How to Use the LYDIAN Mode

[Music] last time we took a look at the locrian mode and analyzed some examples of how it was used for different emotional effects i want to look at some examples of the lydian mode this time but also talk about general principles of how modes are implemented into modern music these examples are all featuring the lydian mode but the methods of how the scale is used that we're going to look at could be applied to any other mode or scale first off so we're all on the same page the lydian mode is a major scale with a raised fourth [Music] this sharp fourth scale degree is the characteristic note of the mode and using it over top of a major chord will result in a lydian sound the lydian scale is characterized as the brightest of the seven major modes being the only mode brighter than the major scale itself fun fact if you take a note and then stack perfect fifths on top of it seven notes high those seven notes will be the notes of the lydian scale starting from that bottom note to insert the flavor of any given mode into your music including the lydian mode you can take one of three approaches that i want to explore in this video using it as the crust the cheese or the pepperoni the crust is the part that you don't necessarily think about or appreciate but it ties together everything layered on top this method involves treating the lydian scale like it's a key building a melody and chord progression using this group of notes you don't necessarily use the characteristic sharp fourth note over top of the tonic major chord but you will construct a major key chord progression and melody that uses only the sharp fourth of the key and never the natural fourth throughout for example look at this excerpt from sonic the hedgehog's green hill zone we see alternating f major 7 and e minor 7 chords with a melody over top that outlines each of these chords in a very simple way there are no b naturals used over top of the f chord in the melody or the harmony but simply by placing it next to a chord that does have a b natural in it and avoiding b flats completely throughout the segment we evoke the sound of the f lydian scale [Music] the second method is to get that nice melty modal cheese this involves baking the lydian sound into the harmony by using the characteristic sharp fourth inside the voicing of the home chord this is usually seen as a major 7 sharp 11 chord because the major 7th occurs a perfect 5th below the sharp 11 and this interval stabilizes the dissonance of the lydian note as it is a tritone against the root you'll also see it voiced as a triad a whole step above the root for example a g over f in the key of f in this section of ecrudiac city's theme from pokemon gold and silver we see an f major seven chord move to a different voicing of an f lydian chord that doesn't easily fit into our chord labeling conventions it's an f a b natural and d kind of a g over f but with no g and an a in its place it feels wrong to label this as a g over f when there's no actual g note in the chord but that makes more functional sense than labeling it as an inverted d minor six chord which is what the note names add up to i settled here on an f6 sharp iv chord check out how colorful it sounds the final method is to use the mode as a topping sprinkling it over top of the music so that you don't always taste it but every so often you get a good bite full of that lydian flavor this involves using the characteristic note of the mode in the melody over top of the tonic chord in this case the sharp fourth in a major key the first example that all of you immediately thought of for this concept was undoubtedly the lost woods theme from ocarina of time where the melody super clearly outlines an f a b evoking an f major sound with the first two notes and then ramming that lydian sharp forth down our throats right after now the astute music theory nerds among you were undoubtedly triggered by all of these examples as none of them are technically examples of the lydian mode used in music see each of these excerpts on their own sounded like they were written with an f lydian sound but if you listen to any more of the original tunes beyond what we looked at you'll see that they're all definitively in the key of c major these are all examples of what i call fake lydian sounds because while they do use the sound of the sharp fourth over a major chord this major chord happens to be the iv chord in a major key rather than the one chord the sharp fourth naturally occurs over the iv chord in any given key and because the sharp fourth against a root is such an unstable note it makes it very difficult to write music that's truly based in the lydian mode without accidentally resolving into a different key and you can see each of these examples shift from a lydian sound to resolving to c major before too long [Applause] do do [Music] the balancing act required to keep the root of the lydian scale sounding like the tonic of a piece of music is extremely delicate but let's explore these three techniques in depth with examples that actually use the lydian mode and see what effects they have on the music first up the crust the crust method is the most delicate by far and the hardest to use with the lydian and locrian mode specifically these are the only two major modes that feature a tritone against the root note the sharp fourth in one case and the flat fifth in the other and this makes them both resistant to resolutions much like the locrian mode as i talked about in my last video you'll oftentimes hear composers use a tonic bass pedal throughout their piece to anchor it clearly within the lydian mode keeping the root in the bass can ensure that no other