For the last little while I've been trying to learn modes.. but without the ability to quickly determine which note I'm on or need to get to.. It is nothing more than learning shapes that I can't actually work with.
It took me forever to understand what was actually going on with modes. I will pass on my experience to try to help you. If someone had told me this it would have saved me a lot of time. Take it for what t is worth...you can decide that part. ;-)
I was given a VHS by my brother called 'Modes: No More Mysteries' by Frank Gambale. I was super stoked to get into it when I first fired it up. About 1/2 an hour into it I realized I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. It was depressing and I almost didn't bother because I realized how little I knew and how much hard work I needed to do if I wanted to learn this stuff. Not only about modes but music theory in general. I hate hard work and I am lazy...but I love guitar and I am stubborn.
One thing that I actually understood from the video was when FG said the reason most people don't understand modes is because they aren't taught modal chord progressions. So that was a clue. If I wasn't jamming to modal chord progressions I wasn't going to learn to play modal lead lines. I also realized It was going to be a fool's errand to try to learn 'the modes of the major scale' without complete knowledge of the major scale, which I did not have. I was mostly a Pentatonic guy who combined the Maj/Min Pentatonic scales/boxes and added in 'colour notes' I picked up from learning solos off of records.
So my first task was to learn the major scale inside out. I began to memorize the C Maj scale. A,B,C,D,E.F and G. This is also a great way to memorize the names of the notes. Kind of a two birds with one stone thing. I was comfortable playing in certain A minor pentatonic boxes, so I learned the C maj scale notes in those positions first. Those notes are also all the notes in A minor, so that was helpful in itself. Doing it in smaller chunks that way still gave me lots of time to have fun noodling or whatever and wasn't as daunting. I needed that because I lack discipline too lol.
I was fortunate to have a programmable sequencer at that time so I could program rhythms to jam to. FG was teaching parallel modes(modes from different keys with the same root), but that was way more than I could get my head around so I took the method he offered and programmed rhythms to accommodate just the modes of the C Major scale. To do that I had to learn the intervals. That isn't too hard.
His method was to use the IV and V chord from the 'parent key' of the mode you wanted to play, and use a chord from the same key as a root chord to give it its 'modal' tonality. I was looking at C so I was using F Maj and G Maj as the IV/V. I started with a D Dorian progression so I used with D minor as the root chord and use the F and G chords to make he rest of the rhythm. Next I wanted an A Aeolean progression I used A Minor as the root with the same V and IV. Then I used E minor for an E Phrygian progression.
This worked great to get the modal tonality in the background. To solo over it I just used the notes of C Maj. I had to 'feel my way around at first, but my ear guided me.
I did the same thing for the major modes and the method works well for the Ionian mode. But for the Lydian and Mixolydian modes I had to use either the IV or V chord twice. Not ideal because FG's method was for parallel modes, not modes in the same key but it still worked. If I wanted to use the parallel mode method I would have had to know the notes in six more keys and I was nowhere near that.
If it worked for me, it will work for anyone, trust me. ;-)