Modal Mixture Is How I Make Music With ALL The Scales!

Ajouté : 2026-05-15

[00:00:15]Votal mixture is one of the most powerful tools I have in my entire composer's toolbox. It allows me to immediately create awesome sounding chord progressions and know exactly what scales can fit on top of those chords.

[00:00:26]I'll be demonstrating that in today's lesson, but I'm also going to give you the tools to pursue this topic even further and more deeply all on your own.

[00:00:32]Because if you approach this topic the right way, you'll end up discovering awesome new scales instead of having to learn them first and then apply them. To demonstrate this on the simplest level, I'm going to write a very basic chord progression in the key of A major. So, here are all the triads of the A major scale. And I'm just going to write a 1 145. A D E. There's my A major chord progression. Now, what I'd like to do is borrow a chord. And I borrow chords from any of the parallel modes. So here are the parallel modes of a major. I have a Dorian, a frigian, a Lydian, and so on.

[00:01:02]And each of these parallel modes has their own chords that we can just grab and borrow and throw in to our original chord progression. So what I'm going to do is grab this chord right here, flat 7 or G major. I'm grabbing that from the parallel mixelyian scale. And I can take that flat 7 and throw it in anywhere to my initial chord progression and it's going to sound good. I'm choosing to throw it in right after a. So I'll have a major. Then this borrowed chord, G major. Then I'll go to D and then E. And you can hear just that one presence of that G chord really brightens things up.

[00:01:33]It turns us into a more interesting chord progression. And with a more interesting chord progression, we can write more interesting leads on top. The easy way to approach this is that these three chords came from major and this chord came from mixelyian. So over these three chords, I can play the A major scale and over this chord, I can play the A mixelyolyian scale. I'll essentially just be mixing those two scales together. And here's what that sounds like. Here's an A major chord, and I play the A major scale.

[00:02:00]Here's uh a G chord, but I play a mix line. Then back to the D and back to E.

[00:02:11]And you can hear that sounds really nice. And most importantly, it keeps us clean. It avoids the worst sounding things you can do in music. For example, when this G chord is played, I really don't want to hear the sound of a G sharp note on top of that. Doesn't sound very good in my opinion. But a mixelyian doesn't have a G# sharp. It only has a G natural. So that conflict is completely avoided. Also, when this E chord comes up, I probably don't want to hear the sound of a G natural. Now I have an E major chord and I'm also hearing G sharp and G. That creates kind of a mess. But if I look at this chord and think, "Oh, it came from major." Then that means I'll always be playing a G sharp on top of that chord and never clouding it up with a G natural. So to put this to use, I've arranged those four chords into a simple loop and I'm going to do some improvising over the top. But before I do that, I want you to think of this in a little different light. Instead of working with two scales, major and mixelyian, I want you to think of the idea that we are just working with one key, the major key. And the major key usually sees its seventh note be flexible. Sometimes it gets pushed in and you get a mixelyian scale and sometimes it just pops right back out and you get a major scale. This is a common behavior for the major scale. So we can kind of simplify this. Instead of thinking, oh, I'm working with two scales and mixing them, you can think, I'm just working with the major key and I'm letting that seventh note be free.

[00:03:25]It can be whatever it wants. It could be a flat 7 and in that case we can make these chords and support these chords.

[00:03:30]Or it could be a natural 7 and it creates and supports these chords. So here's just a brief demonstration of what that sounds like. mixing the major scale with the mixelyian scale and also just playing some pentatonic major in between.

[00:04:09]And it is a good idea to pause here and try this out on your own. I've provided this jam track for free on my website.

[00:04:13]There's a link below in the description.

[00:04:15]But for paying site members or Patreon members, I've also provided three other jam tracks for the other examples in this lesson. And this helpful PDF for all you guitar players out there that's got some scale charts in there that I'll be using in this video, but also serves as a helpful guide to get through this lesson. So, that's about as simple as this concept can get. Write in major and borrow from anywhere. just play that scale over the borrowed chord. But here's the thing. When you borrow a chord like flat 7, you don't actually know where it came from. And this is a point I really want to reinforce throughout this video is that we don't know where chords come from. We can figure out where they may have come from. And we can certainly tell where they didn't come from, but this G major chord could have come from the A minor scale. It could have come from the A Dorian scale. There's other scales that aren't modes that this chord could have come from. And look at these other chords, one and four, A and D. Those could have come from mixelyian, right? I could have been playing the mixelyian scale over all three of these chords and then just saved the major scale for the end. That's a totally legitimate option.

[00:05:08]And to demonstrate this even further, here's what I'd like to do. Instead of just working with triads, let's work with extended chords. So, here are all the triads of the A major scale, but I can click this button. And now I see all the diietonic seventh chords of A major.

[00:05:19]So, my one chord is no longer A major, which is just A, C sharp, and E. Now, my one chord is A major 7. That adds this extra G sharp. And my two chord is now B minor 7. So now I'll be composing with these chords instead. And same thing with mixelyian. I'll extend those diietonically and I get these chords.

