Music/Scale/Dorian

• Dorian Mode

  • Also called the protus authentic mode or Mode 1. On C: C D E♭ F G A B♭. Steps in semitones: 2 1 2 2 2 1 2. The second mode of Music/Scale/Major.

  • History

    • The name is Greek but the scale is not. The ancient Greek Dorian octave species ran from E to E in modern terms, the collection now called Phrygian. Carolingian theorists, most visibly the anonymous Alia musica around 9/0/0, attached the Greek names to the church modes in a different order.
    • In plainchant and Renaissance polyphony, the D mode was defined by its final, its range and its reciting tone A. B♭ was common, so much Dorian music sounds Aeolian to modern ears.
    • Baroque composers often wrote D minor with no key signature, a habit inherited from Dorian notation. Person/Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 538 is called "Dorian" for that reason alone: its notation has no flat, and its music is in D minor.

  • Use

    • Modal jazz made Dorian a vamp scale. Person/Miles Davis's "So What" (Kind of Blue, 1959) sits on D Dorian with a bridge in E♭ Dorian, and Person/John Coltrane's "Impressions" uses the same form.
    • The i–IV vamp, a minor tonic with a major subdominant, is Dorian's signature in rock and Latin music, as in Person/Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va" and the rock band Santana's cover of it, with Person/Carlos Santana on guitar.
    • English and Celtic folk melodies, among them "Scarborough Fair", are often Dorian.
    • In jazz chord-scale theory it is the default scale for a minor seventh chord functioning as ii.

  • Quirks

    • Its step pattern is a palindrome, so Dorian is the only diatonic mode that inverts to itself about its tonic. D is the center of symmetry of the white-key collection.
    • The raised sixth makes IV a major triad and puts a tritone between ♭3 and 6. That raised sixth is the note a listener uses to tell Dorian from Aeolian.
    • Music/Scale/Dorian/Ukrainian and Music/Scale/Dorian/Bebop carry Dorian in their names. Ukrainian Dorian derives from harmonic minor, and Bebop Dorian adds a chromatic passing tone.
    • The MicroFreak manual spells its "Dorian" and "Minor" settings almost identically; the "Minor" spelling is this scale with an added B natural. See Microfreak/UG/15 Using Scales/01 Scale Settings.