How To Make Music With The Lydian Dominant Scale On Your Guitar

Tommaso Zillio

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Is it really a surprise that one of the favorite scales of prog metallers is also a favorite scale of jazz players?

Well, it was surprising for me when I met this scale for the first time.

At the time I was obsessed by prog metal - and I quite disliked jazz.

(Hold your horses - I was a teenager. At least I wasn't listening to trance music...)

The fact that both styles used the same scale was... quite unsettling for me. Maybe there was more in common between jazz and prog than I suspected?

Back to the scale... as usual in music theory, this scale takes several names, one more ridiculous that the other :-)

Lydian b7, Lydian Dominant, Mixolydian #4, 4th mode of Melodic Minor...

... but despite the complex names, the basic idea is simple, and the scale sounds great.

In this video we see a few easy (and immediately applicable) ideas to make music with this scale on your guitar. If you've never used it before... don't worry, just play through the examples and you'll discover a completely new sound.

And if you knew it already... maybe I can still give you some new ideas.

Watch the video here:

(If you are still thinking about that... of course I like jazz now. And there is also some good trance music out there. Don't limit yourself!)

If you like the video above, then maybe you want to know more about other interesting scales and the music you can do with them. I would recommend this video on the Byzantine scale (that you can use for some surf rock):

And if you want something even more weird (but that can sound Jazzy or Bluesy in a pinch) here's a video on the rarely-used-but-interesting Enigmatic scale:

If you find yourself overwhelmed by all these scales... that 's normal. It's probably because nobody taught you how to properly visualize scales and modes on your guitar fretboard, and how to use them to make the music YOU like.

If this rings a bell, then you should check out the Master of the Modes guitar course - a complete course on scales and modes that leaves no stone unturned and that will help you make sense once and for all of the modes on the guitar fretboard.