Here is a video in which you can hear me playing a piece of music I improvised and named Each Pebble. As usual, I named this piece after recording, as I like to play with no script and see what emerges. I chose the title because the music brought to my mind’s eye the texture of many pebbles, and the way water runs and cascades over them, or the way they tumble against one another in a riverbed, or sea spray creating sparkles on a pebbled shore. Each pebble is individual and separate from the other, with its own contours, distinct yet similar to the others — each with its own story of how it was worn down and shaped by the relentlessly moving water. Together they form a bigger picture — the multitude of pebbles forming a shore, with its own collective story. 

In this improvisation, the music transitioned and cycled between four closely related modes — F Aeolian, F Dorian, E flat Dorian and G Aeolian. 

This felt like it was echoing the idea of multiple pebbles lying next to each other in the same riverbed, or seashore — each pebble made of slightly different mineral combinations or with slightly different sizes and shapes, but all sharing a resemblance in structure, and all belonging to the same body of water. 

Each mode had similarities in its dark and sorrowful minor structure (all of them have a minor 3rd degree), and each mode was from parent scales that were on adjacent positions in the cycle of 5ths. And yet despite these close similarities, each one has a distinct identity in its slightly different colour and character.

Mode Table

Mode	Note Names	Parent Scale	Modal Relationship
F Aeolian	F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ – E♭	A♭ Major	6th mode of A♭ Major
F Dorian	F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D – E♭	E♭ Major	2nd mode of E♭ Major
E♭ Dorian	E♭ – F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭	D♭ Major	2nd mode of D♭ Major
G Aeolian	G – A – B♭ – C – D – E♭ – F	B♭ Major	6th mode of B♭ Major

Interval Formulas

Aeolian Mode Formula:

1 – 2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – ♭6 – ♭7

Root, Major 2nd, Minor 3rd, Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, Minor 6th, Minor 7th

Dorian Mode Formula:

1 – 2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – ♭7

Root, Major 2nd, Minor 3rd, Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, Major 6th, Minor 7th

Further Reading and Listening

Learn more about modes here: Complete Guide to Modes of the Major, Melodic Minor, and Harmonic Minor Scales

Neptune’s Midnight Rain — Improvisation in D Aeolian, E♭ Lydian, D Phrygian & G Aeolian

Elegy for the Edge of Indigo — Improvisation in B♭ Aeolian, D Lydian ♯2 & D Lydian

Rooted in the Sunlight — Improvisation in E Dorian & B♭ Lydian