How to Apply the Modes to songwriting part 1: The Ionian mode

Modal applications part 1: The Ionian Mode

Okay, in my previous set of lessons I went through all of the diatonic modes and the general feel of each of the modes as well as showing you how to find each of the modes. In this series of lessons, I will be showing you how to apply these modes to songwriting, soloing, and chord building.

I strongly recommend that you read my previous lessons before this, or read lessons on the modes posted by other teachers before reading these lessons though, as there will be quite a bit of advanced guitar playing being shown in these lessons.

Now remember this, the Ionian mode has the exact same notes in the exact same pattern as the natural major scale. The only difference between them is what music you are playing. You can call it either so long as it’s what’s simplest to you. Below is the entire mode written out in one octave in the key of E (the entire thing starts on an E and ends on an E, you could also describe this as making E the ‘root’ note).

Ionian mode in E

E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
G||------------------|------6----8---9--||--9---8---6-------|------------------|
D||-----------6---7--|--9---------------||-------------9--7-|--6---------------|
A||---7---9----------|------------------||------------------|------9---7-------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|

Now this mode is characteristically the brightest or ‘happiest’ sounding of the modes most of the time, and as such it is usually used to write happy sounding songs. One well known example would be “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. What you have to remember however is that not all of the notes in this scale will sound happy all of the time. Some of them will sound more tense than others or more bland, etc, but it truly depends on what music is being played behind it.

For example, if you played this phrase:

E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
G||------------9-----|-----------9------||----------9-------|----------9-------|
D||--------9-------9-|-------9-------9--||------9-------9---|------9--------9--|
A||---7--------------|--7---------------||--7---------------|--7---------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|

It doesn’t sound particularly happy. Yet if we play this instead, it sounds slightly happier:

E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
G||------------9---8-|-----------9---8--||----------9---8---|----------9----8--|
D||--------9---------|-------9----------||------9-----------|------9-----------|
A||---7--------------|--7---------------||--7---------------|--7---------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|

This is because the phrases is using more notes from the scale, it is starting to sound more and more like the scale, and therefore, more “happy”. The third note in the scale, often simply referred to as a third by musicians who presumably want to show off what they’ve learnt, is often the note that has the biggest say as to whether a scale sounds overall more sad or more happy. In this case, the third note is four frets higher than the root note (the note the scale starts on), or for those of you who are aware of tonal gaps, it is two full tones higher. This is known as a “major” third, which is basically another way of saying a “happy sounding” third. Because of this, using this third note in a phrase makes it sound even more bright and positive, as I’ve shown below.

E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|
G||------------9---8-|-----------9---8--||----------9---8---|----------9----8--|
D||--------6---------|-------6----------||------6-----------|------6-----------|
A||---7--------------|--7---------------||--7---------------|--7---------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|

This will really help you if you are writing a melody or guitar riff over some chord written in this mode. If you are aware that some notes are going to sound happier than others within this scale, and then build upon those when you are writing your music, you will end up with a much brighter sounding song than you probably would otherwise. There is a way of enhancing the melodic qualities of a song using theory called arpeggios, but that’s going off topic and these arpeggios aren’t a part of any particular scale either.

What you need to be aware of when soloing using this scale is that if you want the solo to sound as happy as possible, then you need to play the scale over and over again until you have figured out which notes sound the happiest, like the major third or the major seventh(seventh note) in this scale. The Ionian mode is generally quite a good mode to play a melodic sounding solo with as it’s got a lot of happy sounding notes in it giving you more melodic notes to play with.

So how do you use this scale to build chords?

Well, there is a pattern of chords that exists when using the 7 diatonic modes. I’ve written this pattern below for when you are using the Ionian mode:

Major

Minor

Minor

Major

Major

Minor

Diminished

Major (back at the start)

What this means is that if you build a chord off each of the notes in the Ionian mode, as you go along the scale the chords will have to follow this pattern if you want to stay perfectly inside the scale (don’t worry I’ll explain this later). You will eventually learn to break out of these chord “boxes” as I have, but you have to be aware of exactly what the rules are before you break them.

So I if were to build chords off the Ionian mode using each note as the root note (starting note) of a chord, I would go like this (the reason why there is more than one shape for each chord is that there is more than one position that a chord can be played in, if you want more detail on how to find these shapes, I urge you to look at The CAGED system to get you started). Once again this is all in the key of E. To make thing easier I have highlighted the notes that the chords are being rooted on so that you can see the scale being used more clearly:

   E Major           F# minor           G# minor          A Major

E||---------------0--|---------------2--||---------------4--|-9-------------0--|
B||---9-----------0--|-10------------2--||-12------------4--|-10------------2--|
G||---9-----------1--|-11------------2--||-13------------4--|-9-------------2--|
D||---9-----or----2--|-11-----or-----4--||-13------or----6--|-7------or-----2--|
A||---7-----------2--|-9-------------4--||-11------------6--|---------------0--|
E||---------------0--|---------------2--||---------------4--|------------------|

   B Major           C# minor           D# Diminished     E Major

E||--11-----------2--|-12------------4--||-12---------------|-16---------------|
B||--12-----------4--|-14------------5--||-14------------5--|-17------------9--|
G||--11-----------4--|-13------------6--||-14------------6--|-16------------9--|
D||--9------or----4--|-11-----or-----6--||-13------or----7--|-14------or----9--|
A||---------------2--|---------------4--||---------------6--|---------------7--|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------------|

Using these chords to write a song would mean that you could solo over it using the Ionian mode in this key, and it would also mean that it would most likely sound quite happy if the song is in the same key as this scale (this means that the song feels like it’s trying to go back to an E major chord).

That’s pretty much it for this lesson, but I will be uploading the other parts to this series of lessons as soon as possible.

I hope that this lesson has been able to help some of you out there.

Take care and I’ll see you next Time!