# Lydian mode?



## Jakke (Apr 5, 2011)

Never really thought about it, but whan I did think about it I realized that I had no clue on how to play it

So if a kind individual could tell me a bit of background, and maybe show me the general way of playing it throughout the keys, I would be eternally grateful!


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## Konfyouzd (Apr 5, 2011)

Google is your friend... Also... Guitar Grimoire... The black one... Get it, learn it, love it...


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## SirMyghin (Apr 5, 2011)

Lydian mode is a sharp 4th, thats how you play it. 

My current tune has a repeat progression (intro and outro) and a bridge, the intro melody is in C ionian, the outro is in C lydian. I find it gave it a kind of triumphant feel, more lifting and whatnot.


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## Ralyks (Apr 6, 2011)

And if you want something tastier, try Lydian Dominant (#4, b7) or Lydian Augmented (#4, #5). I like using those to get a sort of minor sound while still in the major realm.

And if you're trying to spell those out, in the key of C:

Lydian Dominant: C, D, E, F#, G, A, Bb, C. Try over a C7#11 chord.
Lydian Augmented: C, D, E, F#, G#, A, B, C. Try over a C7#5 chord.


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## SirMyghin (Apr 6, 2011)

^^

The tastiness of a scale lies in its application, not the nature of a scale. You wouldn't use a chisel to cut a board in half.


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## TRENCHLORD (Apr 6, 2011)

Book from HAL~LEANARD titled The Complete Book of Chords, Scales and Arpeggios for the Guitarist by AL POLITANO. This is truely one of the best for plotting scalular runs and hand shifts for some of the less common scales and modes in many different root positions.


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## simulclass83 (Apr 6, 2011)




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## Ralyks (Apr 6, 2011)

SirMyghin said:


> ^^
> 
> The tastiness of a scale lies in its application, not the nature of a scale. You wouldn't use a chisel to cut a board in half.



Yeah I know, just throwing a few ideas his way.


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## Jakke (Apr 7, 2011)

yeah, I've been looking for some books for digging in to


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## Jakke (Apr 7, 2011)

also, I'm always up for tasty!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 7, 2011)

I feel that there was a good discussion in another thread, and I don't really feel like relating all of opinions from there again and wasting space in this thread, so have a look at this and see if it answers any questions you may have: http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/mu...lydian-without-making-sound-like-x-major.html

Nobody can tell you how to play with a certain scale, and I'm not going to give you some tab of what lydian scale music should sound like, but the scale itself has a history that's kinda interesting, so I'll relate that to you.

Around the turn of the 20th century, some European composers sought new sounds and started using major scale modes. Big whoop. Debussy and Ravel were the main dudes that were doing this. One of the scales that they started using (as you may guess) was the lydian mode. This caught on, other classicists followed suit, blah blah, then the jazz cats got around to it in the 1950's, with dudes like George Russell, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane doing modal jazz. The psychedelic rock movement picked up on some of this modal junk, and there was also some crossover from contemporary jazz, particularly after Miles Davis went all fusion on everybody's ass. The fusion dudes and the psychedelic dudes were the precursors to the progressive rock dudes, and the modal playing made its transition over to them. The jazz dudes and the rock dudes bombarded popular music from both ends with this harmonic language, so it stuck. How they used the modes was a little different: modal jazz began as "Hey, you, play in this mode until I say so." "Dur, okay.", but dudes (I think George Russell, mainly) eventually figured out that they could associate modes with changes. The rock dudes pretty much fucked around with the scale to their hearts' content, sort of like early modal jazz. The jazz approach essentially became this: if you see a chord, you're supposed to think of what scale fits it. The lydian mode became associated with the maj7 chord, because it simply fits. Lydian scale: 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7; maj7 chord: 1 3 5 7.

Now, you may be thinking that a regular old major scale fits a maj7 chord just fine. And you would be correct. However, it gets a little more involved than that: when adding upper extensions onto a maj7 chord, a #11 clashes less than a regular 11. Furthermore, that George Russell guy postulated all sorts of stuff regarding the lydian scale - if you stack seven perfect fifths on top of each other, then compress them into a scale, you get a lydian scale. Check it: C G D A E B F# -> C D E F# G A B.
I think he may have also reasoned that the lydian scale conformed more to the overtone series than the major scale.







Notice that we get an F# (tenth harmonic) long before F. Because of these reasons, it was reasoned by Russell that the lydian mode is more stable in relation to a major triad than the ionian mode.


And on that note, I'd like to bring up another scale: the lydian dominant scale. This is also known as lydian-mixolydian, mixolydian-#4, lydian-b7, the acoustic scale, and probably a bunch of other names. It's a mode of the melodic minor scale, but forget about that for now. As you may have ascertained from the various pseudonyms, this scale is spelled 1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7, or on C: C D E F# G A Bb. This is a curious scale. Debussy used it, Stravinsky used it, Bartok used it, Ravel used it (I think), and a bunch of other dudes after them extending into the jazz and rock dudes we talked about earlier. If you compare this scale to the overtone series of C that I put up just a couple seconds ago, you'll notice that not only does the F# match, but so does the Bb; something the lydian mode by itself does not do. It's like a scalar representation of the overtone series (hence the name, "acoustic scale"), and a lot of the aforementioned composers probably considered this. However, this is obviously a no-go for playing over a maj7 chord, as the sevenths would clash. The proper chord pairing would be 7(#11).

Another thing I noticed about this particular scale is that it moves in two directions at once, and I'll show you what I mean by that.






