Songs that use the Mixolydian ♭6 scale

this video is sponsored by the music transcription app transcribe plus mixolydian Flat 6 is a scale that does exactly what it says on the tin it's a mixolydian scale but the sixth degree the sixth note in the scale has been flattened [Music] this bright yet dark intriguing sound makes the mixolydian flat sixth scale a good choice for film and TV scoring for example Ramin jawadi used the B mixolydian flat 6 scale for the Valar morghulis theme in Game of Thrones the music associated with the mysterious Faceless Men in this theme the music literally starts by climbing up the mixolydian Flat 6 scale immediately setting us into that bright yet dark tonality [Music] foreign [Music] this mixolydian Flat 6 sound illustrates The Faceless Men perfectly as these are characters who ride the line between good and bad between light and dark just like the scale does a lot of songs that use the mixolydian flat sixth scale do so via what I would call The mixolydian Flat 6 Vamp the chord progression of one the tonic chord moving to the minor version of the IV chord in the key of C major this would be the chord progression C to F minor between just these two chords we get six out of seven of the notes of the mixolydian flatic scale and most importantly we get the major third alongside the flat six which are the two main character notes of the scale [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] hear how these songs have that slightly exotic Dark Yet light sound that is the sound of mixolydian Flat 6 blending both the bright major third with the dark minor sixth The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails uses the G mixolydian flat six scale remember that the mixolydian Flat 6 scale is just like a major scale but with a lowered Sixth and lowered seventh we can see the lowered sixth the E flat in this case here in the vocal Melody and the lowered seventh the F natural is here in the Baseline [Music] the verse section of Twilight by ELO is in c-mixylodune flat 6. what's interesting about this example is that the vocal Melody only uses the first five notes of the scale and because the first five notes of the major scale and the mixolydian Flat 6 scale are identical it means that the vocal Melody is effectively just using the major scale and it's in fact here the chord progression underneath that Melody that introduces the flat six and flat 7 which paint us into that mixolydian flatic sound shapes [Music] because all of the mixolydian flat six nists of this song is coming from the chords not the melody if we took this same Melody and played it over a major scale chord progression instead we would completely lose that mixolydian flat six sound [Music] in my mind [Music] Twilight crawling through my window a similar use of the mixolydian flat six scale is Single Ladies by Beyonce just like we saw in Twilight by ELO in Single Ladies the main vocal Melody is just sticking to the first five notes of the major scale it is then the other elements of this song the other elements of the arrangement that introduce the other degrees of the scale the Flat 6 and the flat 7 Which pull us into that mixolydian Flat 6 sound in this Example The Flat 6 degree the C natural is introduced by the bass line here and the flat 7 the D natural is present in this flute sample [Music] with transcribe plus you can easily and smoothly Loop pitch shift or adjust the tempo of any song on your phone or any song on Apple music this makes the app a great tool for Learning and transcribing songs for example if there's a particularly fast tricky moment and a song that you're trying to learn transcribe plus can allow you to not only Loop that section but also to slow down the tempo to give you a better chance to play or transcribe out the notes the pitch shift function also makes it easy to learn and practice songs in a different key which is really useful because you can now practice along to the original record even if your band are learning the song in a different key you can try out transcribe Plus for free and when you're ready to unlock all of the premium features it's just a one-off payment not a subscription so if you're interested do check out transcribe plus by using the links Down Below in the description now you may have noticed that mixolydian Flat 6 is a slightly awkward name for a scale once you get beyond the most typical and widely used scales we often don't have standardized names for these less common scales so we instead take another well-known scale like the mixolydian scale and name it after that detailing what alteration needs to be made in this case the flat 6. but there is another name that's used for the mixolydian flat six scale and that is aeolian dominant an aeolian scale is a natural minor scale and for a scale to be considered dominant it means that we can build a dominant seventh chord on the tonic chord just using its notes in the case of the aeolian scale that means altering the third degree making it into a major third rather than a minor third so aeolian dominant is saying we should have a aeolian scale a minor scale but have a major third which results in a mixolydian flat six scale which just a different way of arriving at the same set of notes personally though I'm not a big fan of the aeolian dominant name I find it a bit jarring because it's ultimately asking us to think of a minor scale with a major third and when the minor third is the defining characteristic of a minor scale to think of a minor scale without the minor third is a little confusing to me however I do like how aeolian dominant points to the fact that this scale is a a minor scale but with a major third meaning that effectively the bottom half of the scale is a major scale and the top half is a minor scale showing us where that bright yet dark sound is coming from another name that's sometimes used to describe the mixolydian Flat 6 or the aeolian dominant scale is the Hindu scale because the scale is commonly used in Indian music of course Indian musicians don't call it by the slightly crass name of the Hindu scale they instead refer to it as regam cha yukishi this regam or Raga has been used in both Indian film music and Indian classical music foreign [Music] Flat 6 is not only a scale but it's also a mode a mode is when we take the notes of another scale and we treat a different note in that scale as the root note as the tonic mixolydian Flat 6 is the fifth mode of the melodic minor scale so if we take the C melodic minor scale but now treat the fifth note of that scale in this case G as our root note as our new tonic note we now have a g mixolydian flat 6 scale what is quite satisfying about the relationship between mixolydia and Flat 6 and its parent scale the melodic minor is that the melodic minor scale is like a reflection of the mixolydian flat 6. in the sense that the melodic minor scale is just like a major scale but with the third lowered and the mixolydian flat sixth scale is just like a minor scale but with the third raised so both of these scales offer us a blend of the major and minor sound but with mixolydian flat 6 we get major on the bottom and minor on the top and with the melodic minor we get it the other way round we get the minor on the bottom and the major on the top I'll leave you today with this piece of music I've composed purely in the g mix ladoon flaxic scale [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 145,198

Keywords: modes, scales, music theory, mixolydian flat 6, aeolian dominant, melodic minor, songs, examples

Id: GTRDQeiLNck

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023