Improvising With The Mixolydian Mode

Once you've learned about what Modes are, and how they function - let's put that knowledge to good use!

We're going to use a simple 2 chord progression (often called a vamp) here. Don't forget the swing timing!

This is a I7-bVII progression, a neat summation of the unique qualities of Mixolydian, which can be thought of as a Major Scale with a flat 7th. 

We get to use a Dom7 Chord as our tonic, and while the chord built from the 7th Scale Degree in the Major Scale would be Diminished, in the Mixolydian our "7 chord" is Major.

The greatest tension the Major Scale has to offer is the Tritone, and making our home chord a Dom7 tends to neutralize the harshness of the Tritone. This has the neat effect of making it quite difficult to play a "wrong" note.

For this reason, the Mixolydian Mode is quite a forgiving scale to work with, and works great for jamming.

Now let's improvise over it!

We can use the Major Pentatonic Scale here starting on the A root without issue.

You can also use your Mixolydian 3 Note Per String Form here for all 7 notes of the mode.

Another powerful option though, is to modify our Pentatonic to incorporate the 7th, as seen below:

This doesn't require a lot of new thinking to work out, we just add the Minor 7th where appropriate to our Penta Forms, and you'll find a fresh new sound out of the familiar shapes!

Can you work out where the 7th can be added in to the other forms?

The Mixolydian Mode also sees a lot of use with the 12 Bar Blues. You can use this Major Penta + b7 configuration in your improvisation, and we will take this idea to the next level when we discuss The Mixo-Blues Scale!