking about this one? http://www.slowplayers.org/SCTLS/modes.htm
Nate, I wasn't giving you a hard time. I even called it a "typo", which I have numerous occurrences of... I just found the irony to be worth commenting on
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Reverend
Re: "Church" Modes
I thought it was funny, too, rev
I mean, what kind of idiot misspells scholarship when asking an academic question, anyway?
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
I have a feeling that these 'modes' and their use in music, predates the categorization by the Church. After all, the physics of a six hole flute dictate a limited number of notes and scales. And six hole flutes have been found that predate historical records. For all we know, some of our trad tunes may predate any of the ancient cultures that we know of. We quibble about whether tunes are Irish or Scot, perhaps both of them borrowed from earlier times, people who predated the Celts and the Picts.
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: "Church" Modes
I heard that God actually wrote alot of the really old tunes, Adam started singing them and he taught them to Eve...and so on
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
Did you actually *read* that Wikipedia piece?
It says there were 8 mediaeval church modes, not 7 (in fact there was a 9th with an equal claim to recognition). And it correctly doesn't list major and minor among them. (That page also has one screaming historical booboo - I am not about to get into the Wikipedia tarpit and try correcting it).
Do yourself a favour and actually *look* at what I've written about this stuff: http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Modes/ .
I'm always open to new information but so far you haven't given me any.
The slowplayers link is well presented and accurate as far as it goes (and leaves out a lot of irrelevancies that *need* to be left out), but without any mention of gapped scales it isn't a whole lot of use for traditional music.
ALBrown, look at what I say about the Greek aulos and you will see the problem with that statement about six-hole flutes...
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: "Church" Modes
Jack, with all respect, I don't know who you are. There's nothing in your member profile, and you just linked me to an article authored by yourself. If you are a professional academic or something, then please forgive me, but I can't just chuck my musical education into the bin because of something I ran across on the mustard board
I'm really not even arguing all that much beyond the fact that it is commonly taught that the church modes were from greece and our major-minor scales have their roots in them (major is Ionian and natural minor is Aolean)
whether that is true or not, it is commonly taught
I do agree that it is easy to find corollaries in other music systems, but the natural overtone series being what it is, that shouldn't surprise anybody
but mixolydian is a gregorian mode
on that, I'm afraid I have to stand pat
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
Just read my pages and tell me what you think. There's much more there than in any of the sources you've listed but it shouldn't be that hard.
You know who I am (or can easily find out). You have no idea who wrote anything on Wikipedia - all their authors conceal their identity.
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: "Church" Modes
Don't tangle with Jack, Nate. If ever a bloke knew what he was talking about... This isn't the only website which harbours scholarly contributions about traditional music.
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Steve Shaw
Re: "Church" Modes
Mix's website about Irish modes and chords is http://www.intermix.freeuk.com/
# Posted on July 28th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: "Church" Modes
Sorry Jack, I thought you were just some nut busting my chops
I did not know that the names came from greek guys who were writing about middle eastern scales. That's interesting and it makes sense. I thought it came from greeks writing about thier own system that the Roman world coopted and so was latched onto the the church because they were the only guys who could read greek in the 8th century...or something like that
I did once run across the idea at school that the greeks thought each scale created a particular emotional reaction, and so each city state had its own "mode" that it wrote all its tunes with
I guess that would explain why the phrygians were so miserable all the time
but I can't remember what that source was
so anyway, sorry about getting up on my hind legs there
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
And Mix does a great job of keeping it simple - which for guitar accompaniment (his main focus) is centrally important. He's clearly a man with a mission - to get guitarists playing with good taste - and more power to his elbow. Traditional music really, really doesn't need any more Berklee cultists with their "chord-scale relationships".
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: "Church" Modes
well... so much for being nice
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: "Church" Modes
"I did once run across the idea at school that the greeks thought each scale created a particular emotional reaction, and so each city state had its own "mode" that it wrote all its tunes with"
You're thinking of Plato's Republic. The translation "mode" is misleading - Plato had in mind something more like "genre", it was as if he was talking about the effect the blues or hip-hop had on people. Which isn't quite as daft.
