Writing Exotic Music with Phrygian Dominant- 5th mode of Harmonic Minor [MUSIC THEORY - SCALES]

the ambitious music student in their pursuit for musical knowledge will travel far and wide in search of more exotic and dramatic sounding scales for many that journey ends when they discover Fijian dominant hey I'm Jake Lizzio and in this video we're gonna be exploring one of my favorite scales Phrygian dominant we're gonna go through the theory on how do we build the scale how do we figure out the chords I'm also gonna show you examples of where we've heard this in popular music but more importantly we're gonna be talking a lot in this video on how do we use the scale how do we be musical with it so before you start this video I do have two videos you should probably watch first I have one on the Phrygian scale I also have one on a harmonic minor and those two are going to go through the concepts of what is a mode and they're also gonna explain the harmonic minor scale so I really do strongly recommend those as prerequisite videos to this one but even if you don't know much theory as long as you know this scale you can actually make a lot of awesome sounding music right out of the gate so let's get started a Phrygian dominant scale can be thought of as just a Phrygian scale but we've taken that third note and we've just sharped it so now it is a natural third or a major third as opposed to a minor third and if I want to do that in the key of E that would be giving me the notes e F G sharp a B C down those same exact notes now you can fear just by going up and down I start to get an idea of what the scale can really feel like even with just the tiniest embellishment maybe just a hammer on on top or on the bottom you should start hearing that this has a very very ethnic exotic foreign flavor to it so our first application of the scale will literally just be going up and down it but what I like to do is I like to pedal on my root note so have our low note sustain that's my E I'll just keep finger picking that with my thumb and then at the same time I'll just start going up the notes of that e Phrygian dominant and you can hear you get a really nice flavor out of that as opposed to just going up and down the scale without having a droned petal note on the bass and hopefully that should kind of evoke that imagery of the middle east and that's not a coincidence I mean this is a Middle Eastern scale it's an essential scale in Arabic music it's known as Hejaz and we hear it in Turkey we hear an Egypt we hear it in Indian music as well a lot of Carnatic music has this idea of a low drone - no with the scale being played on top just like this now I cannot play the piano but I have never let that stop me from playing the piano the cool thing about music theory is even if you're not like good at the instrument as long as you know the basics you can at least be musical with it so I'm gonna take the same idea and I'm just gonna put it onto the piano I'll drone with my left hand some low e notes with my right hand I'll just kind of go up and down this Phrygian dominant scale and it's gonna sound wonderful [Music] now we really don't need any more theory just to start writing risks with us in fact some of the songs that I'm going to give you here don't include any chords at all it's just the idea of going up and down the scale for example The Offspring has a song called come out and play and it's just the first five notes to the scale with a little bend in [Music] also in progressive rock and metal Dream Theater writes a lot of songs in Phrygian dominant here's an example from the song in the name of God [Music] and tool as well the song example I'm gonna give you here is 46 and 2 we're basically just in D Phrygian dominant on the bass [Music] but we'll talk about that song a little bit later right now I want to figure out what chords are we allowed to play in Phrygian dominant if I start on my first note and I try to build triads off that I can get an E major triad I'm also allowed to build an F major triad off the second note on the third note I can make a G full diminished off the fourth note I can make an a minor my five chord would be a B half diminished or be full diminished my sixth chord is a C augmented and my seven chord is gonna be just regular old minor now all these chords are playable in the key but the ones that I suggest you focus on are the one and that - the flat - so we need a F you should be able to hear there's so much tension just between those two boards I also really like using that flat seven chord the D minor in this case so just by using those three chords in my opinion that's really all you need to develop that nice Phrygian dominant sound so maybe just give it a let Latin strumming pattern [Music] it was all bad - now remember how we were pedaling over e earlier on let's do the same thing here let's take my e chord and instead of playing a fool let's just keep Aeon the bass but have an F on top of it so we have an F major over again and that to me is like all you need to know about Phrygian dominant there that entire field develops very well just between those two chords pedal over and that sound is very reminiscent of like the fake flamenco that I do a lot of times I'll do like just an E major and then slide it over to an F position and you get an F major seven sharp eleven over E and if you surround that with the notes of Phrygian dominant so I've got like it and then the notes of the scale you get that like an echo sound and that's my fateful night I'm not actually a flamenco player and a little Spanish guitar but if I have to fake it this is what I go to is just my Phrygian dominant scale now one of my favorite usages of Phrygian dominant