Drone

The note that pins everything down

The article The modes through familiar pieces names as the most effective exercise: leave a single note sounding as a drone and play the scale above it. A held D together with the white keys from D to D gives Dorian, and you can hear it because the drone pins the centre down. Without that reference note every mode falls back at once into ordinary major.

According to the article the mode arises not from the choice of notes but from emphasis: if you play the white keys over a D drone but keep ending phrases on C, you have C major again, although not a single note is different.

On the guitar

For the guitar the approach is especially convenient, because drone notes suggest themselves on open strings. An open D string as a pedal with Dorian melody notes above it sounds at once like the mode, without a second musician being needed. Many folk pieces are built exactly like this. The article also mentions the bagpipe: the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe has a scale without a leading tone and therefore sounds necessarily modal.

Typical mistakes

• Losing the reference note: without a drone, bass note or clear phrasing nobody hears a mode.
• Modes as a finger exercise: “Dorian is the major scale from the second degree” is correct but leads you to keep thinking in major.
• Avoiding the characteristic degree: a Dorian piece without the raised sixth is simply minor.