Watch the Tonal Centers online guitar lesson by Robbie Calvo from Guitar Interactives
PRINCIPLE 10 - TONAL CENTERS / MODES
A tonal center is where your ear tells you that a progression or melody resolves. We can be playing in the key of G, for example but this may not be where the chord progression resolves to within the key. There are 7 tonal centers within each key. In order they are Ionian - resolving to the I chord
Dorian - resolving to the II chord
Phrygian - resolving to the III chord
Lydian - resolving to the IV chord
Mixolydian - resolving to the V chord
Aeolian - resolving to the VI chord
Locrian - resolving to the VII chord
I’ve prepared a backing track for each mode and tonal center to illustrate how this works in practice...of course these tracks are perfect to learn some cool rhythm parts and then you can use your modes to jam over each modal track resolving to each of those tonal centers.