note can muscle its way into the tonic spot in our ears yoshi's song gives us a super clear example of this the bass line repeats this one five one figure in c underneath the entire track and the upper part moves back and forth between two pairs of thirds d and f sharp moving down to c and e [Music] this gives us our first big practical use for the lydian mode maintaining interest without any harmonic motion had this upper part been using f naturals rather than f sharps each move down to the c and e notes would feel like a mini resolution to our tonic chord and repeating this resolution gives this feeling of stopping and starting moving to and away from home [Music] using a c lydian sound rather than c major paints the whole figure with this lydian color rather than feeling like you're moving away from and back to the one chord this is in my mind one of the biggest benefits of the lydian mode it's colorful and bright and major but it allows you to sit in one harmonic place while still sounding interesting it's a feeling of stasis not dissimilar to what we get with sus chords and this feeling gives yoshi's song a forward-looking expectant energy throughout the whole tune i think the only video game tune i've ever heard actually pull off a strictly lydian chord progression is zelda's lullaby and even that isn't entirely convincing we start with the same kind of progression we saw earlier in a croutiak city a c chord moving to a c 6 sharp 4 for that bright lydian sound over top of the tonic c note [Music] the following chords work their way down from b minor to b flat diminished to a minor 7 to d and even though this all fits within the lydian mode besides the diminished passing chord here and we don't ever hear a g chord or an emphasized g note in the melody this chord movement is so common as a turnaround in the key of g that it's still really hard to hear c as the tonic [Music] what pushes me over the edge into admitting that this is a successful piece in c lydian is the fact that the b section is definitively in c major we are changing modes between the sections but not tonic notes [Music] [Music] whether you agree or not about my take on the key of this piece it's hard to resist falling in love with this tune the bright lydian sound of the sharp fourth woven into the sweet slow three-four time lullaby gives the music a brilliance a sense of beauty and innocence that wouldn't be there if we stuck in the normal major mode this example should make it clear how difficult it is to bake a lydian crust see the natural fourth in the major key is an important part of what makes the home cord feel like home if you look at all the most common ways that composers typically resolve to the home court in a major key you'll find that most of them feature the natural fourth of the key resolving down to the home court's major third somewhere in the voice leading removing this tool from your tool belt not only makes it more difficult to establish your desired tonic it presents the danger of accidentally making a different note sound like the tonic g major in the case of zelda and this can ruin the vibe of what you're trying to create for a less precarious approach try coating your music with a thick layer of melted modal cheese if you're focused on layering on cords that are built with a lydian sound themselves you don't have to try and stick within one scale for the whole piece the whole tune will be covered in that warm chewy lydian sound in the rogue port theme from paper mario the thousand-year door the initial chord progression looks like very standard a major stuff we sit on a for a while then move to d the iv chord and then we move up to the flat six chord f for that cinematic chromatic mediant sound what makes this tune unique is that each of these chords is built as a lydian chord with the sharp fourth relative to each root note used in the accompaniment the melody over each chord is also basically just running up and down each respective lydian scale making it even more clear [Music] [Applause] [Music] we talked earlier about how the lydian mode can create an expectant energy how we can just sit on one chord and soak up that bright major chord color without the music feeling resolved and in this example that bright and unresolved lydian energy is used to create an adventurous feeling perfect for the town where you set off on your epic journey garden of hope from pikmin 3 features a middle section where playful clarinet and bassoon melodies trade back and forth over top of shimmering string pads the chords move completely non-functionally starting with an f lydian sound and moving on to e flat and g flat lydian chords before the section is done again these three chords don't fit into any one lydian scale but the fact that each make use of their own lydian sound by including the major third and sharp fourth gives the music that restless lydian quality [Music] [Applause] [Music] the light instrumentation slower 6 8 time and playful melody take that restless lydian energy and turn it into something really sweet these lydian chords don't feel particularly resolved but they're not dissonant in a way that makes you want to move to another chord either even though we're moving from the one chord f to the flat 7 and flat 2 chords which could sound really dark used in a different context the application of the lydian sound to each chord makes each change of tonality feel like a welcome shift of the color palette rather than a big move from one harmonic place to another the vibe here is not so much sailing from one key to another as it is lazily drifting down a stream just happening to pass by different keys as we go by far the easiest of the three