The Dorian Mode – Making It Musical

The Dorian Mode

Lets recap the Dorian mode and what makes this mode unique. The Dorian mode is the second mode of the major scale. This means if you can take any major scale and emphasise the second note as home base you will get the Dorian mode. For example if you take the C major scale and start your scale from the second note which is D, you get D Dorian.

C Major	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
D Dorian	D	E	F	G	A	B	C

Currently it still looks a lot like the major scale but starting on the second note. In order see the differences between the two you need to look at the intervallic formula that describes the scale. Your ear forms relationships between the note being emphasised as home base and every other note in the scale. You hear these relationships as intervals.

For example in the C major scale, C is emphasised as home base, therefore you hear every note as being related to C. This produces a sequence of intervals the goes Root, Major 2^nd, Major 3^rd, Perfect 4^th, Perfect 5^th, Major 6^th, and Major 7^th.

C Major	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	Major 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Major 7th

When you emphasise the second note of the major scale as home base this sequence of intervals changes because we are relating all the notes in the scale to the second note instead of the first. If you treat the second note of the C major scale as home base, you get D Dorian. The sequence of intervals produced when D is the root note is. Root, Major 2^nd, Minor 3^rd, Perfect 4^th, Perfect 5^th, Major 6^th, Minor 7^th.

D Dorian	D	E	F	G	A	B	C
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	Minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Minor 7th

Hopefully you can see that the major scale and Dorian mode share the same notes, but their intervallic formulae are different.

Major Scale	Root	Major 2nd	Major 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Major 7th
Dorian Mode	Root	Major 2nd	Minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Minor 7th

One of the important things about the Dorian mode is the minor third. The presence of the minor third gives the scale a minor tonality. This makes it a minor mode and we are therefore better comparing it to the natural minor scale.

The natural minor scale is also called the Aeolian mode, it shares the same notes as the major scale but you start on the 6th note. This produces a scale formula that goes Root, Major 2^nd, Minor 3^rd, Perfect 4^th, Perfect 5^th, Minor 6^th, Minor 7^th.

A Aeolian	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	Minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Minor 6th	Minor 7th

When you compare the Dorian mode to the natural minor scale it is easy to see that the Dorian mode is simply a natural minor scale with a major 6 . That is the only difference between the two scales.

Aeolian Mode	Root	Major 2nd	Minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Minor 6th	Minor 7th
Dorian Mode	Root	Major 2nd	Minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Minor 7th

In my experience this is how most musicians end up conceptualising the Dorian mode, it is a minor scale with a major 6 . This conceptualisation is useful because it will allow you to use a lot of the tools you already have, for example the minor pentatonic scale.

There is still a problem though. If you play the C major scale, and then the D Dorian scale back to back you probably won’t hear any difference between the two.

How to sound Dorian

How can you hear the difference between these two scales, and any of the modes for that matter? It all comes down to how you emphasise home base. The mode you hear is a product of the harmony that is being implied. If you create a harmony that implies to the listener that C is home base, you will hear C major or C Ionian. But if you create a harmony that implies that D is home base you will hear the Dorian mode.

In my opinion the harmony is the most important thing what it comes to hearing the modes. All modes of a major scale share the same notes, the difference is the relative relationships between the notes. Harmony is like the colour of a canvas on which you paint. It could be red, purple, white or yellow. The colour of the canvas will influence the colours of the paints that you layer on top.

In music harmony is a product of the chords that you are playing on top of. The chords that you play over will influence the quality of the melody that you create .Therefore if you want to sound Dorian you need to make sure that you are playing over a Dorian harmony. That is, a harmony that implies that the second note of the key is home base.

Chords in the Dorian Mode

In order to make a Dorian chord progression you need to know what chords are created by the Dorian mode. In the same way that we worked out the formula for a dorian scale we can also work out it’s chords. Lets look at the chords in the major scale.

In the major scale each note can have a chord built on it. The pattern produced is major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. So we have C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor and B diminished.

C Major	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	Major 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Major 7th
Chord	Major	Minor	Minor	Major	Major	Minor	Diminished

We can number these chords based on the interval in the formula, this is the Nashville number system in action. This gives us a major I, minor ii, minor iii, major IV, major V, minor vi, and a diminished vii chord.

C Major	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	Major 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Major 7th
Chord	Major	Minor	Minor	Major	Major	Minor	Diminished
Nashville Number	I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	viio

We can extend these chords to become 7^th chords, this allows us to easily spot the dominant chord in the key. The dominant chord will be useful for implying home base so we should make it easy to find. G major becomes G7, this is our dominant V chord, ready for when we need it later.

C Major	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	Major 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	Major 7th
Chord	Major	Minor	Minor	Major	Major	Minor	Diminished
Nashville Number	I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	viio
7th Chord	IMaj7	iim7	iiim7	IMaj7	V7	vim7	viio

Given that Dorian is a minor mode it is better to compare it’s chords to those in the Aeolian mode which is our natural minor scale. Starting on the 6^th note of the major scale gives us the natural minor scale. The chords in our natural minor scale follow the same sequence, we just start from the 6^th chord . The pattern becomes minor 7, half diminished, major 7, minor 7, minor 7 , major 7 , dominant 7. Anywhere there is a flat interval we make the Nashville number flat too. These are the chords that are created by the natural minor scale.

A Aeolian	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	minor 6th	minor 7th
Chord	minor	Diminished	Major	minor	minor	Major	Major
Nashville Number	i	iio	bIII	iv	v	bVI	bVII
7th Chord	im7	iio	bIIIMaj7	ivm7	vm7	bVMaj7	bVII7

Starting on the second note of the major scale produces the Dorian mode. Therefore we should start our sequence of chords in the same place. This produces a pattern that goes minor 7, minor 7, major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, half diminished, and major 7.

