Modal Jazz

Not all jazz is a stream of changes. From the late fifties onwards a lot of it does the opposite: one chord, held for eight or sixteen bars, with a mode rather than a key.

This inverts the problem. Over fast changes your difficulty is keeping up. Over a modal vamp there is nothing to keep up with, and the difficulty becomes making a single unchanging sound stay interesting.

The mode you will meet first is Dorian — a minor scale with a raised sixth, which is why modal jazz sounds cool and open rather than sad. You can hear the raised sixth in the harmony too: it is what makes the chord built on the fourth degree come out major instead of minor.

A Dorian

A Dorian. Find the sixth degree and play it against an Am7 — that one note is the whole flavour.

A Dorian, one octave from the fifth fret

Ascending: A B C D E F♯ G A. The F♯ on the fourth fret of the D string is the raised sixth — the note the whole mode turns on.

e
B
G
D
A
E

--------------------------|
--------------------------|
--------------------------|
-----------------4--5--7--|
--------3--5--7-----------|
--5--7--------------------|

This track is explicitly modal, sitting in A minor at 108 BPM and rocking between Am7 and a D major chord. That D chord is the Dorian fourth degree, and it only exists because the sixth is raised.

With one scale covering everything, your only remaining decisions are rhythmic and melodic, so make them deliberately. Play a phrase, then rest for a whole bar. Repeat a short motif three times before changing it. Sit on one note for four bars and let the chord change underneath it.

If you run out of ideas after ninety seconds, that is the lesson working — modal playing is where you find out how much of your improvising was really just reacting to chords going past.

Dorian Grey, A minor at 108 BPM. One scale, and every decision left to you.