Hello, this is Mike Hayes and we're talking about musical scales: and on this video we'll
be looking at two scales in particular the G blues scale and the G Mixo-Lydian scale.
Now, some of you will be familiar with both of these musical scales; I'm sure most of
you will be familiar with the G blues scale; so what I want to do here is to start this
video off by presenting the idea of musical contrast; the equivalent to a musical "sweet
and sour" if you will, with the G blues scale providing the 'sour' , and the G Mixo-lydian
providing the contrasting 'sweet' effect. Now, of course as most of us know we can just
about play the blues scale over any chord, ah, what I want to do here is play the notes
straight, no slides, no bends, no guitar effects; I want you to have a listen to how the notes
in the blues scale sound when played against a G7th chord; I'm going to play the notes
very slowly and when I do this you'll will notice that two notes in particular, that's
the B flat and the D flat note; you'll hear when we play these two notes against the G7th
background it will create a musical dissonance and this can be a great effect because it
creates a musical tension that, provided that we can resolve that tension will sound very
cool in a solo. Whereas, when we hear the G Mixo-Lydian mode
played against the G7th chord you will hear that all these notes in the Mixo-Lydian mode
fit very nicely over the G7th chord. So, let's go and have a listen to how these
two musical scales sound when there are played against the exact same G 7th background.
In this next example I'll be playing a G7th chord as a background and we'll be comparing
the sound of a G blues scale, the sound of the notes in the G blues scale when there
are played slowly over this G7th chord, we'll be comparing the sound of each of the notes
in the blues scale to that of the notes in a G Mixo-Lydian mode; so here's the background
and we'll have a listen to firstly the G blues scale: one, two, three, four ...
Ok, let's use exactly the same G7th background only this time we'll play a G mixo-Lydian
mode over the G7th chord: one, two, three, four ...
Up to this point in the video we've been comparing the sound of the blues scale with that of
the mixo-Lydian mode, and now I'd like to dig a little bit further and go deeper into
our discussion on musical scales. The next concept I'd like to present is that
each musical scale creates it's own harmonic environment, it has it's own unique sound
and creates it's own atmosphere; and when I'm doing musical theory I like to make the
subject come alive. So far we've had a look at the notes that
go to make up the Mixo-Lydian mode, we've had a look at the underlying structure and
we've discussed how the Mixo-Lydian mode relates to the dominant seventh chord; and while all
this information is very important, what we really need to know is how does the Mixo-Lydian
mode 'sound' ... how do we 'feel' when we hear the mixo-Lydian mode.
Now, essentially when I hear the Mixo-Lydian mode I immediately think of a 'swamp " sound;
now, of course, trying to describe musical sound is like trying to describe color to
somebody everyone is going to hear slightly and use their own words to describe what they
are hearing or seeing. So even though we've said that the Mixo-lydian
mode to produce a 'blues' effect, I would take it a little bit further; in my mind it
creates a 'swamp' effect ah so it's a little bit different from the blues ah but to me
there's a slightly different feeling you get when you play the mixo-Lydian mode.
So, to help convey this 'swamp' feel ah, so you can make up your own mind how the Mixo-Lydian
mode sounds, I'm going to use a song called "Born On The Bayou" it's by Creedence Clearwater
Revival and the guitar solo is by John Fogerty. And I'm using this song because over 90% of
this tune is based on a E7th vamp; and there's very few songs that have this unique sound
and ah, the same type of intensity and atmosphere that this song conveys; you actually feel
like you're in the middle of a swamp down in the deep south and ah, that's the type
of sound I'm thinking of when I'm ah, thinking of the Mixo-Lydian mode.
So, let's just see what's going on here: E7th is chord five in the key of A; my scale of
choice to play over the E7th chord is E Mixo-Lydian mode and we can see that we have the same
Mixo-Lydian structure; the underlying structure of tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, semi-tone,
tone, that's the same underlying structure that e saw when we were looking at the G Mixo-Lydian
mode. An interesting point about the guitar solo
is that even though John Fogerty could have used an E blues scale or an E minor pentatonic
scale over the E7th chord, he choose to use an E Mixo-Lydian mode to help convey the mood
that he wanted to create. Take particular note of how he begins his
guitar solo on the note "A", and he moves between "A" and "G#" at the beginning of his
guitar solo, this of course is where the semi-tone occurs in the Mixo-Lydian mode and it helps
create extra tension and intensity in his solo; ah, the "A" note is actually what we
call a 'color tone', and we'll be discussing color tones and hybrid scales and that in
the next video; don't forget to have a listen to "Born On The Bayou" , that will give you
an idea of the sound and feel of the mixo-Lydian mode and I hope you have enjoyed this video
and got something out of it, I'll see you on the next one.