Songs that use the Lydian mode

this video is sponsored by the piano learning app skoove the lydian mode or the lydian scale is exactly the same as our usual major scale however the fourth degree has been [Music] raised the raised fourth gives lydian a bright ethereal almost magical sound a brilliant example of the lydian scale in action is yoda's theme from star wars written by john williams yoda's theme begins in c lydian as we can see from the raised fourth the f sharp here in the melody and also in this d major chord [Music] lydian's magical mystical sound is a perfect fit for yoda who is a magical mystical character if yoda's theme was instead in c major the f sharp would be an f natural and this d major chord would be a d minor as you can hear the melody still sounds fine like this and is actually quite grand and regal but it lacks the uplifting intriguing lydian quality in fact after these opening four bars in c lydian yoda's theme does actually then switch to the typical c major scale as we can see from the f natural here in the melody and this d minor seven chord [Music] this switch from lydian to major creates a sense of coming back down to earth or coming back down to dagobah what's number one by elliot smith begins in d flat lydian from the first note of the melody we can hear that distinctive raised fourth that gives the song an intriguing unusual sound [Music] the verse of when we dance by sting is in e lydian the lydian sound is introduced by this a sharp note in the melody as you can hear the introduction of this note brings a brilliance and brightness to the melody the verse of possibly maybe by bjerk is in b lydian the repeating keyboard arpeggio outlines a b major seven chord with bjerk's vocal melody introducing the lydian raised four the guitar riff of led zeppelin's dancing days is in g lydian giving it a harsh almost exotic sound [Music] in fact zeppelin are sort of using a lydian blues scale here the riff is built from the g lydian scale but with the occasional addition of this blue note here the minor third so it's lydian but with a hint of blues oceans by pearl jam uses two different lydian scales after the verse we enter this section with a c lydian sound thanks to the raised fourth in these guitar chords and then for the next section we shift up to d lydian adding even more brightness to the already bright lydian sound quite a common lydian chord progression is one the tonic chord shifting to the major two chord vamping between these two chords is a super efficient way to establish that lydian sound the tonic chord establishes the key center and then the major ii chord introduces that raised fourth degree making it clear that we're not in a typical major scale we've already seen this progression at play in yoda's theme but there are many other examples that we can look at yeah yeah yeah [Music] compared to other modes like dorian or mixolydian lydian doesn't appear in pop or rock music particularly often but a style that it does appear in quite a lot is film music the magical intriguing curious sound of the lydian scale makes it perfect for film scoring we've already seen lydian put use in yoda's theme but even if used briefly we can find lydian in many other film scores in fact in the future composer alan silvestri uses the lydian mode to create a sense of awe and excitement at this particular moment in the score we hear this motif in g lydian and then immediately after we hear it again now transposed up to b flat lydian stoking even more excitement into that lydian sound and in the iconic flying theme from et john williams has used a shift to lydian to create a sense of flying and magic in the music the theme begins by establishing this main motif and then immediately after that main motif is repeated upper tone thereby introducing the raised fourth to the melody that lydian note [Music] scoove is a great way to get started on the piano skoof is an interactive app that listens to you as you play and gives you feedback and features a wide library of classic songs scoove is also now available on android as well use the link in the description to start your free trial today as you may have already noticed songs are rarely written exclusively in the lydian scale songs that do use the lydian scale will usually only use it for part of the music and will then move to a different scale for the rest of the music in fact every example of lydian that we've looked at in this video so far has only used it for part of the composition this is partly because of lydian's potent distinctive sound which can sound quite overwhelming if used excessively but i think the main reason is when used harmonically lydian can be quite an unstable scale lydian is a mode it's the fourth mode of the major scale so for example if we take the notes of g major but treat the fourth degree as the tonic note as the root of the scale we get c lydian [Music] [Applause] so the only difference between c lydian and g major is which note sounds like the tonic note where we perceive the root the center of gravity to be within the music and this is where lydia's instability comes into play because modes by definition share their notes with a major scale when we're listening to a modal piece of music there can always be an element of subjectivity and ambiguity to which note is the tonic note which note is the root but this ambiguity of tonic note is particularly common with the lydium mode let's take here comes miguel by tom petty as an example the song starts out in a lydian with this lydian vamp between the tonic chord of a and the two chord of b major at this point in the song a sounds unambiguously like the tonic note we are in a lydian [Music] however look what happens when the song reaches its chorus we're still using all of the notes of a lydian but suddenly it's e that sounds like the tonic note not a it sounds like we're now in e major so what's happened here well alidian and e major both use the exact same notes as a lydian is a mode of e major the only difference between the two scales is that a lydian treats a as the tonic note and e major treats e as the tonic note in here comes miguel in the verse section the chords and melody are making a sound like the tonic note placing us in a lydian but when we reach the chorus the chords and melody are now pointing to e as the tonic note which shifts our perception of the tonality from a lydian to e major the same thing happens in man on the moon by rem the verse establishes c lydian as the key center [Music] but then in the chorus even though we're still using the seven notes of c lydian the context changes making g sound like the tonic switching us from c lydian to g major if you believe now as i said before this instability of tonic note occurs in all of the modes to a certain degree but it is particularly prevalent in lydian and this is all because of the placement of lydian's tritone without going into too much detail the major scale and by extension all of its modes has one tritone and this tritone plays a big part