Vidale and Lydian gave very good explanations already, no need to dumb it down. It's a very simple concept, as has been pointed out, but what Lydian said about tonal center is something that everyone should try to understand/form an intuition about, because that's about the only hard part about music theory. The rest is just language.

I'd like to add to what ZAU touched with his comment. The most common modes outside the familiar minor and major, the Dorian and Mixolydian, "feel" like minor and major, respectively; you can interpret a song in a Dorian mode as a minor with borrowed chords. So in principle you don't need to invoke modes in your thinking when writing music, you can just use a D major chord in A minor because it sounds frigging cool - case in point: the chorus of "Civilization" by Justice 

Spoke with one of my professors about this, and he pointed me to this PDF that might help some people out!

Okay, here's how I broke the modes down for myself.

1. The 7 modes are split up into the Major and Minor sounding modes.
2. Major: Ionian, Lydian, Mixolydian. Minor: Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Locrian.
3. MAJOR sounding modes:
    i) Ionian = The Major Scale.
    ii) Lydian = The Major Scale but raise the 4th note in the scale up 1 semitone. *
    iii) Mixolydian = The Major Scale but lower the 7th note in the scale down 1 semitone.
4. MINOR sounding modes:
    i) Aeolian = The Natural Minor Scale
    ii) Dorian = The Natural Minor Scale but raise the 6th note in the scale up 1 semitone.
    iii) Phrygian = The Natural Minor Scale but lower the 2nd note in the scale down 1 semitone.
    iv) Locrian = The Natural Minor Scale but lower the 2nd note AND 5th note in the scale down 1 semitone.

Essentially, there are really only 3 major things you need to know to fully understand the modes:
1. How to construct/play a Major Scale.
2. How to construct/play a Minor Scale.
3. The characteristics of each mode, there are only 7 of them, it's not that hard I don't think?

And when you break them up into the Major/Minor ones, it gets a lot easier.

*Best example of the Lydian mode ever: The Simpsons theme. The third note in that melody is the raised 4th scale note.

Quote from: Marrow Machines on April 07, 2016, 01:06:15 am

EDIT: so that chord of the starting point, is the chord that corresponds to the C major scale when using that particular mode?

The professor said it was meant as another way to remember the modes, but I'll admit I can't remember the explanation completely because of all the other stuff I've been learning today.  I know that he explained it in a way where if you look at all the notes that are in the displayed chord, they end up being all the notes displayed for the associated mode.

thank you very much.

Quote from: Marrow Machines on April 06, 2016, 02:15:40 am

But w/e, i seek to make things easier because i see a whole bunch of snobby  rubbish in this particular subject of production, mix engineering, and music.

Okay?

asuh dude

thanks

sorry it took so long for me to respond but i just was digesting all this stuff and it brought up so many more questions that im trying to answer on my own before i take up anyones time.

We're all here for you.