Lydian thoughts

[=Bob=]

On the piano, I have certain riffs and licks that work nicely for certain styles. I especially enjoy playing various modalities and have devloped a fairly nice repertoire of ideas. Expressing those ideas in a polytonal way has allowed me to develop some very nice sounds. For example, playing E Dorian riffs over C major is very airy and ambient sounding and is of course C Lyrdian, but the licks are E Dorian and work around that tonal center, which is the Major 3rd in C major. Playing D Mixolydian licks over C major does almost the same thing, since it's really C Lydian too, but it's tonal center is the 9th in C Major. I find it easy to think in the two keys this way and to develop those passages based on the tonal center indicated by the modal scale selected.

[xcdrn]

that's cool that you mention that, i like c major on the piano because it's the white keys as far as i am concerned.

I got a friend to show me g# and after that i was set. I would mostly just make up chords with my left hand in Cmaj and change the bass line around to fit the melodies i was making with my right hand, which would usually be phrygian type stuff going off into harmonic minor and various tensions. I dont know if any of it would ever sound good to anyone but me but i sure enjoy it.

When i play guitar over Cmajor chords i'll usually throw in very odd scales and move from minor pentatonic (5 notes, A C D E G, i believe) and then just move up the modes according to the chords that are being played while switching through whichever scales i hope fit.

To mimick that sort of sound on piano i'll throw the F in there, or a run of E F F# G or something like that and really emphasize the E-F change then switch around to pentatonic type stuff and back to other modal ideas with harmonic minor and melodic minor. (A B C D E F G# and A B C D E F# G# i think?)

[=Bob=]

Here's just a quick sample of the noodling. Just some screwing around...About 1.2 Mb:

http://sdg.ag.uidaho.edu/BobWeb/LydianExperiment.mp3

=Bob=

[Factor]

Ahh... man that's nice... Reminded me of the music for the movie Blade Runner. Ever listen to Vangelis?

[prodigy84]

Satriani found a really nice way of using lydian mode to sound like a sitar without going microtonal.

If the first link doesn't work, go to the second. =P Freewebs is a bad bad server.

http://www.freewebs.com/prodigy84/lydian.mp3

http://www.freewebs.com/prodigy84/index.html

[=Bob=]

Thanks Factor, glad you enjoyed it. Sure, love Vangelis. And Tangerine Dream, Rick Wakeman, Jean-Michael Jarre, Pink Floyd...Too many artists, not enough CDs!
=Bob=