D Dorian	D	E	F	G	A	B	C
Interval	Root	Major 2nd	minor 3rd	Perfect 4th	Perfect 5th	Major 6th	minor 7th
Chord	minor	minor	Major	Major	minor	Diminished	Major
Nashville Number	i	ii	bIII	IV	v	vio	bVII
7th Chord	im7	iio	bIIIMaj7	IV7	vm7	vio	bVIIMaj7

Now you can see the differences between the chords in the natural minor scale and the Dorian mode. There are a few of useful differences. Firstly our ii chord is no longer half diminished, it’s minor. Our IV chord is no longer minor, it’s a dominant 7^th chord. And finally the flat 6^th chord is no longer flat or major, it is now just half diminished. We have three chords that differ from the natural minor scale, and it’s these three chords that you can target to pull out the sound of the Dorian mode.

How to make a Dorian chord progression

The minor i chord

Lets start emphasising the Dorian mode in our chord progressions. To do this you have to imply that The minor i chord is home base The easiest way to do this is to sit on the minor i chord and never change.

In D Dorian the minor i chord is Dm or Dm7. I could play D Dorian over this chord and it would sound fine. However I could also play D natural minor over the top of this chord or D Phrygian because both scales have a minor i chord. It’s not going to sound wrong, it just means that the minor i chord alone does not strong imply the harmony we need. Sitting on a single chord vamp for a whole song is also not that interesting in my opinion so we probably should use some more chords.

Creating Cadences

To bring out the Dorian mode further you need to take your listener further from home base, to another chord in the mode, and then bring them back to home base again. You can do this by going to a chord that is unique to the Dorian mode and then cadencing you chord progression back to home base in this case Dm.

The strongest way to imply this is to cadence with a dominant chord. This is why we extended our chords to includes the 7th earlier. In D Dorian the dominant chord is G, this can also be played as G7 for extra dominant spice. Playing a chord progression that goes Dm7 to G7 to Dm7 sounds distinctly Dorian because the dominant IV chord is unique to the Dorian. This sound always reminds me of Carlos Santana!

Another way to produce the same effect is to move between the minor i chord and the minor ii chord. This is another Santana esque chord progression that that strongly implies the Dorian sound.

This is the easiest way to start producing Dorian harmony, emphasise the chords that make the Dorian mode unique, this is the movement between the minor I, minor ii chord, and the dominant IV chord.

Taking it further

This can be quite limiting, it makes it hard to play chords that are shared between the modes. If you use a C major chord in your D Dorian progression the listener might start to perceive C as home base because they are not used to the sound of the Dorian mode. The way to circumvent this is to make sure the note that you are using as home base present in every chord you play.

For example if you are in D Dorian you could make sure that every chord you play contains the note D, so that the sense of D as home base is never lost. This is the trick I was using in the chord progression below. It is in A Dorian and every chord contains the note A.

Obviously this takes some figuring out so if would like to learn some chord voicings to emphasise the Dorian sound check out the lesson pack below.

Soloing

The minor pentatonic scale

Now we have our harmony, we have our chords that emphasises the Dorian mode. Lets talk about soloing. You might think you need to learn a bunch of new scale shapes, however this isn’t true. The first thing that you want to think about is that this is a minor mode and it therefore has minor tonality. You probably already know a scale that works well over a dorian chord progression. That is everybody favourite, the minor pentatonic scale.

The minor pentatonic scale contains five of the seven notes from the Dorian mode. It has the root, minor 3^rd , perfect 4^th, perfect 5^th , and minor 7^th. Therefore you can use the minor pentatonic licks and shapes you already know to improvise over a Dorian progression This is how you should start, if if you have never improvised with Dorian before, start with minor pentatonic vocabulary you already know.

Adding the 6^th and 9^th

The minor pentatonic scale does not heavily imply a Dorian tonality, but it’s certainly there because of the harmony we are playing over. To sound more Dorian you need add the two notes that are unique to the Dorian mode. These are the major 2^nd, also called the 9^th, and the major 6^th.

These two notes can be added to the minor pentatonic scale to create the full dorian mode. Check out the scale diagrams below to see how the minor pentatonic scale, and the dorian mode, look side by side. The 6^ths and 9^ths are represented with the green triangles, notice how they fill in the gaps in the minor pentatonic scale.

As before you should continue to use your minor pentatonic phrases but try modifying them with the Dorian notes we have just added. For me ending on the 6th is a really good way of implying the Dorian tonality, it is the key note that emphasises the difference between the minor scale and the Dorian scale, and is therefore a strong choice to end phrases on if you want to sound particularly Dorian. Check out the lesson pack for some examples of minor pentatonic licks that have been modified with the 6^th and 9^th.

You can expand the other minor pentatonic scale shapes in the same way to cover the whole fretboard, I use the CAGED system to map out these shapes. It’s simply the case of playing your five pentatonic shapes and filling in the gaps to turn it into the dorian scale. Scale diagrams for all the shapes are in the lesson pack.

Final thoughts

All the general ideas you should use for phrasing when improvising also apply here. These are concepts like motifs, call and response, leaving space, articulations. These ideas will help you ensure that what you are playing doesn’t sound too scalar.

If you need some tips on phrasing check out my post on phrasing here. Beyond that, if you want to be more Dorian focus on the 6th and the 9th of the scale. If that becomes too dissonant, or you feel you are getting lost you can always fall back on the minor pentatonic phrases you already know.

Have a go at making your own Dorian chord progressions and improvising over them with the minor pentatonic and Dorian scales. If you would like a backing track to use for this, and more detailed examples of exercises you can use to practice these ideas, check out the lesson pack below.

Good luck unleashing your inner Carlos Santana! If you have any questions about the subjects with discussed, leave a comment below.