The last of the “essential scales” that we’ll be covering now is the Mixolydian mode. You might be thinking, “hmmmm...MODE?...I thought we were going over SCALES.” The fact is that this scale is one of the modes of the major scale (as a matter of fact, so are the other two scales we just covered), but we won’t go there yet! Stay tuned, as we’ll dive into this later in the course.

The Mixolydian mode is defined by the scale degrees: 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7-(8).

FIGURE 1

 

It should be readily apparent that the Mixolydian mode is identical to the major scale with the exception of the 7th scale degree, which is flatted.

Generally speaking (remember that phrase from lesson 3?), it can be played over a Dominant 7th chord (C7, A7, etc.).

EXERCISE 1

As we did with the other two scales covered in the preceding lessons, play through the C Mixolydian mode. Play it slowly, and make a concerted effort to really assimilate it...and not just crank through it as hand exercise. As before, be constantly aware of what scale degree is being played at any given moment, and how it relates to the root.

Video Exercise 1

 

EXERCISE 2

Transpose the two patterns for the Mixolydian mode (Figure 1) and play them in all 12 keys all over the fingerboard.

EXERCISE 3

Play through the C Mixolydian mode in staggered 3rd’s. Just to keep things interesting, though, let’s mix it up a bit! This time, let’s reverse the order (ascending vs. descending) of every other pair. So in terms of scale degrees, we’ll play:

1-(3)-4-(2)-3-(5)-6-(4)-5-(b7)-8-(6)-b7-(9)-8.

Do you see how that works? Instead of the 2nd pair being “2-(4)”, it’s reversed to be 
“4-(2)”. Every other pair is reversed similarly.

Then, descend through the Mixolydian mode in staggered 3rd’s using these “alternating pairs”:

8-(6)-5-(b7)-6-(4)-3-(5)-4-(2)-1-(3)-2-(b7)-1.

Video Exercise 3