What does mode mean in music?

Theory & harmony

Mode

Also: Dorian, Mixolydian, church modes

A mode is a scale defined by which degree of a parent scale it starts on, playing the notes of C major from D to D gives Dorian, from G to G gives Mixolydian.

Seven modes come from the seven starting points of the major scale: Ionian (the major scale itself), Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian (the natural minor), and Locrian. Each has a distinctive interval pattern above its own tonic, and that pattern, not the parent scale, is what the ear hears.

Modes matter to a string player because a great deal of folk-derived and twentieth-century orchestral writing is modal rather than major or minor. A passage with a key signature of one sharp that never resolves to G and keeps landing on D is Dorian, and recognising that stops you hearing it as a piece in the wrong key.

Vaughan Williams, Bartók, Debussy, and most film scoring lean heavily on modal colour, as does virtually all fiddle repertoire.

Scale: A scale is an ordered sequence of pitches spanning an octave, defined by its specific pattern of whole and half steps.
Key signature: A key signature is the group of sharps or flats written at the start of each staff line, indicating which notes are consistently altered throughout the piece.
Relative minor: The relative minor of a major key is the minor key that shares its key signature, found three semitones below the major tonic, A minor is the relative minor of C major.
Interval: An interval is the distance between two pitches, named by the number of staff steps it spans and qualified as perfect, major, minor, augmented, or diminished.

Every term in this glossary is taught in context somewhere in Arco's curricula, on the staff, on the keyboard, and on your own fingerboard at the same time.

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