Hey folks, I’m so sorry for this long gap between posts again. There’s a ton of stuff going on — I’m preparing the piano sheet music book for my EP, editing the videos and just mindlessly cycling around the town (which should, of course, also be considered an important activity) — long story short, I just can’t carve out the time to sit down and share some quality material here (although believe me I have a fuckton of it in the queue). Did I just use “fuck” and “quality material” in the same sentence? 🤔 Anyway! This time is going to be a quick modal workout that I’ve recently used, and as soon as I’m done with my release, I promise I’ll get back with a fat post on descending motion I’ve been wanting to share with you all for a long time. But today, let’s talk about Lydian clouds!

What? Yes, this:

 

So what’s going on here? All I’m doing is layering the incomplete Lydian scale runs with the degrees of the 3rd degree of the same scale (iii7 in this case) played in triad and rootless jazz voicing (in this example it’s 7-3-5). Lydian is one of the favourite modes of jazz composers — unsurprisingly, because of its more-major-than-major quality that’s coming from the II7 and V∆ degrees. I personally like it a lot and use it very often in my compositions.

This exercise — as pretty much every other in this blog — helps you achieve several goals: memorise the scale degrees and understand how they define the mode’s nature. Plus — the whole figure creates a very obscure sound that could be easily used as an accompaniment device. Done with iii7? Pick another degree!

 

Same idea: Lydian scale from root to 6th in the left hand, Lydian V∆7 in the right. The beauty of it is that you can also adjust several things as you go to avoid getting bored: for example, play different degrees each time or change the scale range you cover with your left hand. Here’s an example:

I might say that I’ve intentionally left it you to figure out what degrees I was using in each bar, but I’ll be honest and admit that I just forgot to mark them in the sheet music 😄 So, go figure! 🤓

That’s it for today — I hope it was not too boring and too jazzy or too Lydian or — insert your term for something that feels a bit too lazy — but let’s just call it slow attack pad routine. Jokes aside — you might wanna try it on your favourite Serum or Omnisphere pad instead of the piano — you won’t be disappointed! Okay, going back to my release prep business — talk to you later!