From the Author of ModeWheel …
As a child I was taught piano just well enough to persuade my parents to continue paying for lessons. As an adult, I often joined with friends informally to jam for fun on various musical scales and patterns. But it was musician Oliver Prehn’s superb YouTube lessons — all of which are available via his website — that inspired me to study improvisational jazz more seriously.
I wrote ModeWheel as a cross-platform (Win/Mac) application that emulates and extends his original cardboard tool for identifying the modes in order to improve my own understanding of these scales and how these relate to chord progressions. Hope that you find it helpful too.
As regards my personal background, my career has been divided between work as a clinical psychologist and university instructor, graphic designer for renewable-energy publications, and a programmer developing psychological testing applications. Although this might seem an odd combination, all are truly as much art as science.
I welcome your feedback and suggestions via the Contact page. I promise to reply promptly to all messages.
Although ModeWheel is a copyrighted application, it may be downloaded anonymously from this website and used entirely free of charge, subject only to the licensing terms detailed at the end of the QuickStart Manual posted on this website.
If you do find ModeWheel of value in learning more about these musical scales, please consider a small one-time anonymous donation via the Paypal link in the page footer to help to support the cost of making ModeWheel available to everyone interested in music theory. However, just as Oliver Prehn says with respect to his own video lessons, please feel no obligation to do so.
More important to me is that you share the link to this website. As a life-long teacher, I’d like to reach as many music instructors and their students to promote a better understanding of scales and modes. (If you have your own website, an external link to my site may help even more.)
Best wishes,
jeff k