Composers are going to keep writing music that doesn’t comform to the theory exam expectations; teachers understand this, and put considerable effort into understanding for themselves (and into teaching their students to understand) the way the composer is working. 2 flats indicates the tonic of G and the minor third, but not necessarily all the notes that will be used in the piece. Michelle. Ex: d dorian is related to C major and has no octave. As egregious as this error was I’ve been noticing a far worse trend in the past twelve months: examiners who mark students wrong when they correctly identify the key of a signature-less piece of music as being other than C Major/A minor. If I’m writing in G Dorian, I prefer a key signature of 2 flats – indicating a G minor tonality, and use accidentals to clarify the exact mode. k="../midi-files/hypodorian.mid"; //Put the name of the tune here. D mixolydian-- either think down a fifth to G and it is a G scale starting on D -- OR -- think D major scale with a lowered 7th (C natural - so the key signature is F#). If you would like to listen to some jazz tunes based in Either thought process gets you to the document.write('
') One way to look at modes is to imagine a piano. scales to improvise with! G mixolydian = G, A, B, C, D, (How come this G major key signature.