This has been discussed on the board several times, including recently. Search for "Ohmsen" or "music theory" and you should find a thread from two or three weeks ago, I think.
Briefly, though, the major scale is just the 8 notes you have heard all your life sung with the syllables "do, re, mi" etc. The easist place to find one (the major scale in the key of C) is the white keys on the piano from middle C to the next higher C.
One way of thinking of modes (other sets of notes in particular patterns)is that they're made up of the notes of the major scale, but starting on a note other than the key note of the major scale. For aeolian, you start on the 6th note of the major scale (which is A in the key of C) and play the white keys from there up to the octave of the starting note (A to the next higher A rather than from C to C for aeolian). Same notes but arranged in a different pattern of intervals.
All this is confusing to state verbally, but it's easy to hear the difference between major and minor if you play the white keys on a keyboard first from C to C, then from A to A.
Each key (there are 12) has the same set of scales and modes based on defined patterns of intervals between notes. The patterns are consistent, so much so that there used to be slide rule type gadgets with which you can transpose a set of notes from one key to another. Engineers tend to be good at understanding and using the patterns.
Anyway, good luck.
Jim
"I can afford the instrument--just not the divorce."
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