This Round Is Done!

This round will be a fun capstone to Round 14 and Round 15 which will attempt to blow your mind by combining the two of them together. This round will feature a tiny bit of composition on your part, and an extra optional challenge to play in an odd meter. Hopefully you'll read the whole thing instead of just what's on the very front page (click the link Chad :-).

What you'll be doing is using chords to link two keys together so that you play Ionian in one key, and then Lydian in the next key. I'll suggest a few example chord changes, a song structure, and then also talk about odd meters for the optional challenge.

The Challenge

Ionian and Lydian are very close modes, with only one note different (the sharp 4). This means you can't really just combine the two modes, since nobody could really hear the difference. Instead, you have to change keys in the song, purposefully going from Ionian in one key to Lydian in another. There's a few ways you can do this, which I'll get into in the lesson section.

For the challenge, your job is to come up with a song structure that has two distinct keys and play Ionian in one key and Lydian in the other. This gives you a lot of space to try out different sounding things to see what seems most dramatic, weird, or interesting. For example, you could decide the Verse and Chorus are in different keys. Then during the Chorus you'll use Lydian, and "pick it up" during the Chorus flipping into Ionian to make it happy.

This is only a suggestion though, you should play with some chord progressions to figure out what sounds cool to you.

The Optional Challenge

If you're feeling extra frisky you should try to play the song in a timing that's not 4/4. Try a 2/4, 3/4 or even 5/8 time. Anything exotic that isn't heard very often. If you can make the two sections use a different timing that'd be extra double points.

The Lesson

You should already know the two modes you'll use, and you probably are familiar with different keys. The missing link (hopefully and literally) is knowing how to compose chords so that you can transition from one key to another. They way you do this is to use one of a few "tricks" to make it happen:

• Morph a chord that's major in one to minor in the other (or v.v.)
• Write out the chords for both keys and use a common chord to link.
• Just go for it, and force it to happen through the melody.

However, you can use these tricks (and many others) but it's much easier if the key you choose is to transition to is along the cycle of fourths. This is why we also had the shed post on cycle of fourths so you can learn what those are and use them in this round.

To keep it simple, we'll pick two keys that are only 1 step away on the cycle of fourths, and transition between those two.

Morphing Chords

The simplest and probably most free form thing you can do is just take the last chord of one key's progression and flip it to what the next progression needs. Let's say you're doing A for Ionian and D for Lydian. You'll notice (which is more obvious in the next section) that these two are very similar when you're doing Ionian and Lydian, so you want the key change to be obvious. Let's say we have these two sets of three I/VI/V chords to work with:

|: Amaj Dmaj E7 : Gmaj Dmaj Emin :|

Two things to notice here: In the key of A the E chord is E7, but in D the E chord is minor. No problem, on the last time you play each progression and want to transition to the next one, just change it. Imagine we did each one twice:

|: Amaj Dmaj E7 : Amaj Dmaj Emin : Gmaj Dmaj Emin : Gmaj Dmaj E7 :|

There, that's all there is to it. Try out different organizations of the chords and force different ones to switch to their cousing in the other key and see what happens.

Linking Common Chords

Using chords that are common to both keys is the most "correct" but can also be the most boring. Let's imagine that you're picking the keys of F for Ionian and Bb for Lydian.

F G A Bb C D E F Bb C D Eb F G A Bb

If you've been paying attention you'll see that these are very close, with only the E vs. Eb between the two (F G A Bb D Eb F is Bb Lydian). This is why the chords are so important.

Now, if you lay out the diatonic chords for these two scales we have:

Fmaj Gmin Amin Bbmaj C7 Dmin Edim Bbmaj Cmin Dmin Ebmaj F7 Gmin Adim

Next we can find the common chords, which looks like Dmin, Bbmaj, Gmin. If you change the 7th chords to major chords then those are common, but then we wouldn't have our next trick: the 7th chords determine the key.

With these ingredients we can then come up with a chord progression to solo over. First we get three chords, trying to use a 7 chord:

|: Fmaj Bbmaj C7 : Ebmaj Bbmaj Cmin :|

The first set if from the F and focuses on Ionian, the next one is from the Bb and focuses on Lydian. Now we just need to "link" them in order to transition using a common chord:

|: Fmaj Bbmaj C7 : Dmin : Ebmaj Bbmaj Cmin :|

Finally, we can tweak the last set of chords and on the last repeat put Bbmaj at the end to link back into the F key and repeat it:

|: FMaj Bbmaj C7 : Dmin : Ebmaj Bbmaj Cmin : Bbmaj :|

All that you need to do now is play with how many of these to play, timing and the rhythm. Also, if a chord sounds wrong don't use it, just try another one.

More Than One Fourth Step

In the above examples we only change keys by one step on the cycle of fourths and back. This is the easiest, and probably even that is too adventurous for most pop and rock music. If you want to make the changes more dramatic, then try jumping more than just 1 step on the cycle of fourths. For example, you could do A to C instead of A to D.

The trick though is if you try this you'll also want to play with 7th chords and see how they sound as "linking chords". The extra note makes the transitions more clear. If you keep going down this road you'll eventually just invent Jazz.

Screw It, Just Do It

The last method, and probably the most fun to try is to just pick two keys at random, do chords for both of them, and then just play over them when they come. Don't try to work out linking chords or anything, but have the melody and soloing be the strong driver between them. Good solid riffs that force the key change at the end of each transition will make this happen.

This is also the easiest way to make something sounds like crap, but remember if you play something often enough it'll start to sound good.