APPENDIX 1: SCHNEIDER MASTERCLASS

Maria Schneider: I looked into this whole thing with modes. Do any of you know Ron
Miller? Have you heard of that book he has? Anybody?

Class: Yeah.

MS: Yeah, he has two books on modal. And he taught at the University of Miami where I
went, but I never studied with him because I was only there one semester. But I found out
that what I do is really similar to kind of his concept. You know, my very first lesson I
ever had on piano my teacher played this.

(MS plays major arpeggio, then minor arpeggio)

MS: Then she sang, “bright the day,” then she sang “dark the night.” And the whole idea
was to just kind of to show me that inside of music everything has you know, a feeling
that results from what these notes do. You know that? Harmony is not separate from
feeling and emotion or you know, some sort of whatever you want to call it. You know, I
don’t want to say that music has to have lots of feeling or emotion, but it, it does.
Basically, that’s what attracts us to it. Every piece I ever played, she made me analyze.
And what I realized, you know, in subsequent years like, if you look at the modes based
on... Let’s just talk about like, the white keys on the piano. What’s the brightest mode?

Class: Lydian.

MS: Lydian, right? F to F. (Plays F Lydian mode) The second brightest?

Class: Ionian.

MS: Ionian. C to C, and C is a fifth up from F, right? Okay. What’s the next bright, err
dark mode?

Class: Mixolydian.

MS: Mixolydian. It’s up a fifth from Ionian. What’s the next dark mode? It’s up a fifth
from Mixolydian. G, now we’re talking D to D, Dorian. Then A to A, Aeolian. E to E
Phrygian. B to B Locrian. Now, each of those modes vary by one note. It gets dark, and
that one note if we start with a common… All that modes are, are relationship of whole
tones to half tones, relative to the root, right? And that’s what gives it the sound. So if I
play, I’m gonna use C as our ground here. So, there’s C Lydian. (plays half steps from C
Lydian stacked vertically). If I go down from a fifth from C, I get F natural, so the F# in
C Lydian becomes F natural. This is Ionian. Now, if found this from that F, it takes me
what note? B flat, right? That’s gives Mixolydian. A C scale with a Bb (plays scale).
Down a fifth from Bb?

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Artist Share, “About,” http://www.mariascheider.com/about.aspx (assessed 28 September

Carr, Ian, Miles Davis – A biography. New York: William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1982.

Kahn, Ashley, Kind of Blue – The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. New York:
Da Capo Press, 2000.

Maria Schneider Master Class. VHS. Filmed by Brian Shaw. 2001. Banff Centre Jazz
Workshop, Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Miller, Ron, Modal Jazz Composition and Harmony Volume 1. Rottenburg: Advance
Music, 1996.

Sturm, Fred, ed., Maria Schneider – Evanescence – Complete Scores. New York:
Universal Edition, 1998.

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Ab in the voicing adds to the traditional voicing, yielding a minor chord with an added

second and flat sixth scale degree. Although the change from a regular minor chord is

very slight, it adds an interesting color to a composition.

In my research, I have only mentioned two methods of finding modal voicings.

One dealt with a consistent bass note and the other dealt with a consistent modal cell. The

modal cell I chose to deal with was the Ionian mode. There are many other possibilities

found in the various forms of minor. I briefly mentioned in Example 39 that the same

approach to finding modes in Ionian may be used in harmonic minor as well. The same is

true in melodic minor, as Maria Schneider mentioned in her master class. These differ

from the modes of the Ionian mode by one note in most cases. The brightest mode in

Ionian is Lydian, while the brightest in melodic minor is Lydian Augmented. If both

modes were based on C, the only difference would be that the Lydian Augmented would

have a G# instead of a G natural.

There are many more possibilities of finding modal voicings other than the ones I

discussed. While doing this research, my interest has been peaked and I plan to further

my study of this very interesting concept. There are still several modes of minor to be

explored. There are also many more colors to achieve by studying the work of Miller and

Schneider and studying the use of modes with alterations. The use of modal voicings as

harmony and the use of different flavors or shades of major and minor chords is still

vastly unexplored. Hopefully, this paper will spark interest in someone and help it reach a

wider audience.

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 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION

The modal concept developed by Ron Miller and Maria Schneider is still a highly

unexplored concept. The method rank orders all seven diatonic modes from brighter to

darker, starting with Lydian and progressing to Locrian. It is possible to continue the

progression past Locrian and achieve five other modes that are synthetic in nature. These

synthetic modes all have an Ionian quality and their relationship to the bass progresses

from darker to brighter as they cycle.

One method of finding all twelve modes deals with a stationary bass note. The

modes will continue progressing from bright to dark and dark to bright while the bass

note stays the same. The bass note functions much like a pedal point would in any type of

music; it stays constant while the sets of half steps used to form modal voicings work

their way down in a stair-step fashion as they move to the left of the piano keyboard.

Another method discussed is in opposition to the first and is used to find twelve

modes for any Ionian mode. Essentially, this method harmonizes each scale degree of an

Ionian mode and uses the chromatic notes found between scale degrees to find the five

synthetic modes. As found in the first method, it also has a type of pedal point, but now

the modal voicing of the Ionian mode (scale degrees 1, 3, 4 and 7) stays consistent as the

bass note changes.

These modal voicings found in each method can be used to create different shades

of both major and minor chords. These voicings will add one or more notes to traditional

major or minor chords and therefore, create subtle colors to these familiar sonorities. For

instance, the modal voicing that makes up C Aeolian contains D, Eb, G and Ab.

Traditionally, Aeolian would imply a simple minor chord. Including the pitches D and

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Note that since these modes are coming from the same collection of pitches, the melody

should also work with these new chord changes.