approaches is to sprinkle the lydian mode on top of the music like little slices of pepperoni what i mean is take an otherwise normal major key piece and slip that sharp forth into the melody over top of your tonic chord you're chowing down enjoying the music when all of a sudden oh there's a little pepperoni on that bite munching away oh was that a little lydian on that note oh space junk galaxy from super mario galaxy shows us how using a lydian melody note over its tonic chord can bring an otherworldly flavor to the music the opening piano vamp sets the stage with an a flat major 7 sharp 11 chord immediately tossing us into a lydian sound when the melody comes in the chordal accompaniment switches to a more basic a flat chord voicing without the upper extensions but this time the melody brings the lydian flavor by landing on a big stat sharp fourth note right on beat one of the second bar the tension of this tritone against the root note in an otherwise serene arrangement brings in that otherworldly quality of outer space mixing together the beauty of the setting with the isolation inherent to it again we're chilling out on our tonic chord for quite a while here since the lydian sound doesn't push the harmony to move anywhere else but when the chords do change we get something kind of interesting we walk down to a lydian chord built off the flat seven and a flat over g flat with the melody emphasizing the sharp fourth over the new root the end of the section gives us a fun take on the classic mario cadence flat 6 flat 7 to 1 by having the melody emphasize the major 7th over the flat 6 chord and pass by the lydian sharp 4th over the flat 7 chord it sounds much more colorful and decidedly less triumphant than the original [Music] perplexing pool from pikmin 2 is in the key of b-flat and uses a progression that's almost entirely diatonic to the key there's just two flat 7 chords a common chord to borrow from outside the key keeping it from being purely in b-flat major there are plenty of natural fourths used throughout the harmony and melody yet over the first b-flat chord the melody decides to imply a b-flat lydian sound by trading between b-flat major and c-major triad arpeggios over the following a flat chord one of the two flat seven chords i mentioned the melody outlines b flat and c minor triads to evoke a rich a flat major 7 sharp 11 sound [Music] [Music] combining the colorful bright sound of the lydian melody over top of the arpeggiated chordioid guitar accompaniment creates this beautiful distant quality that's really hard to put your finger on this is one of those magical tunes that feels like so much more than the sum of its parts due to composer hajime wakai being a super genius whose musical talents cannot be comprehended by mortal man and it's difficult to analyze for that reason but what we can see in common with our previous examples is the sense of harmonic stasis the section of the music that moves through a diatonic b flat major chord progression moves fairly quickly at one chord per bar but the chords that use a lydian melodic sound over top of it sit and stew for four bars each we don't need to be going anywhere from here it's just a welcome treat when we do [Music] there's something about the lydian sound that pairs really well with this one to flat seven chord move we've heard it in the last three examples and every time it just feels right one final example can be found in painful battle from final fantasy tactics advance a tune i covered a couple of videos ago but one that's relevant here as well the tune starts by chugging away on our tonic b flat chord but when the melody comes in it makes sure to emphasize the sharp fourth e natural several times throughout each phrase the expectant energy this note creates combined with the bouncy 12 8 rhythms creates a forward looking and hopeful feeling the tune is just buzzing with anticipation [Music] again the harmony drops down to the flat 7 chord this time followed up with a further walk down to the flat 6 and 5 chords the melody uses the respective lydian scale of the first three chords carrying that hopeful energy forward then the v chord sets up a resolution to our tonic in a typical way we have here a completely normal functional chord progression but with that modal color sprinkled on top of the melody to give that salty lydian flavor that you crave [Music] whether it's lazily drifting down a stream floating through the isolation of outer space getting ready to begin a big adventure or meeting a sweet and beautiful princess the lydian mode can take us to all sorts of places on our musical journeys it's a great harmonic color and a must-have tool for your composition tool belt but don't forget that it's not enough on its own to make a piece work all of the other elements of each piece we looked at work together with the lydian sound to create their specific musical setting whether the mode is used as the crust the cheese or that salty greasy pepperoni on top i hope you enjoyed the video check out my patreon page if you did and i'll see you guys in the next one [Music] you

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 344,117

Keywords: video game music, how to write music, composing music, learn jazz, modes, what is a mode, lydian scale, how to use the lydian mode, chord theory, harmony, pikmin 2, perplexing pool, super Mario galaxy, space junk galaxy, final fantasy tactics advance, painful battle, Yoshi's song, sonic the hedgehog, green hill zone, ecru teak city, pokemon gold, Pokemon silver, Zelda's lullaby, ocarina of time, lost woods, pikmin 3, garden of hope, 8-bit Music Theory

Id: XElvBrpaUP8

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022