The dilemma these days is there's so much information you've got to figure out whether you should listen to Youtubers with online courses, videos, books, people on forums... the list goes on.

I learned the modes from Frank Gambale in a magazine which came with audio examples. Even though I had a book with all the theory in it I couldn't understand why C major starting on D (Dorian) or any mode starting from another note would sound different to the major scale. Hearing those examples was huge. All Frank did was kept the IV and V chords static while changing the root chord and then it all made sense. I could hear the Dorian sound. Phrygian. Lydian. Mixolydian. I could already hear minor (Aeolian). It was important to learn the modes from C major and then transpose them all to C to get the formula and then eventually in every other key.

All these years later I now remember he had a video from back in the days when he was rocking a mean rug.

https://vimeo.com/322763149

While you can still build up an impressive vocabulary committing various patterns, shapes, and lines to rote memory there will always be a barrier to self expression that you'll struggle with when you try to push beyond that and that's where ear training comes in. It's not like you need to stop everything else — develop it alongside everything else you're learning. It doesn't matter whether you use conventional theory to drum it all in so it makes sense to other musicians or whether you develop your own system. All that really matters is you can hear it and it all becomes instinctive where you're reaching for notes without thinking about them and they'll be the right notes because you're internally singing them. That's what the best players are doing.

Now of course do something for 40+ years like some of them where they're drawing from a seemingly bottomless well of ideas and it's scary. That's what seeing Allan Holdsworth play live was like for me and it kind of messed me up for a while because it was like trying to climb Everest before tackling smaller peaks. It would have been better to see the guy back in the early 70s at the start of his career who was still shredding but I could more easily recognize what he was doing and then build on that.

Getting back to theory when you hear someone talking about "Lydian Dominant" (Mixolydian #4) for example it's just going to be a sequence of notes reduced to fretboard patterns until you internalize it and really digest it. This is where the ear comes in and I think piano is probably the best tool for the job since you won't get bogged down in technical stuff related to the guitar because on piano it's laid out right in front of you in the one place and you can just close your eyes and let it sink in.

I was listening to a Thomas Newman score the other day and the app on my TV is set to automatically play the next video and suddenly I'm hearing something new from him. It immediately grabbed me so I hit pause and went to the piano. Nailed the key first note and could hear the scales he was pulling it all from. That inspired me for the next hour to figure out my own piece using that as a starting point and I've revisited that several times. Without any kind of ear training I would have been lost and stuck on pause-rewind. Even when I took a long break from guitar I'd hear music and immediately be working it out in my head. That never really goes away once you train your ear as I mentioned.

The reason why pentatonic scales are a good place to start is both half steps have been removed and 5 notes are easier to memorize than 7. Minor pentatonic (1-b3-4-5-b7) works over the 3 "minor" modes of Dorian, Aeolian/minor, and Phrygian and major pentatonic (1-2-3-5-6) works over the 3 "major" modes of Lydian, major, and Mixolydian (since the 7/b7 is left out). From there adding notes or altering those scales makes more sense.

Anyway getting back to the ear, it's really important to be able to hear the sound of a scale/mode or chord which is simply a collection of notes from a scale often laid out in thirds. Being able to go "that's Dorian" when you hear that natural 6th over a minor 7 chord or "melodic minor" when you hear the natural 6th and a major 7th instead of the usual b7. Learning to hear those intervals and then hearing them played together as harmonic intervals. Suddenly that layer of mystery is removed from music and it starts to make sense. Damn mang if I keep typing you'll never read it and it'll probably crash this POS forum software so I'll call it here.

Above all never lose the passion for learning this stuff and continually remind yourself it's all a means to an end to further self expression. That's all it is. Some people use it as a vehicle for writing more complex music to impress people. To me it's about unlocking doors to expression. Instead of spending hours searching for the right chord or notes you just know where they are. Now being able to play them fast in an improv situation is where all those years of practice come in but you've got to start somewhere and I think it starts with the ear. You don't need to drop everything else and you should never lose track of why you picked up the instrument or were drawn to music in the first place. Always keep chasing that feeling. See every day as an opportunity to learn something rather than watching 30 second instagram videos of someone with incredible chops who makes you want to quit. Just keep learning. No one can ever master this chit. No one.

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