Hello, this is Mike Hayes and we're talking
about music theory, and specifically on this
video, we're talking about pitch scales in
relation to chord structures and the idea
that we're presenting here is that each chord
has a particular scale that sounds 'just right'
with that chord, of course, you can play any
scale over any chord but, we're looking for
the 'perfect fit' if you like and we're looking
today at the 12 bar blues.
On previous music theory videos we've discussed
the various modes, so before we get right
into the 12 bar blues, I'd like to do a quite
review and let's start with listening to the
sound of the Ionian mode and comparing the
Ionian mode with the sound of the Mixo-Lydian
mode.
I'm going to compare the sound of a G Ionian
mode to that of a G Mixo-Lydian mode; it's
important to relate the sound of each mode
to a harmonic structure so I'm going to begin
our example by playing a G major chord followed
by a G Ionian mode and then finishing with
a G major chord ...
And now for an example of the G Mixo-Lydian
sound, I'll begin by play a G seventh chord,
then the G Mixo-Lydian mode and finishing
with a G seventh chord again ...
I think you'll agree that the G Mixo-Lydian
mode sounds 'just right' over the G seventh
chord; now, the thing to keep in mind is that
we're talking about dominant seventh and the
reason we're talking about dominant seventh
chords is because our focus on this video,
as we said is on the blues.
So if we look at a standard twelve bar blues
progression usually speaking we won't have
triads, we won't have three note major chords;
we'll usually have four note chords and these
chords will be dominant seventh chords, just
like the chord progression you see on the
screen right now.
And, the ideal mode to fit over these dominant
seventh chords is the Mixo-Lydian mode.
This is where our music theory kicks in and
helps us understand 'why' things work; if
we have a look at the G seventh chord, when
we have a look at the notes in the G seventh
chord, I have them here as a vertical structure:
G, B, D & F; once we have a look at the notes
that go to make up the G seventh chord we
can see why the mixo-Lydian mode works so
well over this chord and as we said it's a
G dominant seventh chord.
When we have a look at the G Mixo-Lydian mode
we can see that if we took every second note,
we would have the exact same notes that go
to make up the G dominant seventh chord.
Our next step is to identify the correct Mixo-Lydian
mode to play over each chord in our twelve
bar blues, and again we'll be using our musical
theory that we've learnt in previous lessons
when we created the scale chord series; that's
the four note chords that are created out
of each scale by stacking the notes of the
scale on top of each other in thirds.
So looking at each chord in our twelve bar
blues progression we can see that the dominant
seventh chords are chord five in each key:
G7 chord is chord five in the key of C, therefore
we could play the G Mixo-Lydian mode over
the G7 chord.
The C7 chord is chord five in the key of F,
we could play a C Mixo-Lydian mode over the
C7; and D7 is chord five in the key of G,
and we could play a D Mixo-Lydian mode over
the D7.
We've cover a lot of musical ground on this
video, so to review and consolidate everything
we're learnt so far here's an example of our
twelve bar blues chord progression with our
new Mixo-Lydian musical resources marked in.
You can see that we've identified the G Mixo-Lydian
mode that can be played over the G7 chord;
C Mixo-Lydian can be played over the C7 region
of the blues; and the D Mixo-Lydian can be
played over the D7 chord.
At the bottom of the page you'll see the various
notes that are contained in each mode; I do
hope you have enjoyed this video and we'll
cover the modes in greater detail on the next
video.
