Mixolydian Minute

I am an unschooled musician…a 100% self taught, play by ear, hack. This means, of course, that over the course of my slow musical growth, I’ve likely developed some bad habits, wrong methods and probably caused some real, “legit” musicians to shake their heads. The good news is that, over the past 20 of my 55 years of playing, I’ve finally “discovered” or recognized a modicum of music theory. I was already applying the methods, but didn’t know the language or the mathematics of what I was doing. A couple of things have contributed to my growth spurt of musicality; 1.) a number of incredible musicians I’ve been blessed to share stages with sharing their knowledge and 2.) the beautiful 1929 Chickering grand piano we were blessed with a few years ago. The piano is the absolute best example, or “grid” of music theory on display. Among the cache’ of theory I’ve been recently awakened to are the seven modal scales, each a derivative of the Major scale, and identified by a Greek name indicating it’s place of origin in Greece. Each modal scale differs by the note intervals within it and lend themselves to different sounds which favor particular genres and music styles. Although my MO is to follow my ear and my heart as to what sounds good, and not try to over think what modal scales I should play, I have discovered that a favorite of mine is the Mixolydian…the Major scale with a flat 7. This mode has a soulful, bluesy tonality that lends itself to rock, blues and jazz genres (my faves). By now you likely are saying…”Shut up and play!” and will shake your head at how brief is my sampling of the Mixolydian scale at work. Oh well, here’s my meager “Mixolydian Minute”.