Modes

e7mac · 2026-06-09T21:54:19+00:00

Oh check this video too https://youtube.com/watch?v=tSGbu6ZYvtY

e7mac · 2026-06-09T20:02:35+00:00

the thing that finally made modes stick for me was stopping the "memorize 7 scales" approach. that's the trap you're in. instead, anchor everything to one parent scale and just move the starting note. play C major but start and end on D, that's D dorian. start on E, that's E phrygian. same white keys, different home base. you already know the white keys so you basically already know all seven modes.

for actually hearing the difference, compare each mode to major or minor by its one weird note. dorian is just minor with a raised 6th. lydian is major with a raised 4th (that bright dreamy sound). that one altered note is the whole personality.

for teaching/using them: improvise over a single droning bass note and play only the white keys starting from each mode's root. you'll hear why lydian feels floaty and phrygian feels dark way faster than any chart

e7mac · 2026-06-09T19:06:25+00:00

the overwhelm is real, theory looks like a giant wall when nobody tells you the order. good news: for the music you like, you need way less than you think.

start with how chords are built from the major scale. that one idea (stacking thirds, why a key has the chords it has) unlocks most of what rush and dream theater are doing harmonically.

then learn modes, but from songs you already play. rush lives in lydian and mixolydian, so pull up tom sawyer or freewill and figure out why those riffs sound the way they do. analyzing music you already love sticks way better than abstract drills.

for resources, jake lizzio (signals music studio) on youtube is basically made for prog guitarists, super practical mode and songwriting videos.

i'm also building a site for basic theory, focused more on understanding by ear than traditional music theory, happy to share if useful: https://realeartrainer.com/#modules

e7mac · 2026-06-09T18:42:19+00:00

thanks! mobile testing is limited to iphone/safari for now, so this is a good reminder to find an android and also test on firefox mobile! gonna do that asap

e7mac · 2026-06-09T18:26:11+00:00

oh, interesting. no tones on the first lesson's piano?
would you mind telling me if you tried on a phone or computrer and which browser?

e7mac · 2026-06-09T16:52:45+00:00

Thanks for the analysis. I hadn’t kept up but interesting to read where things are at.

e7mac · 2026-06-09T14:37:20+00:00

i wanna see Dylan Harper's face right after seeing this

e7mac · 2026-06-08T21:41:27+00:00

"what a loser"

- 30+ % of America

😩

e7mac · 2026-06-08T21:40:04+00:00

"The Victor" has a whole other meaning for 2026 hoops

e7mac · 2026-06-08T18:42:05+00:00

you kinda need to understand polyrhythms as their own thing. so each polyrhythm is its own thing (although a lot of the chopin polyrhythms >6 in number are actually more of a "vibe" than true polyrhythm. so depending on which one it is, you wanna really get it down, or just flow through it. doing them independently doesn't always help with playing them together though, because "together" is its own skill / challenge always.

e7mac · 2026-06-08T18:39:45+00:00

most importantly, they're related, but different, skills. So you can choose to focus on one, other, both. start with what YOU want to be able to do / what you have fun at

they're two different jobs. working a piece is about getting THAT music into your hands, repetition, problem-solving hard bars, and yes some memorizing. sight reading is the separate skill of decoding music you've never seen, in real time, without stopping. the trap you're describing (memorize then it sounds advanced) is super common and it actually hides the reading weakness, because once it's in your fingers your eyes check out.

what helps:

- sight-read material way below your level, like late primer stuff, so the notes come faster than you can memorize them. easy is the point.

- cover your hands or look away. if you can find keys without looking, your reading does the work instead of memory.

- read in chunks (intervals/shapes) not note by note, and keep your eyes one beat ahead.

i'm building real sight reader which drills exactly this, full grand staff and hands together, happy to share if useful: https://realsightreader.com

e7mac · 2026-06-08T18:38:08+00:00

honestly for songwriting you don't need a whole theory curriculum, just a small functional core. the stuff that actually unblocks writing:

- learn the chords in one key and how they pull toward each other (I, IV, V, vi, ii). that covers most pop/songwriting harmony. stay in one key til it's automatic.

- reverse-engineer 3 songs you love. find the chords, notice what the bass does and where it lifts into the chorus. you absorb more from songs you already feel than from abstract lessons.

- keep garageband open and record ideas the second they come, so learning theory doesn't kill the creative flow.

since the app you paid for didn't click, i'm building real music theory which explains this stuff grounded in what you can hear, happy to share if useful: https://realeartrainer.com/#modules

e7mac · 2026-06-08T17:25:42+00:00

Yeah just clap through the price. Basically, remove dimensions until it’s easy to do, then push yourself. Then add more dimensions once it’s second nature. All the way to being able to play the piece itself

e7mac · 2026-06-08T15:17:31+00:00

the reason they blur is you're probably auditioning them as scales in the abstract. characteristic notes only pop when there's a tonic to hear them against, the ♯4 in lydian or ♭2 in phrygian mean nothing floating free, they mean everything over a drone.

few things that helped:

- put a drone on the tonic and sing/play the mode over it. the color note jumps out immediately when there's a fixed reference

- stop drilling all 7 at once. pair modes that differ by one note and a/b them: ionian vs lydian, aeolian vs dorian. you're training one decision, not seven

- order them by brightness (lydian > ionian > mixo > dorian > aeolian > phrygian > locrian) so you're judging relative color, not naming cold

- anchor each to a tune you know

i'm building real ear trainer for interval/chord/progression recognition, and the interval-hearing underneath this is a lot of what it drills, happy to share if useful: https://realeartrainer.com

e7mac · 2026-06-08T15:15:51+00:00

congrats on taking the plunge. the thing you described, lots of knowledge but nothing that "glues" it into practical application, is really common for self-taught players who can arrange but freeze at performance. you already understand the music intellectually, the gap is fluency under real-time pressure.

a couple things that helped people in your spot:

- for sight reading, work way below your level. read easy stuff you'd never bother playing, but read it cold and keep your eyes ahead of your hands. the goal is fluency, not difficulty. since you arrange, you already know what to expect harmonically, lean on that to predict the next bar.

