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The Mighty Mixolydian Scale over A Blues

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So why do you want to use the mixolydian scale for blues?

Well, not that there’s anything wrong with the pentatonic scale, on the contrary, the pentatonic / blues scale is the most essential scale for blues music.

But if you want to take it a little further and jazz it up with some nice fresh sounding notes to expand your improvisation possibilities then the mixolydian scale is a great addition.

The mixolydian scale is one of the 7 modes derived from the major scale. It’s the fifth mode and contains a flat seventh compared to the major scale.

If you already know how to play a major scale you only have to lower the 7th degree by a half step and there’s your mixolydian scale.

Major scale = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Mixolydian scale = 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7

Because the mixolydian scale contains a major 3rd and flat7 (b7) it’s perfectly fit to play over a dom7 chord. And as you might know, the dom7 chord is the main ingredient for blues music.

Now you know how the mixolydian scale is build up, you want to know how to combine mixolydian and pentatonic into your improvisation.Continue Reading

Combining Pentatonics to Play Mixolydian

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Today I introduce to you George Ramsay, Co-founder and Guitar Teacher at Bold Music Lessons. George sheds light on combining pentatonics to play mixolydian.

A great example of how get the most out of your pentatonic scales. Learn and reap the benefits!

HERE’S GEORGE

You can’t really talk about soloing on the guitar without understanding pentatonic scales. Normal, or “full” major or minor scales have seven different notes, while pentatonic scales have only 5 notes (hence “pent”).

Klaus has written extensively on this as well as the CAGED system, so I’ll let you read through some of his postings for more info on playing these scales.

Today we will look at creating the Mixolydian scale by combining some major pentatonic with its parallel minor pentatonic.

Mixolydian is used extensively when improvising over the 12 bar blues, other I-IV-V chord progressions, and more generally chord progressions featuring dominant seventh chords.

What the heck is Mixolydian?

Mixolydian is a mode, and modes are really just types of scales, much like major and minor (in fact, major is called the Ionian mode and minor is called Aeolian). Perhaps the simplest way to understand modes is to look at a major scale. Let’s look at C major, where our notes are C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

Playing a major scale (in this case C major) but not starting or ending on C, creates our different modes. For example, the second mode, called Dorian (in this case D Dorian) would look like this: D-E-F-G-A-B-C. Similarly, the fifth mode, called Mixolydian, would have G-A-B-C-D-E-F as its notes. Notice that each of these modes consist of the same seven notes! We are just starting and ending in different places. These are modes.Continue Reading