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The Ionian mode is the major scale by another name. It's one of seven diatonic modes, and knowing their order—Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian—helps you figure out what notes belong to each one.
The Ionian mode is the major scale by another name. It's one of seven diatonic modes, and knowing their order—Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian—helps you figure out what notes belong to each one.
Okay, so the first mode we're going to look at is the Ionian mode. Now, this is probably the easiest one to wrap your head around, so it's convenient. We're starting it first. The Ionian mode is just another name for what we already know of as the major scale. So Ionian is major. So here I have on the screen a C major scale. This is also known as a C Ionian scale scale. Now, 99% of the time, when we run into this series of notes, we're going to call it a C major scale. We don't really call it a C Ionian scale unless we're working specifically with a group of modes. So why do we have this other term for a major scale? If major and Ionian mean the same thing, why do we bother? The reason is, remember that the modes came first. We had all of these modes. We had these seven modes, and they were around. And then kind of two of them kind of rose to prominence. The Ionian scale and the Aeolian scale. The Aeolian scale is another fancy word for minor. So those two kind of rose to be the two most used in all the music, and the rest of them kind of fell by the wayside a little bit. So we already had this term, Ionian, that was used for the modes, and then it kind of evolved into what we called the major scale, meaning it was used the most. It was the most powerful scale, I guess we said. So it's really just another term for major scale. But while we're here, let me explain to you one other property of modes, and that's that you're going to have a much easier time understanding modes if you remember the order of them. The order of them is important, and it doesn't mean we play them in any order or they're used musically in some order. It's just that for figuring out what notes go into each mode, if you can remember the order, you'll be able to figure out the notes much easier using that relative identification process that we just talked about. So the order is Ionian is first. Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian. That's the order of the seven. So if you can keep that order in mind, you will be able to identify them much easier using the relative. That'll make more sense once we get into the next one, which is our first one. That is not just a plain old major scale, and that's the Dorian mode. So let's jump into that right now.
