Songwriting Challenge 2023

Our songwriting challenge for 2023 was to write a song in an unusual mode, or a mode you don’t usually write in.

What’s a mode?

A musical mode is a scale with a certain character. Everyone knows the major scale, also known as the Ionian mode, or the Do-Re-Mi song from The Sound of Music. If you start altering some of these scale degrees by a half-step up or down, you get a mode. You can think of them as alternative scales to the more typical Major and Minor scales.

The modes of the Major scale are:

Lydian
Ionian (a.k.a. Major)
Mixolydian
Dorian
Aeolian (a.k.a. Minor)
Phrygian
Locrian

Resources

Check out these videos for deeper explanations and to hear how they sound:

Songwriting - The Modes of C and what chords they contain — The Modes of C and the chords they contain

Songwriting with modes - The Modes and what major or minor chords they use — The Modes and what major or minor chords they use

Songs in Modes

A playlist of songs in the Dorian mode and a playlist of songs in the Mixolydian mode (thanks to our guest Susan Cattaneo)

Hook Theory Cheat Sheets

Hook Theory has great resources for songwriters. Our friend Lynn Moe sent us these modal cheat sheets for helping you out, whatever mode you choose to write in.

Harness the Power of the Phrygian Mode

Harness The Power Of The Phrygian Mode | Disc Makers Blog

Modes and the Circle of Fifths

We added Modes to our good old circle of fifths diagram, which shows all the modes in relation to the Major / Ionian mode in terms of sharps and flats, and the order of modes in terms of brightness and darkness.