Aeolian mode

[1] In the music theory of ancient Greece, it was an alternative name (used by some later writers, such as Cleonides) for what Aristoxenus called the Low Lydian tonos (in the sense of a particular overall pitching of the musical system—not a scale), nine semitones higher than the lowest "position of the voice", which was called Hypodorian.

In the eleventh century, Guido d'Arezzo, in chapter 8 of his Micrologus, designated these transposed finals A, B♮, and C as "affinals", and later still the term "confinal" was used in the same way.

[7] In 1525, Pietro Aaron was the first theorist to explain polyphonic modal usage in terms of the eightfold system, including these transpositions.

For example, ♭VII is a major chord built on the seventh scale degree, indicated by capital Roman numerals for seven.

There are common subsets including i–♭VII–♭VI, i–iv–v and blues minor pentatonic derived chord sequences such as I–♭III–IV, I–IV, ♭VII (The verse of "I'm Your Man").

[11] Middleton[11] suggests of modal and fourth-oriented structures that, rather than being, "distortions or surface transformations of Schenker's favoured V–I kernel, it is more likely that both are branches of a deeper principle, that of tonic/not-tonic differentiation."