Composing in Phrygian mode
I tried to compose in the Phrygian mode which seems to be harder than the natural, harmonic and melodic minor.
The biggest challenge was to end my piece in its tonic chord. My song was intended to be E Phrygian, so I started that song with the note E, used a lot of E notes and ended with the note E only to find that Am suits better as the ending chord of my song, rather than Em.
So far I have had a better success if i use a B major chord (or B diminished triad) right before the last chord, to "force" it to resolve to Em. Has anyone experienced a similar success with this strategy, or do you have some other strategies to ensure that your written song is really Phrygian?
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For what it's worth; I've found this mode to work best in lead lines.. not necessarily in composing harmony around an actual "key" based off it.
It has some odd chords; the V chord is Diminished; so V-I sounds odd (Diminished doesn't want to "go" that way). It makes convincing music somewhat difficult.
But playing an E Phrygian scale over an E minor chord is a workable plan. Use the "F" as a passing tone :)
You can use V-I, although you need to prep it well. A not-unusual formula is to end with a standard Phrygian cadence (?vii6-I), and then close it off with V-I or vii?-I (often over over a tonic pedal). Also, less conventional, but using a formula that actually arose from the Phrygian cadence, is to use an augmented sixth as your dominant. (I've closed off a number of preludes on Phrygian chorales using this.) See the following:
A & B start with a Phrygian cadence then either use either vii?/I (A) or V7 (B). C uses a French 6th to lead into I. The lack of a fifth in the final harmony is fairly common. Any of these methods avoids the kind of inconclusiveness that the bare Phrygian cadence has to modern ears.
The important to thing to watch, though, is what you write before you get to the final cadence. There is more to stabilising a mode than emphasising the "mi-fa" interval: dwelling on A will tend to wreck the sense of E as tonic. You can't avoid it entirely, but ensure that A sounds inconclusive - try to set A melody notes with D minor or F major. C tends to act as a melodic dominant in this mode as the fifth of B is diminished (B-F).
This is probably why the Ionian and Aeolian modes have become the most oft used. Both will resolve more easily, using the same 7 notes available to each.the Ionian because the V gives a convincing resolution to I, the Aeolian because the V is not a bad resolution. This of course spawned the harmonic minor, with the raised 7th, which then gives a far more convincing resolution, V-I.
The other modes have a tendency to use the same harmonic structure, as in the same underlying chords, and somewhere along the line, the Ionian or Aeolian V-I occurs.This pushes the key more towards Ionian/Aeolian than Phrygian or the others, which don't have such strong resolutions.
Each mode has it's own unique harmony associated with it and Phrygian is no different. The most notable thing about Phrygian harmony is the II chord which in E Phrygian is F. It's really strong and it is very commonly borrowed and used as what is known as a Neapolitan chord. You would want your chord progression to utilize the II chord like a dominant since the root of the chord has a strong pull back to the tonic chord. You would not want to use v(V) in general for this function because like you've noticed it has a more minor like feel to it.
A very simple Phrygian sounding progression I use all the time is i - II - III - II which in E Phrygian would be Em - F - G - F. Along the same lines, but slightly different you could utilize an altered version of the Phrygian mode (Phrygian Dominant) to get a slightly different I - II - III - II in E Phrygian Dominant would be E - F - G - F and could even be E7 - FM7 - G7 - FM7 if you wanted it to be.
That's just one common example that really defines the Phygian mode there are a ton of others. You really just have to keep in mind what defines the mode and utilize it to your advantage when creating a progression.
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