in dictating where and when the scale sounds resolved with the major scale it's the interval between the fourth degree and the seventh degree this is our tritone here and as you can hear the thing about tritones is that they are dissonant they want to resolve onto a more consonant interval in the major scale the tritone the f and b in this example can resolve neatly outwards onto two of the most consonant notes of the scale e and c and it's this satisfying resolution which makes the major scale so harmonically stable the neat tidy resolution of this tritone creates a clear sense of resolution to the tonic chord effectively telling our ears look this is the tonic chord but in lydian the tritone is between its root note and its fourth degree now like i mentioned before tritones are dissonant and where our ears want them to resolve to gives us a strong sense of where the tonic chord is which note is the root of the scale the most satisfying resolution that we can get in lydian of this tritone is with the bottom note staying where it is and the top note ascending onto the fifth of the scale in this case c and this does a fairly good job of pointing to f major as our tonic chord but this resolution is certainly not as powerful and conclusive as the tritone resolution in the major scale the resolution out to c and e will always sound more satisfying than the resolution to just c and what this means is if we're in f lydian and we move from f to c we may be planning for it to sound like a move from the tonic chord to the fifth chord of the key one to five but in practice it's probably actually going to sound like the f chord was in fact the fourth chord of the key and the c chord was the tonic chord the one chord this effectively shatters our lydian sound and shifts us instead to the more stable major scale sound [Music] [Music] and just to clear up any potential confusion even though here i'm saying that lydian is a unstable mode you will often hear lydian described as one of the most stable of the modes in george russell's famous lydian chromatic concept he described lydian as the most stable of the modes but what he's talking about there is lydian in a melodic sense not in a harmonic sense now if that sounds confusing don't worry it's a kind of a confusing subject there but i will probably do a video about george russell's lydian chromatic concept at some point now talking of confusion before the end of this video i actually want to talk about some misconceptions about lydian primarily about songs which are often cited as being lydian which are in fact not in the lydian scale for example dreams by fleetwood mac is a particularly notorious offender many have looked at dreams repeating vamp between f major and g major and concluded that these must be chord number one and chord number two of the scale in other words the lydian vamp that we were talking about earlier and this would be true this would place dreams in f lydian if f was the tonic note but it's not the true tonic note is a these aren't chords one and two in c lydian they are chords 6 and 7 in a minor or what we could call a aeolian although the first chord of a song is often the tonic chord it doesn't have to be there are other factors that establish the tonic note of the song for example the melody the melody of dreams clearly establishes a as the tonic note not f we can hear this because the melody sounds resolved in that rest when we reach the a [Applause] and sounds unresolved and tense on the note f ironically there is another very similar fleetwood mac song that is actually in f lydian sarah written by stevie nicks now sarah is literally using the same chord progression as dreams however sarah establishes f as the tonic note mainly by pedaling the note f throughout the chord progression making it clear that f is the root of the scale stay with me in fact peddling the tonic note is a really common technique in lydian songs and it's actually being used in quite a lot of the examples that we've looked at today because lydian can be so unstable by continuing to re-emphasize the root note underneath every chord it helps to keep that tonic note unambiguous another common point of confusion with lydian is lydian dominant the simpsons theme written by danny alfman is often cited as an example of lydian due to its prominent raised fourth its lydian fourth but the simpsons theme is actually using a very similar but related scale lydian dominant lydian dominant is exactly the same as lydian however it has a lowered seventh degree and as we can see when the simpsons theme reaches its 7th degree we get the lowered 7th degree of lydian dominant not the unaltered 7th degree of the lydia another song to use lydian dominant is pretty ballerina by the left bank we can see the lydian raised fourth here but also the lowered seventh degree here [Music] and the final example of lydian confusion that we'll talk about today is blue jay way by the beatles blue jay way uses all of the notes of c lydian however it routinely shifts between using the minor third e flat and the major third e natural [Music] so you could argue that this song is fleetingly using lydian anytime we get that major third but when it shifts to using the minor third we basically lose that lydian sound as the major third is an essential part of lydium so although you can make an argument for blue jay way using the lydian scale i don't think lydian is a particularly good way of describing this song [Music] as i mentioned earlier music is rarely written exclusively using the lydian scale so naturally i decided to end this video with this piece that i've written that stays exclusively within the g lydian scale [Music] and as always a massive massive thanks goes to everyone who supports me on patreon including the names you see on screen right now and andrei science diagram andy deacon andrew andrew brown andrew sussman austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry brittany parker cameron alvila colin aiken chris cabal christopher ryan david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena scorchenko eugene leroy fd hodor greg krabowski iolamolatona hamish brocklebank hernick kutcher hugo miller ivan pang james ko j.a hokensberger john dye josh sanderlin justin vigor lee lauritsen mark ziegenhagen max o'keefe melody composer squared melanie schoner michael vivian nancy gillard nathan lawrence nathaniel park paul muller paul paisle peter dunphy richard pride roger clay john kennedy steve daly stephen lazzaro tim beaker home aharoni trisha adams tim payne victor levy vidad flowers vladimir kodakov vaulty and whalen fairbanks [Music] [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 210,512

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Keywords: lydian, modes of the major scale, lydian scale, music theory, modes, examples of, songs that use, pop songs, film music, rock songs, lydian songs, lydian examples, explained, analysis, sheet music, lydian dominant

Id: ll8UwRWVkP4

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021