@MikeHamad said:

@solargarlic78 said:

Anyway, this is awesome stuff - thank you for your posts. I hope my ideas are helpful and not annoying. :-)

Thanks for the kind words. They're not annoying at all. Let me try to address these in turn.

"When Phish jams in minor, it is almost always DORIAN with a focus on the minor pentatonic notes - and the dorian notes added for color - Carini (Em), Ghost (Am), Tweezer (Am), Sand (Am), Bowie (Em) - all Dorian. An interesting exception is Stash (D natural minor, or Aeolian) - when Stash goes to F - it REALLY is doing a modulation to the relative major. (what you call MODIII). But this kind of shift is actually rare in Phish jams I'd argue because they're almost always in Dorian."

Correct. In Phish jams (most rock music, really), minor almost always means Dorian. For awhile, when I started analyzing this stuff, I would specify "A Dorian" instead of "A minor," but it got too annoying. Just assume every time I write "A minor," it's the Dorian mode (i.e. the raised ^6 and flatted ^7).

"2) So I like to to think of Phish "minor" jams as modal jams focused in on the "ii" chord. This means a shift in Ghost from Amin to Dmajor is not really a I-IV as much as a ii-V. (dorian-> mixo). If it were really A natural minor to D major, the pitch collection would modulate to change notes C and F to C# and F# respectively - which would sound weird. The "ii"-> "V" pulls off the Amin-> Dmaj feel within the pitch collection/key at hand (G major). This is also present in the many examples you have of Amin-> Cmaj - that is usually a shift from dorian to lydian (ii-> IV, not i-III) in the Gmajor family of notes (the F# persists)."

I can't behind hearing A Dorian > D Mixolydian as "ii-V" rather than "i-IV." Keep in mind: the Roman numeral system is all about harmonic function. In tonal music, ii is roughly equivalent to a IV chord -- a subdominant, in other words, a place to go that's "away" from the tonic/home key. I, or i, signifies tonic stable function.

Same point with that D mixo area: assume Mixolydian always = major. It's too annoying to call D major "D Mixo" every time, especially because it's going to confuse the hell out of people who are just getting used to major and minor (not you, clearly).

If you call that D area "V," you're ascribing to it the same functionality as a V chord -- dominant function, relatively unstable, eager to return to I -- which presumably would lead to some phantom "I" chord (G major). I hear exactly what you're hearing, but one particular SLICE of it (the "i-IV"-ness, even though Dorian and Mixolydian) is WAY stronger than the other SLICE (ii-V, or subdominant to dominant function, with a tonic that NEVER arrives, but the mode corresponds to ii-V).

The equivalency of major with Mixo and minor with Dorian is simply one of the accommodations / adjustments from tonal classical music that one has to make with this repertoire. But I hear what you're saying (especially when it comes to Reba jams).

"My only point is, all your tables really only keep track of whether the jam is 'minor' or 'major' but really matters is what MODE they are in - Dorian? Mixolydian? Aeolian? If you understand the mode, the next chord that comes is usually within the chords of that mode understood as: I ii iii IV V vi vii I"

You can assume that every "major" is Mixo and "minor" is Dorian. Aeolian / Ionian rarely happen, and Lydian is always fleeting. You could make a parallel chart, if that helps.

"3) Phish major jams are almost always either Lydian (Reba, Curtain, Wingsuit) or Mixlydian (DWD, Jibboo, Gin). In other words, they are almost always playing with the IV-V chords of a given key. So when Disease shifts from A to G, it's not really fair to call that a I-> flatVII. It's better thought of as just a V-> IV. Hood is an exception which is really in Dmajor (I). A lot of Hoods recently have modulated to D mixloydian which brings the C-> D major chord feel into play (again IV-V).

I'd have to reconfigure my whole interpretive framework if I started calling all major keys "V," which ascribes them a dominant function that doesn't really exist (same point as above). The Roman numeral system indicates function, as you know, and not just mode. Certainly, you wouldn't suggest that there's no tonic function in Phish jams simply because of missing Aeolian / Ionian modes, right?

Anyway, let me know if this makes sense or not.[/quote]

Yeah, that all makes sense. I think you're right that doing this presentation in terms of modes would probably confuse people more. But, I think there is also something deceptively simple about Phish mode changes these days.

If you think of Gmajor Ionian as a family of chords - I (G major) ii (Amin) iii (Bmin) IV (C major) V (Dmajor), vi (Emin) vii (F# dim?) I (Gmajor). Then an Amin Dorian jam is often going to jump around within this family of chords (well, usually Phish doesn't touch the iii to be honest). The jam itself is on the "ii" in this conception. They are in effect jamming on the "ii" of a given key/family of chords.

I totally get the dissonance of thinking of the I as the V (because the V wants to resolve etc etc.) But insofar as the Grateful Dead inaugurated jams music with Dark Star (A Mixo), I like to think of that as jamming on the V chord in D major scale. (This all has to do probably with how I learned my scales on guitar and then tried to transpose them to modes). So much jam music is this jamming on the V chord imo.