The same idea of spurious geographical origins for modes is found in Middle Eastern music, where you have modes like "kurdi" (which is not and never has been the property of the Kurds) or "hijaz" (which can't ever have been specific to the Hijaz region of Arabia). We don't know where this idea came from, but my bet is the ancient Sumerians started it, with both the Greeks and the Arabs picking it up from them.
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: "Church" Modes
A couple of years ago I read a rather bizarre book called "The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society Through Musical Energy" by David Tame, which discussed the physical and emotional effects of different genres and even of individual sounds, from ancient China up to the present.
He presented some interesting ideas, but they were rather over-shadowed by his depressing prejudices. I'm sure he discussed modes, but I don't think he considered ethnic musics (for want of a better term), though there was so much steam coming out of my ears I might have missed it! Also the mistakes I spotted made me question the reliability of information that was new to me. Has anybody else come across this?
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by Slightly Mad Scientist
Re: "Church" Modes
I do know that I recently bought a tuned wind chime that contains the eight notes of the Dorian scale, and since then, I have found that I feel kind of wistful when I sit on my porch. Maybe I need a good old major scale to cheer myself up!
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: "Church" Modes
"I heard that God actually wrote alot of the really old tunes, Adam started singing them and he taught them to Eve...and so on "
Which just goes to prove that the earliest instruments were the string family - they were told not to touch the forbidden flute.
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by All Moldy
Re: "Church" Modes
Jack doesn't need any support from me. Suffice it to say that from my perspective his paper on modes (mentioned above) is all you need to know and then some. Historically I think it best for most purposes to think of the modes as defined by the western church and forget about the Greek connection. About all they really gave us is the names and even those were applied to different scales by the Greeks. Perhaps this is the place to mention again this lovely bit from Gustav Reese's Music in the Middle Ages ascribed to a lecturer on Greek Music at a meeting of the Musical Association of London "The only progessor of Greek I have ever known who was also a musician always refused on principle to give me any help with a stiff passage from a Greek author on music. His reply was always the same: 'Put that stuff away. Nobody has ever made head or tail of Greek music, and nnobody ever will. That way madness lies.'"
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by cboody
Re: "Church" Modes
professor...professor...
nobody...nobody...
I need to proof read....
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by cboody
Re: "Church" Modes
I hadn't heard of Tame before - those ideas come from Rudolf Steiner originally, I think, at any rate they're very much like what you hear from Waldorf-school types. From the bits quoted on the web I think I'll give it a miss. (It's a superficial line of thinking even considered in spiritual terms - the Tibetan Buddhist ritual music associated with the Book of the Dead also involves confronting horrific entities, but the idea is that you pass through that confrontation towards enlightenment).
This take on Plato's ideas on mode is a bit less silly:
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=5894
but I'd like to see what a competent statistician makes of the argument. It would be nice if Persi Diaconis would take it on.
BTW I wasn't intending to get at Nate personally as I didn't remember who mentioned "chord-scale relationships" - I stand by my comment that their application to traditional music is entirely destructive, though.
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: "Church" Modes
"I laughed out loud at the *irony* of the typo in the spelling of the word scholarship"
You're no better yourself, Reverend - you've omitted a space and an aposrophe. Besides, "scholar's hip" is two words.
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Schallership ~ in case anyone is unfamiliar with this famous brand ~
Schaller
http://schaller-electronic.com/hp121089/Startseite.htm
Schaller machine heads / tuners
http://guitar-machine-heads.com/hp12600/Machine-Heads.htm?ITServ=C78cf3d24X12a1ef8d3ffX779f
That's what I loved and found a hoot about the mis-spelling...
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: "Church" Modes
Speling is for lozers!
# Posted on July 29th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: "Church" Modes
Write ahn
# Posted on July 30th 2010 by cboody
Re: "Church" Modes
I've written "ahn". What happens next?
# Posted on July 30th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: "Church" Modes
# Posted on July 30th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: "Church" Modes
@ lazyhound Write off....
# Posted on July 31st 2010 by cboody