On 8/15/06, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
IMHO, a lydian is a backwards mixolydian in the sense that they're both on either side of the ionian mode, if you map the ecclesiastic modes on the circle of fifths: F:lydian, C:ionian, G:mixolydian... if you remove VII from ionian, it may as well be mixolydian, and likewise, if you remove IV from lydian, it may as well be ionian. Any pair of adjacent modes on the circle of fifths are only different by one degree, and which degree it is also follows the circle of fifths: IV and VII are a fifth apart.
It's interesting to consider how a key comes about in the first place in regards to this. The major triad is really the only part of the major scale that's based on the harmonic series; and taking that structure from three points separated by fifths, where the middle point is to be the endplace, you get a convenient way to create tension by moving away from the tonic, while recreating that structure wherever you go (IV, V). There's no reason it should only be done with three triads separated by 3/2 ratios. Adrian Fokker wrote a book called Just Intonation that amounted to a compendium of possible ways to create similar structures, but using other harmonic intervals than the fifth, and other chords than the major triad. It's interesting, but grueling. Great ideas, but the book isn't much more than a listing.
If you leave a degree out in a lydian, you can make it sound like it's a ionian, and then the real ionian next to it would immediately sound like it's mixolydian, right?
Else, I have no clue how lydian and mixolydian are related.
I've heard of lydian-flat-7, which is like a combination of the characteristic intervals of both. I guess it's the fourth mode of the melodic minor. Never tried using it though.
I don't understand music.
I think this isn't so much music as ABC's. I find the same thing trying to learn my way around Linux. The most highly developed reason and intelligence doesn't do you any good until someone tells you how the system's set up. Music itself is something one can intuit to an extent, but the ABC's, being an artificial and external language for it, can only be understood from others.
-Chuckk