Tips & Tricks

Flip Your Lyd-ian

How about a trick to help solo over that one oddball chord that doesn’t fit into the progression?

Here is a common scenario. You are trying to solo over a chord progression that has one oddball chord that sticks out like a sore thumb, and every time it comes around, you are baffled about how to play over it.

Most aspiring players start out looking at a progression the easy way. If the tune is in A, just solo over the chord changes using the A major pentatonic scale. This works pretty well most times, but some players like to be more adventurous and will, in time, start to look at the individual chords themselves to see what scale or mode possibilities are available.

We are not going to get too wrapped up in this article about modes and scales, but just enough so that you can use this little trick to play over that chord that does not seem to fit.

Here is the example: In the key of A, a common progression is A – E – D. The A major pentatonic or A major scale fits just fine over these chords, because they are all in the key of A major. But what do you do when your bandmate throws an F major chord into the progression? Now the progression would look like this: A – E – D – F major.

Here is a cool trick that I learned from John Petrucci of Dream Theater a while ago. Whenever you have a chord like this that does not fit (in this case, F major is not in the key of A) you can play a Lydian scale over that chord. Which Lydian scale? Easy – the one that starts on the root of the chord (in this example, F Lydian over F major)

STOP! Don’t freak out here just because I used the Lydian word. Yeah, it’s a mode and yeah it can get a little deep, but we’re not going there in this trick. Just hang on…

All that Lydian means to us here is that we are going to play a normal major scale (F major  in this example) over the major chord (F major) but raise or sharpen the fourth note in the scale (in this example, B flat would become B). The F major scale just became F Lydian . Bingo!

Try this. Play the F major scale on your guitar, and when you get to the fourth note (B flat), raise it one fret which equals one half step, to B. Now you are playing F Lydian! If you have trouble knowing how to play a major scale, look on this site under Tools > Guitar Codex. Look up an F major scale, and the Codex will show you the fingerings up and down the neck.

Lydian sounds great, it fits easily, and it just got you out of a bind every time you see this problem pop up in a chord progression. Listen to the sounds clips in this tip and then try recording the progression or get a friend to play it on another instrument, and practice playing the major scale over the first part of the progression and then smoothly transitioning to the Lydian for the last chord. As you get used to the sound of the Lydian, start mixing up the notes so it does not sound so much like a scale. Work on the transition between the major and Lydian, and make that smooth.

There you go. Raise the fourth note in the major scale, and go Lydian!