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These chords were derived from the original cells used in With Drew. I chose a

new mode for each measure and then determined the chord outlined by the mode.

Mode Chord
Bb Lydian BbMaj7#11
C Dorian Cmin7
Bb Mixolydian Bb7
G Lydian GMaj7#11
D Phrygian Dmin7b9

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The last modal cell that I will discuss is the cell that originally outlined A, Bb, D

and Eb. Note that this is the same exact cell that was used in the second bar. This modal

cell outlined Eb Lydian. Above, I listed some possibilities for this mode, Bb Ionian, C

Dorian and A Locrian. Three other possibilities for this mode are D Phrygian, F

Mixolydian and G Aeolian. The fact that we can combine all seven of the diatonic modes

with just one four note modal cell shows the versatility of method and how many

different harmonic possibilities can be achieved from it.

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Now that different modes have been cited, a new set of chord changes can also be

created. I will choose one of the newly outlined modes from above and create a chord

with it. These new chords will be used in place of the original chords of “With Drew.”

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Next comes the cell used to form E Lydian in my composition “With Drew.” The

notes found in this mode are A#, B, D# and E. One possible mode taken from these notes

would be the very dark sounding D# Locrian. A much lighter mode would be B Ionian or

the minor sound of G# Aeolian.

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B Aeolian was the next mode. The notes that form this modal cell are C#,D, F#

and G. Although the original mode of B Aeolian had a dark quality to it, much brighter

modes can be found. One of these brighter modes is D Ionian. Another mode that is a

little brighter than D Ionian, is G Lydian.

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The next modal cell contains the notes A, Bb, D and Eb. This cell was originally

used to from an Eb Lydian mode, but it has many other possibilities. A very simple mode

that can be taken from these notes is Bb Ionian. C Dorian and A Locrian can also be

taken from these notes and give a different sound than Bb Ionian.

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The third cell was originally used to outline the F Dorian mode and contains the

notes G, Ab, D and Eb. Again we can form the most basic of the modes and label this as

an Eb Ionian mode. The “dominant” sounding Bb Mixolydian could be formed using

these notes as well as Ab Lydian.

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Describing the compositional process of “With Drew” illustrates how the piece

began as purely modal and gradually became exclusively chordal. Due to this fact, I

believe that using the modal method in compositions is very versatile. In order to

demonstrate the versatility of this method of, I will now create an alternate set of modes,

which will then evolve into chords taken from the given cells. I will list a few

possibilities for each cell but ultimately settle on one to create a different set of chord

changes to “With Drew.”

The first cell contains the notes A, Bb, E and F. This cell was originally used to

form a G Dorian mode. One possibility for these four notes is F Ionian. All of these notes

are found in this mode, which also happens to be the F major scale. Two other

possibilities are Bb Lydian and D Aeolian.

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 Determining which mode was being outlined aided me a great deal in figuring out

the harmonies that were to be a part in the piece. For example the first mode, G Dorian,

allows for an easy conversion to a common chord.This cell contains the second, third,

sixth and seventh notes of the mode. Since a third and a seventh are present in this mode,

it is clear that this could be labeled as Gmin7. In fact, no other option is possible.

Two other modes listed above are based on the Lydian mode. This mode contains

a raised fourth, a fifth, a major seventh and the root. To convert these modes into some

type of chord, the proper label would be an EbMaj7(#11), and EMaj7(#11).

There are two other melodic cells that assigned modes in the example above. The

fifth mode, B Aeolian, contains a C#, D, F# and G. This mode could become simply a

Bmin7(b6) chord. In the finished version, I removed the G natural and added an A natural

to make this chord a Bmin7.

The last cell occurs in the seventh bar of this phrase is a little different from the

others. When composing this piece, I always considered this cell more of a chord with a

dominant function. It can, however, be broken down into a modal cell. Just as the D7 flat

6 chord found in “Chemistry,” this chord in “With Drew” is taken from the G Melodic

Minor mode and thus behaves more like a G harmonic minor over D chord, rather than a

D7 chord. Note that this chord does have a suspended fourth, and therefore the F# is

ommitted. That means that this chord only has two sets of half steps, rather than three.

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After I determined what type of sounds I wanted to accompany the melody, I

began to realize which modes were being outlined and assigned them. As previously

mentioned, there are several possibilites for each melodic cell. These are the modes I

assigned to each particular cell.

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* This mode resembles an altered scale, but has no dominant seventh and therefore, may

not be very useful in jazz harmony.

“WITH DREW”

In “Chemistry,” I chose to keep the music almost exclusively modal. Even the

typical “chord changes” listed during the solo section were listed as modes instead of

chords. However, I have used the brighest to darkest concept to develop chord

progressions in some of my compositions. One example is “With Drew.” This

composition was written in several stages. I began with a simple melody. Under the

melody, I began adding simple modal cells to begin formulating some type of harmony.

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The last chord of the bridge does not fit into any of the naturally occurring

diatonic modes I have discussed thus far. The previous methods dealt with either a static

bass note or a static modal cell. This mode that makes up the D7 flat 6 chord comes from

the harmonic minor mode, based on G. This mode also contains a flat 9, but I decided to

omit it from the chord.

The interesting thing about the melodic minor mode is that instead of having two

sets of half steps, there are three sets of half steps. Using the three sets of half steps to

harmonize each bass note, several more modes can be discovered. Note that the modes

based on the harmonic minor mode are alterations of diatonic modes. These altered

modes are the basis of what Ron Miller deals with in his book Modal Jazz Composition

and Harmony, Volume 1.

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