Modes only have names like Ionian, Dorian etc… Modes aren’t called D7.

Say a music sheet is Written in the Key (or scale) of C Major, then you would expect all the notes in the music sheet to be C D E F G A B.

The difficult bit students fail to understand, When you play the melody of a song, there is only one note out of those 7 notes that melody is based around. So if you were to play around with the melody, and go down the scale, you would stop at that note, if that note is a C, then the song is written in the Ionian Mode, if the note was a D, then song is written in the Dorian mode etc…

So if you want to be precise, for example, you could say a song is written in the Lydian Mode of C Major.

What is the reason for having modes? (each mode sounds different)
To help understand why, you need to play all 7 modes.
If you stick to playing around with the C Major Scale.
If you start on C (Ionian mode) and go up and down the scale, it sounds ok to return to the C note.

However if you were to start on the 2nd note of the C Major scale (Dorian mode) and go up and down the scale, it would now sound ok to return to D instead of C. Also you should now notice the C Major scale sounds different in the Dorian mode than it sounds in the Ionian Mode. Some people who are into modes, will say each mode sounds like you are in a musical different world, when it comes to improvising (which is true). In reality, when you are playing the melody of a song, you are actually playing in a specific mode of the scale.

When it comes to improvising, the rules vary by teacher, you can break the rules and still sound great, but for novices, there are some basic rules for novices to stick to, to play safe, before they become more adventurous and explore the more colourful side of improvisation. (get the major improvisation course and learn more).

When you see a chord named in a bar (or measure), it doesn’t mean to say you have to play all the notes in a chord. You need to experiment with the backing track, and start out by hearing how different the improvisation bar sounds, when you just play the 1st note of every chord, compared to just playing the 3rd note or 5th note or 7th note of the chord.

You must start out just playing the root note of every chord in the music sheet, then repeat the process with the 3rd note and hear how different your improvisation sounds, then try out the 5th and 7th notes. What you will find depending on the song, you might have preference to one of those notes (1st, 3rd, 5th or 7th). Sometimes, each chord might sound better on a different note.

If you are a novice, play safe and just play the root note of each chord at the start of each bar.

I’m not going to describe what to do next, just to say you need to experience the feeling of how the improvisation siunds by just playing one note per bar, before leaping into 2 notes per bar, going all the way up to 14 notes per bar….

Another question students ask, is why chords are important to improvisers?

The simplest answer that i know of, is you can divide a song or a band into two separate parts, one section plays melody and the other section plays harmony.

You can recognise the song a lot easier from the melody and probably not from the harmony.

If you were to improvise to the song, then you dont want to copy the melody, otherwise you’re just playing melody, so go and sit in the melody section of the band, the same thing applies if you play harmony, go and sit in the harmony section of the band.

So where does the improviser sit?
He sits alone in a third section of the band alongside with the Chords.
The Chord sits on the fence, he can blend in with the melody, and he can also blend in with the harmony, you can argue all day long as to which section the chord belongs to. To me personally, the chord can harmonise with either section or both but doesnt sit in either section.

So Mr Chord helps you improvise with out sounding too much like melody or harmony but fits in on the music scene.

to help you under chord relationships, listen to two people. One singing a song and the other person just strumming the chords on a guitar. Play the wrong chord and you ruin the performance, so play safe and stick with the right Mr chord when improvising.