by George Marios

Hello everyone. Before moving on with “Arpeggio superimpositions” I would like to talk about another thing called “Modal playing”. This style of playing was popularized by the great saxophonist John Coltrane and you can hear it to a classic song called “So what” which is based around 2 Dorian mode tonalities. So, “Modal playing” is when for instance you play something around A Dorian (A B C D E #F G) and then you change tonality but you still play the same mode (for example D Dorian D E F G A B C).This is a great way to surprise the audience when you are playing something, or it is also a great tool if you are in a band with a female and a male singer and you want to adapt the key to their voice. The reason why I wrote about this is because many players do “Modal Playing” and Superimpose arpeggios at the same time so as to make the song sound more interesting. Have fun until next month