On the piano
The keyboard shows the same seven notes as a shape you can see. The colored keys are the D dorian scale.
D dorian scale on the whole neck
59 notes of the D dorian scale are marked across six strings.
This is every place the notes of the D dorian scale fall on the guitar, with each note's name and its scale degree. The roots are marked so you can find your bearings.
Play the white keys from D to D. Every note belongs to C major, yet the result does not sound like C major.
That is a mode: the same seven notes, with a different one treated as home. D dorian has the notes of C major and the character of a minor scale, because the third above D is F, a minor third. What makes it dorian rather than ordinary D minor is the sixth, which is B natural where D natural minor has B♭.
Because the scale has seven notes, one parent scale gives seven modes. The shapes on the neck stay exactly where they are. What changes is the note you resolve to, and the particular degree that gives each mode its character.
This lesson was drafted with the help of AI and checked by a person, and it may still contain a mistake. Its diagrams are drawn by Everyfret’s own software. How Everyfret is made