Modal Theory

Believe it or not, learning all the modes is actually not as hard is it might sound. Most of the patterns are basically the same as the major or minor scale patterns that you already know (starting at different points), and are basically made up of three finger patterns;

Lets imagine that instead of having six strings, we have a guitar with thirteen strings. The pattern for playing the major scale from top to bottom string would look like;

Using this diagram, we can see a pattern that exists in every mode of the major scale. The finger pattern 1 – 3 – stretch to 4 is always followed by
1 – 2 – 4, which is always followed by 1 – 3- 4.

Now we will look at the patterns for each of the modes of the major scale, in an order that will make them easier to learn by relating to this formula.