[00:05:36]And now I'll create a new simple chord progression. This one's just going to move from this A major 7 to this G major 7. And all on its own, that's a really nice chord change. That's the kind of chord change that you might write and really enjoy, but not know exactly how to play over the top of it. Looking at this chart, we should have a good idea of what we can and can't get away with right now. This A major 7 chord cannot come from mixelyian. It requires a G sharp note. And mixelyian requires a G natural. Similarly, this G major 7 now has fewer origin spots. But I'll keep things the same here. I'm going to use the A major scale over this A major 7 chord. And then when G major 7 comes around, I will be playing the A mixelyolyian scale. Once again, I'm just taking the seventh note of my major key.

[00:06:17]I'm pushing it in. And we're seeing what happens when we do that.

[00:06:44]Now, I want you to know this app that I'm using to figure out all the parallel modes and figure out their dietonic chords is totally free. I worked with Shawn from Melodic Mind to get this exactly how I wanted it. It's basically a dynamic version of my ultimate modal poster. I love that poster, but it's stuck in C. And here you can put in any key and line up all the parallel modes and immediately see their extended chords as well. But while you're on that site, make sure you check out what else is available there. It's an incredible resource for musicians like us. You can study and compare different scales with the music guru. Edit your own music clips with the audio lab. You can even compose an entire song on here with melodic studio. It's a very impressive website and it has a lot to offer folks like us. So, we're pretty much done here mixing major and mixelyian. But there's one thing I want you to notice when we do that. When I take a major and I push in that seventh note G sharp and it becomes G, the set of notes that I get ends up being the same thing as the D major scale. And if you look at a circle of fifths, you'll notice that the key of A and the key of D are right next to each other. They are neighbor keys.

[00:07:38]Neighbor keys are scales where only one note changes between the two of them.

[00:07:42]And I just think that's worth bringing up that this common trick that we've done literally means we're just moving from one key to a neighbor key. But that's not how I'm thinking of it. At no part of that solo that I played was I thinking, "Oh, now I'm in the key of D major." No, I was thinking of the key of A major the entire time. And I was thinking about that flexible seventh, that variable seventh. But looking at that circle of fifths, what about that other neighbor key? What about that key of E major? Well, we can find that by taking our major scale structure and instead of poking in the seventh note, what if we poke out the fourth note? So now instead of D natural, we have a D sharp. Well, that gives us the A Lydian scale, the parallel A Lydian scale. And that's another scale I love to borrow from and mix with major. So once again, let's write a chord progression that mixes these two. I'll start in a major and I'll use those 1, four, five chords again. I'll use A major 7, D major 7, and E7. And then what I'll do is go to Lydian and I'll grab this two chord here. That's going to be B dominant 7.

[00:08:38]And we'll take that chord, throw it into our original chord progression, and we'll get this A major 7, B dominant 7, D major 7, E dominant 7. And this is the kind of chord progression you probably hear maybe in like a jazz turnaround.

[00:08:54]But what we do have is we have an easy option to play over the top of it. Over these three chords that came from major, I will play the A major scale. over this chord that came from Lydian. I'll play the A Lydian scale. But once again, to simplify things, I'm just in the key of A major. And I recognize as a composer that the key of A major has a flexible fourth. You can poke that fourth, it'll pop back in. It's a nice temporary change.

[00:09:45]So, one of the points that I'm trying to drive home here in this lesson is that the major scale structure is very stable. You can poke it and transform it into something else. And that's a good idea. We've only made some very minor surgeries to this structure. We poked the seventh, we poked the fourth. We could do much more drastic things like poke the third and the sixth and the seventh and that would give us the parallel minor scale. And combining these two, major and minor, is truthfully one of my favorite sounds in music. To demonstrate, we'll write a chord progression in major. I'll start with a major 7, the one chord. I'll grab this six chord from a major F sharp minor 7. And then I will borrow this four chord from parallel minor, which will be D minor. And that's it. just a major 7, F minor 7, F# sharp minor 7 to D minor. That'll be the entire chord progression. And over these two chords that came from major, I'll play the major scale. Over this chord that came from minor, I'll play the minor scale.

[00:11:03]Now, like I said, I cannot get enough of that sound, and it's so easy to generate just by composing in the major scale and then flipping to the parallel minor. But here's where we really get into the heart of the matter. We didn't have to play the A minor scale over this chord.

[00:11:17]Remember, chords don't really come from anywhere. So, when I see this chord pop up, I can think of it as being borrowed from minor, but it could come from lots of other places. And here's the skill I really want to teach you, so that way you can explore the deepest depths of this topic all on your own without watching YouTube videos. What we're going to do is look at this chord and then ask ourselves, what is the smallest change we have to make to our major scale structure to support this chord?

[00:11:42]Well, here's my A major scale, and this new chord that's clearly out of key is D minor, and that requires the note F.

[00:11:49]Well, my A major scale doesn't have an F. It has an F sharp. But I could just poke that F sharp down and I create this set of notes. Now, this is a weird scale name. This is a harmonic major. It's one of those scales you might not ever learn, but it's really easy to just discover by doing this technique of finding the closest possible scale match. So, a harmonic major is a completely legitimate scale to play over this D minor chord. And to demonstrate, here's what I'm going to do. Here is a major 7, right? And here's the A major scale. Sounds beautiful, right? Here's D minor coming up. But all I'm going to do is only disturb the sixth note. And I'll leave that seventh note natural.

