Phrygian mode

So I'm sitting in my hotel room at night and I pick up my guitar to process this, and I discovered a musical scale, and the musical scale was really kind of dark and I didn't know what it was because I, I knew it was a scale, but I, I, I just had stumbled upon it.

So I looked up the notes and found out it was, uh, something called the Phrygian mode.

I was listening to this, and then I did some research on the Phrygian mode and it turns out that it was Aristotle who said that the Phrygian mode was a- associated with Dionysian dismemberment and ecstasy.

And I thought about that as I literally played around with this Phrygian mode on my guitar for probably two hours looking out at the city.

It's a beautiful city skyline view.

But what it felt like I was able to do with this Phrygian mode was just work through all of the doubt, the fears, the anxiety, the depression, the, the dark part of myself that was just wrestling with how much light had just come at me.

So then weirdly, while I'm sitting there, there was a song that I, I looked just briefly to see how the day's YouTube was going.

I always just check in to see, like, how are the numbers today or how is the response or whatever, and I hadn't checked in.

The acoustic's like [playing Grace] and the, uh, electric guitar is like [playing Grace] just outlining the [playing Grace] ...

Like, that, that F is, like, a Phrygian move.

Phrygian.

So if we're in E minor, it should be [playing Grace] but they're going [playing Grace] right? By going to F there.

[playing guitar] Phrygian is, like, a minor mode.

It's, like, a type of minor scale often used in flamenco music.

Moon asking to stay And they go [playing guitar] Long enough Like, whoa, haunting.

And some of them are brighter, like the major or like Lydian, which starts on the F.

And some of them are darker, like minor, which starts on the A or Phrygian or Locrian.

So if I'm playing in the key of C...

Starting on F, that is what makes it Lydian.

And we're going to have the other five that are going to sound a little bit weirder to varying degrees.

Now, some of them are going to sound maybe more familiar depending on what kind of music you listen to.

If you listen to a lot of metal, you might be more familiar with the sounds of Phrygian because that gets used in metal music for its dark sound.

Right.

We like it.

That's basically it, right? It has a sort of Phrygian vibe.

In non-theoretical terms, that would be the ancient vibe or ancient Egyptian vibe perhaps.

Mm.

Um, so the distance is like four frets on a guitar.

Yeah.

Uh, and it's quite common to have that major vibe, but it's still sort of evil when you work in these kind of Phrygian or Phrygian...

It actually kind of implies a Phrygian dominant scale-

octave.

minor second, like a Phrygian.

Phrygian is like a minor mode.

It's often used in flamenco music.

Metallica uses it a lot.

my hair and take my arms, take my legs, take my soul, let me

Oh my god, it's kind of hard to like nail, but I gotta really practice it to totally get it down tight.

I love that so much, and he's doing that minor second again, right? This is E Phrygian, not E minor.

And I'm like, that's so weird because I always think of modes as like Aeolian, Dorian.

It's like when you're a kid, you look at the piano and they're like, C to C is a mode, D to D is a mode, E to E, you know, Phrygian, Mixolydian.

And then I'm like, there's like some modes, but it's not all of the modes of Bowling Pierce because there's certainly some missing.

There's like blank spots.

...

I also have a really nice ballad- I also have, um, you know, I have like a, a, you know, I have like a ni- one piece, um, that's like a nylon string thing, then it goes into, um, you know, uh, it goes into a Spanish Phrygian or a double harmonic major, the Byzantine as I like to call it, fifth mode of Hungarian minor.

You know, of course the Byzantine's on there.

It's on all my records, Hungarian minor and all that.

I use, you know, a- and I should get a nicer one, but I have, like, a, a golden nylon string that I j- that someone just gave me, you know what I mean? That, that I ended up getting through somebody, and, um, and I use that.

You know, there's, like, two nylon string pieces on the record and, and it's really co- a, a really cool, like, um, the first nylon string piece, um, is just, like, one of those, you know, Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie meet Al Di Meola, you know what I mean? Like, like, and it's cool.

It's, like, this Phrygian, that Phrygian dominant, b- you know, double harmonic major Byzantine kinda intro, and then it goes into this tune called Den of Vipers.

And what does Den of Vipers sound like? It sou- it's got, like, the, a, a l- a bit of, if you go back to the first Yngwie record, it's got a little bi- bit of that little savage vibe to it, but it's much meaner-

I mean, there's just Lykathea Aflame speaks for itself.

Weird, bizarre, um, Phrygian scale, major key, brutal death metal with drumming that sounds like it's still ahead of the curve, so really, really cool stuff.

Um, yeah.

Thanks for tuning in, folks.