Mixolydian Mode
Major with the seventh lowered, which sounds like a small change and is not. Losing that leading tone removes the strongest pull in the key, so the music stops straining toward home and starts rolling around it.
- 7 notes
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7
- the flattened seventh
which styles use it
- Rock & folk
- Funk
- Blues
- Country
How it is built
Take the major scale and flatten the seventh degree. In C that means B flat instead of B. On the white keys, Mixolydian runs from G to G. The scale matches a dominant seventh chord exactly, which is why it is the first scale anyone learns for improvising over one.
Bright but grounded. The absence of a leading tone is what makes rock and folk in this mode sound relaxed rather than driving.
Where to use it
In rock, funk and folk, where the flattened seventh is part of the vocabulary. Over any dominant seventh chord. In Celtic and British folk melodies, where the mode has been standard for centuries.
The chords that go with it
The giveaway is the flattened VII, a major chord a whole step below the tonic. A I to bVII to IV loop is Mixolydian in three chords and turns up all over rock.
What it gets confused with
With major, which differs by one note, and with the blues, where flattened sevenths appear in both the melody and the harmony for different reasons.