Music modes and our emotional body

[cyfnos]

Music speaks to our emotional body. As such it needs to be able to represent an incredible variety of emotions. The Greeks were very much aware of this and used what we call the modes to express that variety. The Greeks had seven modes. Throughout the centuries and the rise of the church the uses of those modes changed to reflect only two of the them Lydian and Hypodorian (Greek names). Today we call them Major and Minor modes and the minor modes was modified even further to resemble the Major mode in its upper register especially the melodic minor. So all of that variety was simplified to “happy and sad” and the sad was so difficult to handle than we had to make it happier by modifying it...

The modes did not disappear completely, Debussy revisited them, the Beatles used them too but as a general rule they have become the exception.

 

If we look at it from the point of view of our emotional body this is deep conditioning into believing that only the happy position is worth something, all the other ones being irrelevant, bad, our mind took the route of defining them as “out of taste” and if we could taste music… oh wait we actually can , there is a lot we could do to reclaim our full potential.

 

What I like to do is to play those modes everyday or sing them and see what they stir inside me what they show me, the Greeks had specific emotions attached to them but I prefer to see what I attach to them and work with that instead.

 

If you have access to a piano it is made simple by playing just the white keys up and down.

 

B-B' Mixolydian, C-C' Lydian, D-D' Phrygian, E-E' Dorian, F-F' Hypolydian, G-G' Hypophrygian, A-A' Hypodorian. To simplify I call them B, C, D, E, F, G and A modes, but you know we have to be careful of where simplification leads us to…. .

 

We are complex emotional beings there is no way around it.

 

Emotional conditioning is a big one in self healing, it affects our perceptions, this is something that is looked at and worked with in our Quicksilver class, if you are interested we start this Sunday March 20 at 10pm EDT and sign up is still available.

 

Thank you for reading.

Cyfnos