Modal Harmony
Harmony that holds a colour instead of going somewhere. No dominant, no leading tone, no pull toward home. Just a mode, kept alive by the chords that belong to it and killed by the one chord that does not.
- no dominant
- 7 modes
- one forbidden chord
In which styles
- Folk
- Modal jazz
- Film music
- Game music
- Ambient
In short
Normal harmony works by tension and release: the V pulls to the I and the key is confirmed. Modal harmony refuses that engine. Instead of confirming a home by resolving to it, you confirm it by staying put and by leaning on the one note that makes the mode different. The result is music that has a centre but no gravity, which is why it can loop for minutes without sounding unfinished.
Suspended rather than settled. Modal harmony feels like standing somewhere rather than travelling. That is why it is the sound of folk music, of modal jazz and of most film music that has to accompany a landscape rather than a plot.
Where it sits in the phrase
Modal harmony lives in the loop rather than in the cadence. There is no eight-bar arc that lands; there is a vamp that turns. The characteristic chord, the one containing the note that separates this mode from the ordinary major or minor, usually gets the second half of the loop, because that is the position your ear remembers.
Where you run into this
- Any folk tune that circles two chords without ever cadencing
- Modal jazz, where one scale runs for sixteen bars at a time
- Film and game music under a landscape or a journey
The types side by side
Each mode gives a different harmony: Dorian leans on its major IV, Mixolydian on its bVII, Lydian on its major II, Phrygian on its bII. Play them one after another on the same root and you hear that they are not seven flavours of the same thing but seven different gravities. The mistake to avoid is the same every time: introduce the dominant of the key and the mode is gone within a bar.