[HairyScaryMark]

Originally Posted by metropolis4

Yes, but those are scales, not modes. The OP was asking specifically about modes. You gotta walk before you can run

To me, there is little difference between the practical applications of scales and modes other than the styles you're likely to use them in and possibly how likely you are to use them at all. If we also consider that you can have pretty much any note at any time in any key, within reason, considering something to be in a specific mode or scale is kind of limiting, compared with looking at the chord progression and keys.

The walk before you can run thing is what I'm trying to get at. Learning about keys, chords and harmony is going to be far more useful to most musicians than simply learning modes and scales. I'm not suggesting against learning this stuff but if you don't already understand the chords you're potentially going to play it over then I suggest you go back and start with the, arguably more fundamental aspects of music theory and approach this side of things at a later date, when you're able to understand them in relation to other things.

[metropolis4]

... But everything you're saying is irrelevant to the initial question posted here which was what is the purpose of modes.
Of course I understand what you are saying about the importance of learning all these other things, however I don't see what harm there is in simply answering a practical question about the purpose of modes in and of itself without offering outside suggestions about better uses of one's studies in music.

[HairyScaryMark]

Originally Posted by metropolis4

... But everything you're saying is irrelevant to the initial question posted here which was what is the purpose of modes.
Of course I understand what you are saying about the importance of learning all these other things, however I don't see what harm there is in simply answering a practical question about the purpose of modes in and of itself without offering outside suggestions about better uses of one's studies in music.

I think I answered the initial questions.

Originally Posted by bostykid

Is there a point why people spend so much time learning all the modes?
Is there a practical use for these modes?
Aren't they simply the same notes but rearranged?

[northbayguitar]

If this topic's still of interest, a nice musical explanation of modes by Joe Satriani is HERE on youtube.

When I first watched this it seemed to play fine, but now the video and audio are a little out of sync here - but the playing and description is in sync. He does a good job of illustrating "modes, and how to relate them. He uses the phrase "emotional themes", a reasonable way to see them I think.

[Rainer.]

Good watch. I think he did a good job of describing modes in relation to composition.

[northbayguitar]

Glad you liked it! Modes can figure heavily into crafting out a solo and working out where to go with it and he talks it through nicely on that video I think.

Years ago I got the book, "The Ragas of North India" when I was getting going studying music. (it's been kind of a meandering effort from a "scholastic" view ). Still have it around, big honker, by Walter Kauffman. It was a very definitive study of HIndu ragas, their history and meanings and included 100's of notated examples of the short "scales" used.

In it there's some great descriptions that help (or start to anyway) to grasp the purpose behind the ragas that have been written in that folk music, most of it passed along by ear and in performance, rather than through written forms.

The raga is typically viewed from the Western disciplines as a scale, a melody pattern, but that's only part of it. Notes ascending and descending can be different and the "pattern" irregular if I'm expecting a straight up and down movement. Different notes have different importance and will be played louder than others. Some are struck directly, others slid into.

There's also significance to when they're played, some for morning, night, sunrise, sunset. Some have associations with animals, places, people, etc.

The "mood" aspect of ragas goes along with all of this, as they're more than a string of notes that make a melody, there's meaning assigned to them. I only really learned a few, and on guitar it's a commonly heard method that's often kind of hacked up, but it was a useful exercise for me at that time to investigate that music. I think in the same way, Western modal motifs can be studied and learned to the end they can inform our guitar music with meaning, some subtle, some not so.

I can think of modern examples that have become part of the musical vocabulary and are modal-like I think, like Hendrix's famous octave melody in "Third Stone from the Sun". That "scale" can be used in endless ways, mixed and matched and expounded on. It's simple, self-contained and invokes a mood all it's own. "Riffs" can end up populating our playing and get recycled, like the opener in the Stone's "Satisfaction" - who doesn't register an emotional response when hearing it? Even some of Chuck Berry's double stops and horn-riffs have become modal like - endlessly reusable and repeatable. We learn them as riffs and solo material, but in fact they do have a self-contained form all their own.

(yawwwwwn....kinda long there, sorry - wake me up when I time out)