[00:12:29]Weird sound, right? It's a different sound. It's a completely different flavor that you could have discovered all on your own just by saying, "Oh, here's a noniatonic chord. How do I adjust my major scale to support it?"

[00:12:39]But it also helps to know other scales and know what chords fit inside them. I personally know that the mixelyian flat 6 scale can support this chord as well.

[00:12:47]And that might sound really confusing, but it just basically means not only did we poke in the sixth, but we also poked in the seventh. So here's a major, but then here is a flat 6 and a flat 7. So that ends up being the scale mixelyian flat 6. And once again, that sounds amazing over the four chord. So let's hear it together again. Here's a major 7. I play the A major scale.

[00:13:10]And then here's the D minor chord. I switch to mixely Lydian flat 6 and I just love that sound. We're retaining the major third here. We didn't have to poke that third in just to support this chord. And if all you do is C minor 4 chord and think that's borrowed from minor, then you're always going to be poking that third in and you're going to be neglecting this wonderful, beautiful sound. I want to give you a clear example of where this kind of thing happens and that's in Weezer's Buddy Holly. That's in the key of A. And the pre chorus there goes from D, that's the four, the three, six.

[00:13:49]But then we get four, and then we get the most striking chord in the entire song, that borrowed four chord. Now, if you see that borrowed four chord and you only think, I need to switch to the A minor scale, then you might play this lick on top.

[00:14:04]But that's not what Weezer plays. Weezer plays this lick, keeping that major third in place instead of poking that m major third into a minor third.

[00:14:17]Now, did Weezer know that they were composing with harmonic major or mixelyian flat 6? I highly doubt it.

[00:14:23]They were doing what sounds good, but that's what I'm trying to describe to you is what sounds good and how can we relate it back to topics that are consistent and repeatable. One more realworld example, but this time we're going to switch keys to the key of C.

[00:14:33]Leila by Derek and the dominoes. The chord progression is like this. C C over E.

[00:14:39]F add N.

[00:14:42]That's just a one and a four. But then we get this chord B flat dominant 7.

[00:14:47]Right? So we were in the key of C major.

[00:14:49]And now all of a sudden we see flat 7 dominant version. Now instead of looking through the modes to figure out where this scale comes from, let's just do the scale's closest match. Obviously this is the C major scale, but B flat dominant 7th requires these notes. B flat, D, F, and A flat. So to get B flat and A flat out of my C scale, I'll have to flat the sixth and the seventh, poking both of those notes in just like I did earlier.

[00:15:13]And once again, this is going to create that C mixelyolyian flat 6 scale. And those are the notes that we'll hear on top of this chord, which is a beautiful sound. Really, honestly, one of my favorite sounds in music. If I only thought, oh, that must come from the minor scale, then I would have played this lick instead.

[00:15:34]which is nice. They're both nice, but I personally in most settings, I love the sound of that major third being retained over that flat six. Now, if you love that sound, I have great news for you because I have another lesson on that major 1 to minor 4 chord change. It also includes a jam track as well, and it is the perfect way to practice this exact mode. Do we want to do major to minor?

[00:15:55]Do we want to do major to mixelyian flat 6? Do we want to do major to harmonic major? They're all legitimate options that you get to choose from depending on what flavors you enjoy the most. And I'd really like to clarify some things here to get through this lesson. I've made a few statements that might not be 100% true. First off, modal mixture is usually referred to as the mixture of major and minor. Some people don't think of modal mixture as major and mixelyian or major and Lydian. They'll just they call that scale mixture. And that's fine. I don't care what you call it. The concept remains the same is that we're not thinking of different scales with different roots. We're thinking of different A scales, right? We were in A major, then we were in A Lydian, then we're in a mixelyian flat 6 A harmonic major. These are all A scales. And when an outofkey chord pops up, we have options. We can say, hey, what is the closest scale match for this chord? And we can create that scale. Or we could say, what's a scale that we know this chord could come from? And we could just play that scale. These are going to give you different flavors. You have to experiment with them to figure out on your own which ones you like the most cuz there's no way I can demonstrate every combination. There's infinite possibilities here. Now, I have a lot more to say on this topic, especially as it regards to the minor key cuz we didn't talk about minor at all. So, I am going to have to make a follow-up to this lesson. But, if you're hungry for more modal mixture lessons right now, I did a sixeek master class with my site members and Patreon subscribers just on this topic. I just updated the membersonly library and realized there's well over a hundred videos that I've posted there that aren't available for the public on YouTube as well as dozens of charts and MP3s. So, if you're looking to continue learning and support this channel, that is a great way to do it. And lastly, a huge shout out to Shawn for making this modal mixture calculator for us exactly how I wanted it. If you're as grateful as I am, then show your appreciation by heading over to the Melodic Mind website and at least playing around with some of the free tools provided there. So, I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.