Lesson 25: More Lydian Dominant

It’s been a while since I first learned what the Lydian Dominant and the Altered Scale were and I (erroneously) posted about them here.

Anyway, I told Master that I wanted to revisit this and try to delve into it more as it was floating around at the edge of what I understood. The missing part of the puzzle was that there are a couple of easy scenarios for usage – one where the chord is resolving (say a V-I) and the other where it is not, e.g. a I chord in a blues I-Iv-V.

First off, consider the G Melodic minor (we spent a while just playing this). The seventh mode, i.e. starting on F# is called the Altered Scale (or super Locrian). Playing this over an F#7 chord yields an F#7b13 sound, which is cool in itself. In a ii V I in B (C#m | F#7 | Bmaj7) we can play C# Dorian for a bit, then the F# Alt, then resolve to a note of B. One of the key ways to extract the sound of this mode is to play or home in on chord tones of the G min/Maj 7 chord which is contained therein (harmonize the G melodic minor to derive it). As it turns out these are also notes of F#7#something.

Secondly, consider the blues progression of C13 | F9 etc…  Playing the melodic minor a fifth away from the root over the I chord (C13, so this would be G melodic minor) gives us C Lydian Dominant. In other words, the fifth mode of the G melodic minor is C Lydian Dominant which gives a cool flavour, especially if I home in again on the Gmin/maj7 chord tones.

Gmin/maj7 in a G (ascending) melodic minor scale.