A lot of beginner guitarists on their way to the intermediate level of playing will come across a barrier of modes. This post will talk exclusively about a conceptualization to learn the 7 natural modes, but this concept will work for any mode theoretically.
The idea is built upon a 3-notes-per-string approach to playing scales. With the natural modes we have 3:
With these 3 three-note-per-string groups, we can form a column. One that theoretically can go on forever:
The idea is to bring this infinite column into reality with the number of strings your guitar has. Mine has 8 strings. You can sort of imagine a window sliding over a certain set of strings and that’ll be your column.
The one thing to note - this conceptualization is based off of strings all being a perfect fourth away from one another. This is the reasoning behind my decision to make quartal tuning my main tuning. There is a shift however, since standard tuning has a major third difference between the G and B strings, this column will get shifted over a fret.
This is how the shift will look:
Now, once you memorize the pattern, all that’s left to memorize is the actual modes themselves. Here’s a diagram that labels where each mode begins. To play said mode, just continue the column upwards from that starting point.
And like that, if you’ve followed along up to this point then congrats! You now get the modes (sort of). Here’s a diagram of all the modes in standard tuning. Remember the string layout is like what you’d find for tab.
Then the only thing left is to understand how they link together horizontally. This last diagram shows how. This one is in quartal tuning as I can’t be bothered to figure out the standard tuning version.
That might be a bit confusing to look at so here’s a simplified version on one string.
Good luck! By grasping this concept you’ll be well on your way to mastery!
