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Mel Belli
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To be honest, I'm not even sure MT thought in terms of theory like that. I think he went for target notes based on the composition of each chord—which, let's face it, is a pretty easy thing to do with Stones music—and then trusted his ears the rest of the way.
But, like I said, every once in a while, he'd throw in something cool like the "Slow Blues" lick; he repeated it enough times on the track to suggest he knew it was a "value-add" kind of phrase. And he clearly knew his way around basic major scales.
I'm certainly not much of a theory buff, myself. But there's a popular series of instructional books by Jody Fisher that help me a ton, especially with the modes. There's a section in Fisher's "Beginning Jazz Guitar" that clicked for me; it was like a skeleton key. Rather than learning new shapes or fingerings for each mode, it teaches you to locate the modes "derivatively"—because they're major scales, only with fancy Greek names.
If I want to find Dorian, I mentally move a whole step down from whatever chord I'm playing. Dorian is mostly used with minor-7 chords, so let's say you're playing a Dm7. Move (not literally, but mentally) two frets toward the neck, and there's C.
Bingo: Play the C-major scale from D to D (D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D) and you're playing in the Dorian mode! Not only in Dorian, but *D* Dorian. That was one of the things that confused me initially about modes. I understood that you constructed them out of major scales—but what to do with them? I was ignoring the fact that there was A Dorian, B Dorian, C Dorian, etc., and you play them with those corresponding chords.
Similarly, if you move four frets, or two steps, from D, you locate Bb. Hence, play the Bb major scale over the Dm7, and you're in D Phrygian.
I've got guitar-centric little mnemonic devices for each mode. A common one is Mixolydian, played most frequently over dominant seventh chords like E7 or A7, etc. How to find Mixolydian? Think of the 4 of whatever chord you're playing. Let's say E7. What's the 4 of E? Answer: A.
Voila: Play the A major scale from E to E, and you're in E Mixolydian!
To forestall confusion, you might know that Mixolydian is built out of the fifth note of the major scale. My little trick reverses things. Technically, when talking about modes, we should say that E is the five of A. But, at least for me, it's easier to think of the chord I'm playing as the root, and then move from there.
Aeolian is really easy. Just think in terms of relative major/minor. Go back to our Dm7 chord above. What major is Dm relative to? F. So if you play the F major scale over Dm7, you're in D Aeolian.
Okay. Enough pontificating from me!
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