Mixolydian #4 b6

Added: 2026-06-05

[00:00:00]Today we're going to be looking at composing a piece of music with the Mixolydian sharp four flat six scale.

[00:00:07]Now, there are other names for this scale, but they're a little bit confusing. I like to stick with a name that's got the formula for the scale right in the name. I've written a piece called The Keeper of Time, and this is the first time I've worked with this scale, so it really brought up some unique opportunities. All right, let's take a look.

[00:00:28]>> [music] >> Let's start by looking at how to construct this scale. My piece is in G Mixolydian sharp four flat six, so we'll look at the G Mixolydian scale to start, and then we will alter it. So, G Mixolydian would be all of the white notes from G to G, >> [music] >> and that's the fifth mode of the major scale.

[00:01:05]Now, let's look at what we'll do here to alter this. We're going to have G A B, and then that fourth degree, the sharp four, we're going to raise [music] from a C to a C sharp, then we have the fifth, and now the sixth degree, we're going to lower to a flat six, to an E flat.

[00:01:27]So, that's the sound of the scale.

[00:01:33]And you might notice when you hear this that it's reminiscent of another scale, >> [music] >> the whole tone scale. So, you could also look at this as a whole tone scale with the added fifth degree, the D.

[00:01:51]It's a really interesting sounding scale.

[00:01:58]It's a little darker, I think, than the whole tone scale. And it gives you some really nice possibilities because now you have a stable one chord if you use the triad.

[00:02:11]So, let's take a look at some of the chords [music] you can build with this scale.

[00:02:19]Here's a chart with our G Mixolydian sharp four flat six scale and chords.

[00:02:24]So, here's our scale. And here are our chords, both triads and seventh chords.

[00:02:31]We'll start by looking at the triads.

[00:02:33]For the one chord, we have a G major [music] triad. So, very stable one chord. Moving to the two chord, we have this A with a flat five.

[00:02:47]Really interesting [music] sound. For the three chord, we have a B diminished sound.

[00:02:54]And then we get to this chord, the four chord. I have it in italic here because I really think this name is somewhat misleading.

[00:03:04]We're building what are called tertiary chords, which means that I'm building these chords in thirds by skipping a note in between each of our notes. So, if we start with the root of this chord, which is a C sharp, the next note in the scale would be a D. So, [music] we're going to skip over that to the E flat.

[00:03:25]And then our next note in the scale would be an F, so we'll skip over that to the G. And we get this.

[00:03:33]Now, I'm calling it a C sharp diminished flat three chord, but I actually think that's kind of bogus. I wouldn't really >> [music] >> ever call it that. It sounds like an E flat seven chord to me. That's what I hear when I hear this chord. So, what I think I would probably do here is change the way that I build this chord and I might just use this kind of voicing.

[00:04:01]>> [music] >> This C sharp augmented sound here. So, I'm just skipping more than one note here. I'm skipping the D and the E flat to get up to the F and then I'll just skip the G to get to the A. And that would be the sound I might use for my [music] four chord. And this type of thinking is also available in the opposite direction. So, if we look at our one chord, we have this G major [music] triad. But, remember we have a C sharp here. So, we could also have a G with a flat five here.

[00:04:37]Or >> [music] >> we can take that D and make it an E flat and we can have this >> [music] >> G augmented sound. So, those are also available here. These triads that I'm listing are just the tertiary chords where we're skipping a note between each note. Same thing with the seventh chord.

[00:04:59]So, there are a lot more possibilities than what I have listed here. Just be aware of that. And then we've also got all of the tensions. If we keep building upwards, there's all sorts of tensions we can put on these chords. So, there's a lot of exploring to do here.

[00:05:21]When working with a scale or a mode, I like to warm my ears up to it.

[00:05:27]Especially a scale that I don't think I've ever used before. So, one of the techniques I like is to just play a pedal point.

[00:05:37]>> [music] >> Our G, which is the root of our scale, and then just play around with the scale over that pedal point.

[00:06:02]>> Okay, I think that was a nice little melody and it starts to get that scale into my ears. I also like to play a fifth, especially here we have this perfect fifth as part of the scale, the G to [music] the D.

[00:06:17]So that would work, too.

[00:06:21]>> [music] [music] >> There's another possibility.

[00:06:39]Then I like to look for chords that can lead me back to the one chord. So one of the options that I have here is I have this F7 flat 13, [music] which is part of the scale. So I can play this chord and see [music] how it resolves back to one.

[00:06:59]And you can see that moves very nicely back to the one chord. That chord would be kind of a back doorway to get to one coming from flat 77 to one. All right, let's try another chord to get back to the one chord. Let's try this A7 with a flat [music] five and this should go back to one nicely because we have the C sharp and the [music] E flat moving to a D. We have the A moving up to [music] a B and then we have this G staying on a G. So we have this.

[00:07:34]And you can hear that resolves very nicely. So those are the first things I think about when I'm just experimenting with the sound of the scale and trying it to really get it into my ears. All right, let's listen to a little bit of the Keeper of Time and we'll talk about how I've used these chords to harmonize the melody.

[00:08:00]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> I really do love the harmonies that come about with this G mixolydian in sharp four flat six scale. It's got a haunting quality, yet it feels grounded. It's not as floaty as using the whole tone scale because we have that stable one chord and that D natural, but it has that kind of melancholy feeling. And my idea for the piece is that there's a keeper of time.