is as a lead device something to write a lead line or a guitar solo with so I'm going to give you three or four examples and ideas that I'd like to consider when I'm using a scale like this and then I'm going to wrap them all together and put them into a little guitar solo here for you so the first idea I want you to think about is using arpeggios as a lead player I really like to arpeggiate the chord that's underneath it helps me highlight the notes there so for example if my jam track is going to be playing a major I want to be maybe thinking about using the notes or the knee major as a lead player on top of that and if the chords playing math I want to be thinking about using the notes of an F arpeggio however let's spice up our F a little bit if I look at the notes I'm allowed to play I can play more than just an F major I can play an F major with a sharp four and I really like sharp fours that's a tritone so I really like to add that - my arpeggios what I've decided to do and make it a little slide e is instead of playing my arpeggio picking through it I'm gonna just slide through this arpeggio and make it a little bit more legato also diminished 7th arpeggios I love diminished 7th arpeggios I did a whole video on them and since I have a full diminished 7th chord in my key I'm gonna use that to my advantage and use these nice little diminished shapes and even if might not fit in even if I'm not playing a diminished chord let's still play the arpeggio on top it sounds nice if I got this low E and this climbing diminished on top of it also pedal point can also mean returning to a note it doesn't mean always a pedaling tone where something's underneath it so in Phrygian dominant if I keep returning to a specific note like II my tonic I could come up with a cool way to play for G and dominant like that by constantly pedaling to my open E string and I get some really neat little guitar lines like this I also have an open D string and B is a really important note in my E major chord that's the fifth so I could play through the Phrygian dominant and pedal to the note B just like this on my second string and that's a cool idea as well now in the solo here what I decided to do is do it like poly metrically were in 4/4 but I wanted to do like a 10 note fray so I did one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two two five six seven eight nine ten and it kind of left me in between the measures and then eventually I was able to sync back up with the four or four afterwards you really can't go wrong but just got going up and down the scale this is such a flavorful scale and I think that's really unique about Phrygian dominant if you go up and down Dorian you know not a lot of flavors gonna develop if there's no context there you really need the chords behind it for the Dorian scale to sound unique but Phrygian dominant just by going up and down all that color and all that flavor starts coming out of it so why not just go up and down the scale if you're in the middle of a solo it's gonna sound pretty good and last but not least I want to bring back the drone idea on my open E string by letting that open each string ring out as I'm playing the Phrygian dominant of the other strings and you hear that gives me a really nice like imitation sitar sound where I've got that high droning so if I take all these ideas throw them together on top of a jam track here's what its gonna sound [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] now that jam track is courtesy of chess he runs an awesome YouTube channel and if you're into playing lead and improvising leads I highly recommend you go over there and check it out I have so much fun just click on any video hit play turn on really loud and start playing along it's great practice improvising over these different exotic tracks now if this is all new stuff to you I just want to warn you about musical malpractice this is such an easy scale to use and it sounds so cool when you first discover it it's easy to overdo it so I do recommend learning to dilute all of the real dramatic power of the scale a good example of that is in the song 46 and 2 by tool the riff is in Phrygian dominant but after just a few measures the guitars come in with a flat 3 instead of a natural 3 [Music] by bringing in that flat three instead of the natural three it really kind of tampers down the the dramatic nature of this scale and then they go right back to it in the following measure so my advice is you know learn to use this stuff sparingly maybe doing sections in Phrygian dominant or just little riffs and Phrygian dominant before you go back to a parallel minor or a parallel or a related minor scale as well but it can be a little much if you do entire sections in Phrygian dominant so just watch out so I hope you enjoyed this video if you do like videos like this and you want to see more you can consider supporting my patreon page these lessons really wouldn't exist if it weren't for the fine folks over there who have subscribed to me but if you can't do that I understand just like comment favorite all that kind of stuff helps me out I will see you now [Music]

Channel: Signals Music Studio

Views: 590,544

Keywords: jake lizzio, dole mansion, crystal lake, free lesson, guitar lesson, cool guitar, play solos, how to play guitar, harmonic minor scale, phrygian scale, phrygian, phrygian dominant, hijaz, hijaz scale, harmonic minor modes, harmonic minor, exotic scale, coolest scale, cool guitar scale, scale music theory, cool scales, best scale, 5th mode harmonic minor, 5th mode of harmonic minor, eastern scale, egyptian scale, indian scale, dramatic scale

Id: aCZezZf9bi0

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2018