 Hi guys this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson we are going to look at a topic which I call modal harmony or modal chords and it's a very interesting way to take something very simple like just a C major chord or a C minor chord but give it a very modal perspective or give it a very scalar perspective it really depends on how you're looking at this chapter where you want to look at it as a mode Lydian, Dorian, Mixolydian, Phrygian or you know Locrian etc or if you're just saying okay I know the major scale I kind of know the minor scale but what else is there to explore you know so the way I tend to look at modes is just as a scale that's generally how I use them to compose and when you look at modes as a scale you can even start interacting them parallely that means you can look at a song being on C major but then you can borrow chords from certain other scales like you can here and there make it a C minor scale even though for the most part it's C major you know or for the most part you can make it a C major but then here and there you bring in like a Phrygian vibe you know so let's get started with the idea we're going to just start with a C major chord or a C minor chord okay so and then we're going to just see how to develop a modal vibe or a vibe which is new to the year it's not going to feel like C major right and another thing which I'd like to point out is we are not going to take many chord progressions we're just going to literally take one chord so just C major and how do we get the modes into the chord like for example right so let's get cracking and before we do if you haven't already do subscribe to the channel turn on the bell icon for notifications there are quite a few videos which will keep coming your way at various levels so if you're a beginner you will have a fair amount of beginner lessons you'll you'll have a lot of these advanced concepts theory year training and a lot more so it's important to stay notified so hit the bell subscribe if you haven't already let's get cracking so if you take C major pretty much the entire discussion could be around this chord now if I just hit that chord what scale does it appear to be in you know currently this music one might argue oh this is the C major scale which it is but then it could also be part of some other scales could also be part of the mixolydian scale okay or it could be part of the mix or flat six scale so if you actually have a melody around the C major chord it would be or it could be back to major could even be lydian lydian is has the sharp four that one if you have a lot of these options like as I look at it you can even have what is that scale it still has a C major very eastern vibe right right so off the top look at the number of scales which seem to actually demand this chord or contain this chord if you will right C major C lydian C mixolydian C mixolydian flat six or maybe a scale with a flat in two very arabic vibe and the list will well go on if you think about it you're just trying to look at scales which have a root a major third and a perfect fifth so that's the backbone of this lesson right you just have to know that when you're playing a C major chord and if you're going to extend that chord for a certain duration of time and if your music is very modal then generally when I think of the word modal I always tend to look at the the root or whatever you play in your left hand or the bass to last a bit longer than the average song you know it's not going to be that doesn't feel to me at least as a very modal song you'd want the C to be lingering on for a bit longer then you have possibilities then you're thinking oh what scale goes over this chord right of course there are some great jazz artists who do it over quick chord changes right they'll be playing a different scale for every chord but the way I look at things generally is whenever you're looking at modes you're tending to have more consistency in your bass or more longevity in the bass you'll have C it'll just go on for a fair amount of time okay coming to the job at hand now so if I'm on C major and now I ask myself the question how do I get a Lydian vibe with C major as my backbone so I'm pretty much playing a song on C major but I want to feel it like it is C Lydian scale and not C major scale so you need that F sharp so there are two approaches which we are going to do for the entire lesson the first approach would be to communicate the harmony with thirds instead of triads so you go C's third is E then D's third is F sharp mind you I'm on the the Lydian scale so I don't want to do F F is not part of Lydian so all thirds that's pretty much it B D so let's say you're just playing C major so I've created like a flourish of thirds which kind of spell out C Lydian isn't it very important as a composer or as an arranger in a musical in any musical context because you're spelling out the mode you're spelling out the scale and even though you're using one chord can really help the singer of your group to you know say oh this is the scale this guy wants me to compose my melody on it should be not because I did not play F I did not embellish with F rather I'm giving the melody the chance to sing this F sharp or I'm kind of giving the melody a nod you know play the F sharp you need to be on the Lydian rather than the major okay so this is very important if you're like a newer artist in a newer band you know where everyone is at a kind of a learning stage I hope you've got that drill so play a major chord and then embellish with thirds you could just do one pair of thirds which is extra you do C major that's it it's Lydian and that's your song it's coloring it up with that Lydian third pair you could do others as well or you could use thirds like in a flurry or in a pattern like now you're now what you do on the piano starts becoming rememberable on its own okay so you color it up with thirds you can also color it up with the triads which are built from the mode so of