Mixolydian

What it means

The Mixolydian mode runs on the natural notes from G to G. Compared with major it differs in a single note: the seventh degree lies a semitone lower, that is, a whole tone below the tonic. This means the leading tone is absent, and with it the pull that in major leads to the tonic.

Musical use

This has audible consequences. The cadence does not aim, it arrives — the music seems more open, less built toward a close, occasionally carefree. Because the seventh degree lies low, a sonority arises above the tonic with an added seventh that looks like a dominant seventh chord but does not act as one: it does not resolve but remains tonic.

In the order of the church modes, Mixolydian is the seventh mode; its plagal form is called Hypomixolydian. In traditional practice, the seventh degree was often raised in cadences by musica ficta, so that the mode came close to the later major scale.

Outside early music, Mixolydian is omnipresent: in British and Irish folk music, in folk, in blues, and in large parts of rock music, where chord progressions with the low seventh degree belong to the basic stock. In jazz, too, the scale has a fixed place in chord-scale association.

Mixolydian is to be distinguished from major, which it resembles except for the seventh degree, and from Dorian, which additionally has a minor third.

In the medieval order, Mixolydian is the seventh church mode, with finalis G and reciting tone D. In rock and pop music as well as in folk music it is widespread, for instance in bagpipe melodies. In jazz it fits over a dominant seventh chord and is often taught there as the basic scale for improvisation.

Performance practice

Watch the seventh degree — it is the hallmark, and habit presses toward raising it. Do not phrase toward a leading-tone tension that does not exist; the music rests more than it aims. And practise the mode in comparison with major on the same tonic.