Starting at the key of C major (no sharps, no flats), you can move right to acquire F#, and move left to acquire Bb. Makes one think, perhaps. There is a famous Bach prelude that moves in two directions at once (or rather toggles), and the moment when that is fully realized is pure genius. I won't talk about that, though, unless somebody wants me to.

----

If there's one thing that you should be noticing in my little tirade here, it's this: "lydianness" has been used in pursuit of more accurately representing acoustic properties. That may be a little overly intellectual, or even borderline mystical. Another way of thinking of it is this: major triads sound good and familiar to Western ears, so the ionian, lydian, and mixolydian modes provide different flavors to that goodness, which may be the reason for their success in modern music (although, ionian has always been successful in that regard - our whole harmonic system is based off of that one mode). The other modes are somewhat less successful, perhaps with the exception of the phrygian mode, due to its associations with Spanish music and the exotic. Dorian? Yeah, you find it around, but regular minor dominates. Locrian? Good luck. So, these modes may seem to be new harmonic material, but they're more like new takes on some very old and very basic ideas. There is a deep-seated psycho-cultural approval of the major triad, and we evoke this with scales that display the major triad in all its glory.

Anyway, some lydian tunes.


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## Bakerman (Apr 7, 2011)

I'd call Saria's Song C major, just starts on the IV chord.


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## Dead Undead (Apr 7, 2011)

Bakerman said:


> I'd call Saria's Song C major, just starts on the IV chord.



Same thing as Lydian.


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## SirMyghin (Apr 7, 2011)

Schectorwhore, our walking receptical of musical information. Great post dude, and an excuse to listen to freewill! (not that I need one).


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## Bakerman (Apr 7, 2011)

Dead Undead said:


> Same thing as Lydian.



Not really--it depends on what's heard as the tonal center. That's not always the first chord's root.


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## Guitarchitect (Apr 7, 2011)

SchecterWhore beat me to the George Russell Punch - but he's developed an entire Lydian based concept for composition and improvisation *(*"George Russell 's
LYDIAN CHROMATIC CONCEPT OF TONAL ORGANIZATION" - about $131 w. shipping!! - from his site - George Russell - Storefront) 

There's some info here:
George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization

and a lot more here:
About The Concept

Interesting guy. Wrote the first theoretical book on Jazz. MacArthur genius grant recipient. Taught at NEC. Wrote some great music as well.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 7, 2011)

Bakerman said:


> I'd call Saria's Song C major, just starts on the IV chord.



The A section is in F lydian, and the B section is in C major (modulationtothedominantlol). The first phrase ends clearly on a half-cadence with E in the melody - the leading tone of F. Then, yeah, the first three bars of the B section make up a ii V I progression in C major.


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## SirMyghin (Apr 7, 2011)

^^

I am glad I don't understand harmony, otherwise I might have to think about what you are saying.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 7, 2011)




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## Dead Undead (Apr 7, 2011)

Bakerman said:


> Not really--it depends on what's heard as the tonal center. That's not always the first chord's root.



Ah, true. I'm not thinking in Theory today. Thanks.


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## walleye (Apr 8, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> There is a famous Bach prelude that moves in two directions at once (or rather toggles), and the moment when that is fully realized is pure genius. I won't talk about that, though, unless somebody wants me to.



i'd be interested to hear that. can you tell me where i can listen to it? or what its called?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 8, 2011)

walleye said:


> i'd be interested to hear that. can you tell me where i can listen to it? or what its called?



Certainly. It's the Prelude from the first cello suite in G major - the one everybody knows. 



Score here: Disclaimer - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music

Unfortunately, none of these fucking scores have measure numbers. Luckily, the movement we're looking at is the first in the suite, and the score I selected has a page turn in proximity to the relevant part. What we're looking at is this: the suite is in G major, key signature of one sharp (F#). The dominant key is D major, two sharps (F#, C#). The note that separates the two is C/C#. That in itself is nothing special, simply a fact of life. But check this out: in measure 5, Bach introduces that C# and begins tonicizing the dominant. That goes away for a while while he tonicizes a couple of other key areas. Then, at the top of the second page, there's this big ol' G major scale that descends to C# in the next measure, where we get V7/V. But we don't get a resolution - in the second system, C natural comes back, suggesting that we're in G major. Then, magic. The part we're interested in is from 1:15-1:18, the second measure of the second system of the second page. The dude brings both C's together in a variation of the opening motive. (Remember that this is bass clef.)







It's a D chord with two kinds of sevenths (although the major seventh is not really part of the chord). Brilliant stuff; he establishes an opposition between these two keys from the very beginning of the piece, brings them together in half a measure, then has that fermata on the half cadence to let us think about what just happened.


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## Bakerman (Apr 8, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> The A section is in F lydian, and the B section is in C major (modulationtothedominantlol). The first phrase ends clearly on a half-cadence with E in the melody - the leading tone of F. Then, yeah, the first three bars of the B section make up a ii V I progression in C major.



I get what you're saying; it just sounds more resolved at C to me. Maybe it's these B-C and F-E movements:


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 8, 2011)

Bakerman said:


> I get what you're saying; it just sounds more resolved at C to me. Maybe it's these B-C and F-E movements:



I think that another part of it is that the thing's meant to be played as a loop, so it can get away with being tonally ambiguous. I'm playing it with both a C and an F at the end of the phrase, and it sounds resolved either way. Still, the C as tonic sounds off to me.

That phrase with an F at the end: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10498913
And with C: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10498914


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