Posted by Zed Shaw | 2010-03-22 15:30:51.888905
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This Round Is Done!
Round 15 will cover the Lydian mode, which is very similar to the Ionian mode we just did in Round 14. The main difference with Lydian is that it raises the 4th making it sound more modern. The reason is that modern music doesn't really play a natural 4th that often, especially in Jazz, Blues, and Country.
Included in this round is a copy of the US Navy Basic Music Manual which is an excellent free manual that covers a wide range of practical music theory. I'll be using their way of describing scales and modes since it's simple to understand, but if you have your own way then go for it.
The Challenge
For this round we are looking to get you into using the Lydian mode where you'd normally use the Ionian mode. Your challenge is to craft another simple 3 or 4 chord progression that lets you play the Lydian mode and either emphasize the sharp 4 note (F# in a C Lydian mode) or simply craft a regular major mode progression and play Lydian on it anyway.
The key to the challenge is to work in that sharp 4 note so that it fits the chord progression you've crafted.
An extra challenge, for those who want to do multiple submissions, is to do a second submission (or a section of your song) that is very modal and minimalist. Go with a single chord and a droning bass note. Maybe no chord at all, just multiple instruments implying a chord or two.
You'll be surprised at both how easy it is to solo over such minimal composition, but also how hard it is to make it sound interesting.
Chords to look at in this challenge are the major 7th, and major 7th#11 (major 7 sharp 11) chords.
The Theory
Hopefully you know what the major scale is from Round 13, but if not then lets review the notes:
If you're not familiar with the theory, the two scales above have the same "pattern" of increments of notes taken from the main chromatic scale. The chromatic scale is basically all the black and white keys on a piano played in order. Another way to say that is every "semi-tone" or half step. An example of a semi-tone is E-F or G-G# or Ab-B.
The chromatic scale is pretty damn annoying though, so the major scale is a pattern that's pleasing for most of its notes in a particular key. This is why if you play a B scale over a C major chord progression it'll sound bad. Most of the notes in B conflict with C.
However, as you'll see in a second, if you play the Lydian mode of the G major scale (C D E F# G A B C) it'll actually sound pretty decent. The reason is that the patterns are almost the same sequence of semi-tones between C Ionian (Key of C) and C Lydian (Key of G), except the 4th note is sharp (F#) in C Lydian.
But why does this sound good? Well, whether it sounds "good" or not is entirely cultural taste, but for the most part a natural 4th note (F) conflicts with most of the chords in a given key. It probably wasn't that way until Jazz and Blues started changing how we listen to music, but today a natural 4th note seems to drive people up a wall. They just like pentatonics, and if you look at the C major pentatonic you don't find a natural 4th:
No F there, and since we've been listening to this scale over and over and over for more than 100 years, and something like this is found all over the world, we just got used to music not having the natural 4th or the natural 7th. In fact, another way to look at pentatonics is a "corrected" scale that removes the unstable 4th and 7th notes creating a set of notes that fits most music better.
Memorizing Lydian
There's a few ways to describe the Lydian mode. Probably the easiest is just "Ionian with sharp 4th." That makes it simple since, if you know the major scale, then you can extrapolate to the Lydian mode very easily. For example, let's say you want to do the F Lydian mode:
Tada! That's all there is to it, and turns out the F Lydian mode is actually in the key of C (C to F is the 4th).
Alright, so learning something usually involves looking at it from multiple ways until you find one way that, for whatever reason, lets you memorize it and use it. You can also learn the mode as a sequence of steps:
There's many different ways to look at it, but an interesting way that works for many different scales and modes is the use of tetrachords. This is talked about in the manual for this round:
In chapters 5-8, and how it works is you use combinations of 4 note sequences also called "tetrachords". These four note sequences can be either Major, minor, natural minor, or harmonic minor. When you combine them with a Link note in different ways you get different modes and scales. That means all you need to know for this round is that a Major tetrachord is:
And that a Link note is always 2 semi-tones (one whole step). We can then lay out all the modes like this:
That's all there is to the Major modes and how to construct them. The minor modes will be covered in later rounds, but they work the same way, just with the minor and natrual minor tetrachords.
Even if you already know your scales and modes, try looking at them from the point of view of tetrachords. You may find that opens up a unique perspective and helps you hear it or play it differently.
For more on this in the Navy manual, see chapters 5-8, with the Lydian mode covered in Ch. 8 on page 74.