course C major you can do a D major E minor sharp diminished so you get the idea you can do all these triads over the C bass or you can just do the D chord okay so that's about Lydian now let's say you want something really exotic you know generally what I consider exotic I just have that brand for scales in general it's something with maybe a two flat or a five flat that's how I've sort of uncluttered my mind with those sounds why I call them exotic is because you rarely hear them in popular music at least western popular music you know so that one so if you use that chord D flat over C major what could the scale be that could be that or so just take a C major chord and just add D flat and F which is the next third of that new scale so third third pair third pair third pair third pair all thirds so C major chord number one now you're telling your singer it pretty much needs to be in this context you're kind of leaving the sixth and the seventh note free for the melody to kind of interpret you could do so you could even sing that or or so I could do that seventh or that seventh both options exist so anyway so that was about that scale I I don't even know the name of that scale to be honest it doesn't really matter you don't have to name scales before you use them you can compose stuff and yeah somewhere down the line someone will just call it a name or you read up on it at some point so the the approach we are trying to follow is take a chord C major and then embellish it with at least one more ingredient which is a third in that new in that proposed scale or a triad in that proposed scale so so we've looked at Lydian we've looked at this arabic scale okay now why don't we consider a few possibilities given a C minor home base chord that one so if I do this there's a great way to add color if you do if you're just playing C minor you could probably embellish with what does that A do makes it Dorian doesn't it Dorian is nothing but a minor scale with a raised sixth or you can just remember it as a major scale with a flat three and a flat seven so to embellish just the thirds from the Dorian or triads from the Dorian with a C bass consistent and also be very melodic you'll find like rock and roll musicians do this all the time and they are spelling out the mix solidion for example so if you take this you get patterns like it's like a standard rock and roll pattern right now what happened there C major that's a third up and that's a third spelling out the mix solidion so so mix solidion okay so you have all these options so start with a a minor or a major chord so the the job for you now is to take a major chord you know or a minor chord you know and then embellish that chord with two possibilities one is with thirds so harmonic minor is spelled out you know or embellish it with triads Dorian in this case is spelled out or start with a major home bass you spell out all sorts of scales it could be like very exotic or commonly used scales the mix of flat six or just the normal mix solidion rock and roll right you can even do very theatric things with a major or a minor chord you can just do like you don't even have to sometimes scare oh what scale am i on you can just use this as a way to color up a chord just take a major chord just that works quite well i think can just look at it that way you you can say like right now i was just writing a song with c f and g and i've just used i've just taken the triad messed it up a bit by taking the third and the fifth down also becomes um like very melodic on its own you could use it in a musical context you can use it to write a ballad in a more interesting way if you wish right so that's about the lesson guys let's recap this is what we call i we're calling this lesson as modal harmony embellishments but then you can you don't have to look at it as a mode you can just say i am currently playing c major or c minor i want my singer or i want my audience to feel the scale which i'm feeling here so you need to first think okay what scale am i what is the bigger picture here c major is a chord it's not a scale it's just three notes so you need another little bit more information to give you that push or give you that nudge to say oh this is the scale i'm actually on because a c major chord could be part of so many scales a c minor chord could be part of so many scales so we use two ways of embellishment one is thirds and we've used triads okay so you don't have to do too many embellishments even one was enough as we saw earlier lidion that's it because i've given the four sharp or if i do dorian because i have a minor third and a major sixth or very fridgian now or major chord with the two flat and the four or mix so there we have it or you can just forget about theory altogether take a major chord and just move the the non-root of the chord which is c so these notes just move them wherever you want or you just get a very different sound so another concluding point which i'd like to make in this lesson is a scale can be derived using just two chords so if you have two chords in a piece of music you can actually extrapolate a scale from those notes because inevitably two chords are going to have a minimum of four notes right in most cases a minimum of five notes in some cases six notes because each chord is three three notes and i haven't even gotten started on bigger chords we've just taken major and minor triads in this lesson hope you found the lesson useful guys again this is jason here from the nathaniel school of music if you want to learn music from us if you'd want to interact with our with our faculty through our virtual courses do fill up the registration form and if you want to make the youtube learning process a lot better you can consider subscribing to us on patreon you can download all our handwritten notes and there are a few more benefits as well coming your way and if you are at a more beginner level and you want videos which are 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