Pattern Generation

Category: guitar technique and music theory

  • The Push Home: The Mixolydian Mode and a Blues Shuffle Octave Pedal Tone Exercise!

    It’s kind of interesting that for a scale that has so much in common with the restful and homebody-esque major scale, the Mixolydian Mode couldn’t really be any more energetically different.

    Major/Ionian = home/grounded

    Mixolydian = uprooted/restless

    It is hard to argue that the ungrounded and restless nature of the mixolydian mode and its harmonic partner, the Dominant 7th chord, are what made it the definitive melodic and harmonic material for the blues. The Blues, after all, was essentially the music of a culture of people who were taken from their homes, held captive, made to work as slaves, and we’re essentially powerless to return home. They were stuck in an existential embodiment of the mixolydian mode.

    I hope that doesn’t sound trite because it really isn’t.

    That deeply embedded bluesy quality of the Mixolydian Mode is what made it important to realize this Octave Pedal Tone exercise with a shuffle feel. Technically this requires a right hand/arm physicality that is similar to what the great Stevie Ray Vaughn does to achieve the rhythmic feel of songs like Pride & Joy and Rude Mood.

    Downstroke on the beat and upstroke on the triplet 8th that defines the shuffle, sometimes from the hand/wrist and sometimes from the forearm. Make sure to always stay as loose as possible and put rhythm and groove over string and note accuracy. Let the accuracy come as the physical develops, the physical development will never lead you to groove if it’s coming from a place of cautious accuracy.

    Octave Pedal Tone G Mixolydian TabDownload

    There are a couple of occasions in this mixo manifestation where the moving voice extends into the double octave. I feel these moments sound especially bluesy. But then so do the moments when the ascending voice moves in toward the unison and we hear the flat 7th (F) rub idiosyncratically against the root (G). I guess it’s silly to say that any of the registers sound more or less bluesy than others because it’s all pretty danged bluesy.

    Thanks for caring enough to stop by and grab the tab. Stay tuned for the next step of the scale, the Aeolian mode (or relative minor). Keep in mind that these modal focused OPTs are really just the foundation of all the exploratory pattern generational fun that lies ahead.

    Cheers.

  • Welcome to Phrygia, Good Luck in the Battle! Octave Pedal Tone Exercise in C from E to E (or 3 to 3).

    Here we encounter the octave pedal-tone exercise starting on the third note of the C Major scale, aka the Phrygian mode.

    The ancient Greek region of Phrygia is known to have a couple of very famous figureheads and was constantly at war! The Phrygians participated in the Trojan war; they were for a time led by Gordius, famous for his Gordian Knot; and Midas, the mythological King who’s touch turned everything to gold are all part of the Phrygian story.

    In the Phrygian mode we discover some very exotic tensions and, interestingly enough, the mirror image of the Major scale in terms of the perfect intervals (4th, 5th and of course octave) all remaining steadfast in their qualitative resolve but all of the Major intervals present in the major scale, the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th, shift to their minor quality. So where’s we can represent the Major scale as the numbers 1 through 8 with no modifications, we represent the Phrygian mode as follows: 1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 8. Try to enjoy the changing character of each different modal pedal tone exercise while you embrace the possible challenge of learning the location of these notes and the technique required to play it. I promise you your hands will be more agile than ever and you WILL know your fingerboard better than you ever thought possible!

    Here is the Tab:

    Octave Pedal Tone in C (E Phrygian)Download

    While there are a multitude of pathways we can choose to navigate through any octave pedal tone exercise, I decided for some reason to make this one a little challenging. We begin on the upper octave and shift the low voice to the off beats, creating a need to articulate in such a way that we don’t displace ourselves from the downbeat. If you’ve listened to the demo video you will hear that it’s all too easy for the ear to reorient itself within the pulse when the lower voice is the one that is moving–even though it’s on the offbeat–we just naturally want that to be where the beat is. In the interest of humility I will say I could have done a better job delineating that by accenting the beat and playing the offbeat with a softer dynamic. Something to work on, for me and for you!

    After this we go from the almost darkest of the modes to the very brightest with the Lydian. Things get progressively darker moving through Mixolydian, Aeolian and finally Locrian before we finish our elementary investigation into the octave pedal-tone exercises.

    But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we’re not even halfway there yet. Stay tuned for the E Phrygian played in alternating low/high triplets: COMING SOON!

    Thanks for visiting and as always, Happy Practicing!