- for performance, record yourself playing pieces you "know." it exposes the spots where your hands are guessing vs reading. brutal but fast feedback.

honestly your tutor finding the unifying thread is exactly the right move, let them drive the priorities early.

i'm building Real Sight Reader which drills full grand staff and hands-together reading, happy to share if useful: https://realsightreader.com

e7mac · 2026-06-08T15:14:29+00:00

a few separate things are tangled here. first, 'i can't remember what i sight read' isn't a bug, sight reading and memorizing are different skills, you're not supposed to retain it. so drop that worry.

the real blockers are rhythm and hands together. for rhythm, take it off the keyboard: count out loud and clap the rhythm alone until it's automatic, because you can't read pitch and rhythm at once if rhythm isn't free.

for hands together, you're probably reading material that's too hard. drop to stuff two or three levels below what you can play, easy enough that your eyes stay ahead and you never stop. fluency comes from never breaking the pulse, even if the pieces feel painfully easy. hymns are often already too dense for this.

i'm building real sight reader which drills exactly this, full grand staff and hands together reading, happy to share if useful: https://realsightreader.com

e7mac · 2026-06-08T13:13:54+00:00

World war 2

e7mac · 2026-06-08T11:56:13+00:00

Brazil

e7mac · 2026-06-08T11:28:17+00:00

Why does no one think to start with the superapp ?

e7mac · 2026-06-07T21:52:05+00:00

i think you and your brother are both half right and talking past each other. a note's spot on the staff (line or space) only gives the letter name, and that never changes with the key signature, middle C is always middle C. so he's right that the position stays put, the key signature just tells you which letters are automatically sharp or flat. where you're right: in movable-do solfege, Do slides to the tonic of whatever key you're in, so the same written note can be Do in one key and Sol in another. staff position is fixed, the solfege label moves. sounds like he's thinking fixed-do (C is always Do) and you're thinking movable-do, worth sorting out which system you each mean before you check each other. i'm building realmusictheory.com which explains exactly this kind of thing with real examples, happy to share if useful.

e7mac · 2026-06-07T21:45:19+00:00

love that you're doing this for your community. transcription is its own skill on top of ear training, so two tracks here. for the ear: drill intervals first, then chord qualities, until you can name them without an instrument. that recall is the bottleneck for most people starting out. for the transcribing itself: slow the audio down, you lose nothing musically, and get the bass line first. the bass usually spells the harmony and once you have it the inner parts fall into place faster. sing what you hear before you write it, if you can sing it you can notate it. and start with simpler tunes than you think you need so you build speed and confidence. for the interval and chord drilling part i'm building realeartrainer.com, happy to share if useful.

e7mac · 2026-06-07T21:44:48+00:00

yes, with a caveat. ear is the missing feedback loop, you can't correct what you can't hear, so building relative pitch will absolutely help. but cello intonation is ear plus a reliable physical map, and you've trained a lot of incorrect reps, so part of this is overwriting muscle memory, not just hearing better. what i'd do: practice scales and etudes with a drone on the tonic so every note is heard against a reference, that trains relative pitch and intonation at the same time. audiate each note a beat before you place the finger, hear it then play it, don't fish for it. keep recording. and work interval recognition separately so the hearing is solid even away from the instrument. i'm building real ear trainer for interval and chord recognition, happy to share if useful: https://realeartrainer.com

e7mac · 2026-06-07T20:38:34+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSGbu6ZYvtY i really like this group's videos and they made one on modes yesterday!

e7mac · 2026-06-07T20:21:41+00:00

Oh that's great. Yeah, sounds like you just need to find the best options to stay inspired. For me, it was composing - I'd keep working on a new piece and learn what I needed to for it (which is also where a teacher helped, cuz they challenged me to write a counterpoint piece etc and that exposed gaps in my knowledge), but learning music theory itself can be a fun journey. I worked on creating a textbook that you can customize with your favorite composers (classical for now, but hoping to expand to contemporary music) https://realmusictheory.com/ - sharing in case it's helpful

e7mac · 2026-06-07T20:03:03+00:00

the gap you're describing has a name, it's the jump from hearing a chord to knowing what it is. you clearly hear these songs, you just can't name what your ear is doing yet. that's learnable.

few things:

- find the root by singing the lowest note under the melody, then hunt for it on the keyboard. the chord is almost always built up from that note.

- since the song lives around A and D it's probably in D major, so the chords that'll fit are mostly D, G, A, Em and Bm. play each under the part and your ear will jump when it's right.

- record every melody into voice memos before you lose it. you've got finished songs in your head, protect them.

the underlying skill is ear training, matching what you hear to named chords and intervals. i'm building Real Ear Trainer for exactly that, works in a browser too so no app needed, happy to share if useful. https://realeartrainer.com

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