Having some fun with the Mixolydian Mode

The latest scale chart on my Instagram feed was the D mixolydian mode (see below).

I’m often asked what chords work well together to really get the sound of the mode, so I wrote and recorded a little example for Instagram:

Keeping the tonic in the bass of a chord progression really helps to establish the sound of the mode so I wrote a basic progression of D-Am-G-D but played them as triads over the open D string. This then creates a series of slash chords. They were embellished a little with some sus chords and a little bonus C/D in the Am measure.

The improvised solo was trying to hit the chord tones, especially the C note over the Am chord to further establish us clearly in D mixolydian, the C note (the b7) being the characteristic colour tone of the mixolydian mode.