Mixolydian mode

Well, it changed for me when I went to college.

When I went to Northeast, I was in a garage band up there with some European guys, and they were teaching me the Mixolydian and the Dorian scales and the Pentatonix, the different scales, whereas I was doing scales, but I didn't know exactly what I was doing.

I couldn't put a name on it, you know.

I was doing it the whole time, but didn't know the theory in behind it.

Yeah, and of course, those things are going to change, you know, no matter what key you're in.

I'm assuming a lot of those guys in the Nashville, they play a lot in Mixolydian, right? So you're always kind of doing the VII7 thing.

Some of them, you know.

When you hear some of the stuff that they did, especially in Motown, I mean, they would be able to put those tracks down in like two takes.

Because they sound like Latin.

Mixolydian is what you're thinking.

Yeah.

And my favorite was I was telling a student the other day about the Mixolydian scale.

And I asked him about two minutes later, do you remember what that scale was called? And he's like, the Mickey Baja scale.

And I was like, I wrote that name down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is actually Mixolydian.

I got my mode, sorry.

We could do Sad Pilot in Locrian if you want.

But it is corrected that this will be, in fact, Mixolydian.

But Stu offers to play it in Locrian if he'd like.

How would that be? I'm curious to hear what Sad Pilot would be like in that mode.

And then we get Locrian.

good stirring melody.

Mixolydian.

One of the things that I love about these sorts of, you know, these sorts of songs which go on forever is know like we we just talked about the the robin going through the beggar man's clothes as he's putting them on and he finishes that section with uh where are we talking about the pockets there's a pocket for meal a pocket for malt a pocket for barley and corn and one pocket more to make up the score and that's for my bugle horn and you know that's that verse comes back again when he's kind of he's uh he said he wants to be the the hangman for the three squires And he jumps up to the gallows and the squire says, God, you're pretty nimble for an old beggar man.

And he says, look well, look well in this beggar man's coat because tales will be told with his patches and pockets so free.

When I write instrumentals, I hear myself playing those old... those note choices and stuff.

And a lot of it, you know, I write a lot of tunes and I didn't even, you know, somebody said, Oh, you wrote that song in Mixolydian.

And I said, no, I didn't.

I wrote that in, in Ohio somewhere.

I was in Columbus when I wrote.

He's no Mixolydian is a, uh, is a

style of, of, uh, of, uh, note noting, you know, and, uh, of, of, of chord progressions and all.

And, and, uh, so, uh, you know, I asked my daughter about it.

Today we're exploring three of the seven modes, sometimes referred to as the church modes due to their use in Gregorian chant.

They have rather imposing names, Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.

But each one is simply a distinct pattern of half steps and whole steps that get you from a point in one octave to the next.

Two of them are already very familiar.

One thing I like about exploring modes is how much difference a single note can make.

Raising a fourth or lowering a seventh can change the character of a whole piece.

So the next time you have a student plow through a piece forgetting all of the F sharps, just tell them that was some great improvised exploration in G Mixolydian.

I'll be back next Monday with some more of what's good in the contemporary piano teacher's repertoire.

So I'll just think about it as a G7 of some sort.

So if it's Mixolydian.

So like whole tone.

It kind

Um-

I mean, in, in the verses, I'm in, I'm in Mixolydian, right? I'm going for the A to the G-

Okay

... with the one to the, to the major seven, and then in the chorus, I'm very much major.