[00:09:04]I imagine this old man who's winding clocks. And by winding those clocks, he's keeping time running from birth to death to rebirth. This time is constantly moving forward because of this Keeper of Time. That's the image that I used to create this piece. Let's look at some of these chords.

[00:09:29]Starting here at the beginning, I've written the chords up above the melody, which is here in the oboe. So, we start on this G chord, our one chord, with G in the melody, our root in the melody, we step up to the [music] ninth, and back down.

[00:09:50]So, we start with something very comforting, I think. Then we move to this A nine flat five.

[00:10:00]It's unexpected, but we still have this B natural in the melody.

[00:10:08]And then we go back down to the A. So, melodically, we have that, which is, you know, a very straight-ahead melody, something you could hear in G major, but we've got this very interesting chord right in the second measure.

[00:10:31]Then we move back to G.

[00:10:36]And then we move to this F augmented sound.

[00:10:43]An F augmented seven.

[00:10:46]Now, that chord really, again, has that floaty feeling, but it leads very nicely back to our G chord.

[00:10:58]And now our G chord is over D. It's still a G major sound, we've just put the fifth in the bass. And we have this for our melody.

[00:11:09]It's following the same pattern of stepping up and stepping back down. So, we step up, scale-wise. [music] So, now on our G chord, we have this very interesting note, this E flat. Now, normally, that E flat would be something I would avoid because in the bass we have a D and then we have this E flat. We have this flat nine sound. Quite a dissonance. But here we accept that sound because we've really started to establish the sound of this scale in the chords that we've used. And we could do something like this. We could step up to an E flat augmented chord.

[00:12:02]That would be just fine, but I really wanted to hear this dissonance. I think it's part of the scale.

[00:12:13]Then we move to an F9 flat five. And the difference with this chord from this F augmented seven is that we have that B natural in there and we have these first four notes, even five notes if we play the E flat in the bass.

[00:12:37]Whole tone scale.

[00:12:39]And then above it we have the melody.

[00:12:43]Very interesting sound and [music] it really has that floaty feeling even more than this F augmented seven. And then we go right back to G.

[00:12:56]>> [music] >> So you can see that I've gone from the one chord, moved away from it, back to the one chord, moved away from it, back to the one chord, moved away from it, back to the one chord. So we know where home is. All right, let's look at the next eight measures.

[00:13:17]Looking at the chords in this second eight, you can see that I've really stepped away from going back to that one chord over and over, and we've moved far away from it and we don't return to it until the very end of the phrase. And I feel okay about doing that because we've really established G as our home chord at this point. So, we go to this E flat major 7 sharp 5, and that sounds like this.

[00:13:53]Then we move to a C sharp augmented sound, and that sounds like this.

[00:14:02]You can see we're moving down by whole steps here. Then we go to this B 7 with a sharp 9 and a sharp 5, and that sounds like this.

[00:14:16]>> [music] >> It's very much like the E flat major with the sharp 5.

[00:14:24]But now we've got this A added [music] to it, and I saved that in the orchestration to come partway through the bar.

[00:14:32]And that gives [music] it a little bit of a different flavor.

[00:14:36]Then we move to that A 9 with the flat 5.

[00:14:45]So, if we look at our bass line, we're going E flat down to C sharp, down to B, down to A.

[00:14:54]Now, on this next chord, the D minor 6, I did struggle with choosing this chord.

[00:15:03]We're coming from an A 9 flat 5 to the D minor 6. So, this should work, but for some reason my ear wasn't accepting it.

[00:15:12]We had just come from that line of chords that were moving stepwise, and now we're moving a fifth, and we're moving to a chord that doesn't have as much interest and tensions on it. So, for some reason it took me a while to choose this chord and I did try many here, but in the end with orchestration, the D minor 6 was the choice that I liked here best.

[00:15:43]Then we move to this F7 flat 5 over E flat.

[00:15:52]And here I'm using this G flat 5 to delay the resolution to the one chord.

[00:16:02]As we talked about with our triads when we're looking at what options we had, we had some different options for the one chord. We have this G major triad, but we also [music] have that C sharp.

[00:16:18]So, we could make it a G flat 5 or a G augmented chord.

[00:16:24]And by making this a flat 5, I'm using that C sharp as a leading tone to lead me back to one. So, it sounds like this.

[00:16:38]So, it's a really nice option to have when you're looking at the possibilities of the chords that you have, consider other options because we're talking about using tertian chords, building them in thirds, but you can do other kinds of building. You can drop it down to that C sharp or you can make it this E flat. It doesn't [music] have to be the D. Those are all options for that one chord that you have.

[00:17:07]All right, I think we should listen to the whole piece now. The way that I've done the harmonies for the B section are very much the way that I thought of them for this A section. A lot of using modal writing and chord changes in this kind of context is to use your ears. Because we're on new ground, new territory, we really have to listen and try to approach it as if it's our first time hearing these. The excitement that we had the first time we wrote something in major or in minor, that wonder that we had to see how those chords might go together. We have to have that kind of wonder when we're listening to this new scale that we've never used before.

[00:17:58]All right, let's listen now to the keeper of time. I hope these ideas will help you in your next piece, and I'll see you all next time.

[00:18:13]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Oh.