Hi Dave

Am really enjoying your new Scale Modes series so far

I would ask these questions in the chat, but I live in the UK and your livecast is 1am to 2am so unfortunately I can only view the replays and ask questions in this forum

The zoomed-in detailed view you are presenting is really good, however I'm struggling with a few concepts which may need a little more zoomed-out approach.  The zoomed-in approach is like your Private Trooper on a battlefield that has to fight one-on-one or small groups.  Whereas the Field General needs to view the whole battlefield from the top of his (safe!) mountaintop camp.

So I'm struggling with WHERE and WHEN these modes should be used?  e.g. like if you have a chord sequence in Key C, and you intentionally write the sequence as the home chord was the m2 chord -> is that when D-Dorian is applicable?  Or can you write a normal song in the key of C and use D-Dorian when the m2 chord is being played in the chord sequence?  Note, I'm not looking for a zoomed-in explanation of "this note fits here to move to this note blah blah"

So in a nutshell...
Where is it applicable to use Dorian, Ionian, etc.?
Is a surrogate Root chord needed to use non-Ionian? e.g. Dm in the Key of C
Do we need to use different modes on different chords in the progression?

Your real-world song examples are great, but your explanation only makes sense to that specific example.  Maybe I'm just not smart enough to get the wider inference at the moment.  Maybe if you added something like "Kid Charlemagne is in the Key of C, the chord Sequence is "Dm - G - C - Dm, so the m2 of C is being a surrogate root so here is where Dorian will fit right in".  Note, I have no idea if the example is remotely correct, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say.

Or maybe, "Hey guys, say you wrote a chord progression, Key of C, and it was C - Dm - F - G.  So that's I-ii-IV-V, so your options for modes are...".  And do a few examples that get a bit more non-diatonic with the chords, like "Dm - C - G - Bb, so here we have ii-I-V-bVII well this mixes it up because your modal options could now be...."

Giving us tools is great, but teaching us where it's appropriate to use those tools is of equal value.  Most of us only use the Minor Pentatonic because it mostly works on Major and Minor keys, it works "everywhere", which is why its good and bad.

Looking forward to the future episodes