Songs with the "mixolydian" chord progression

I realize that the term is used loosely but a dominant 7th chord technically will not alone establish mixolydian mode. However, the term is used for a 7th chord by some folks.

 

Here is a song that hints at Mixolydian but never quite gets there all the way. It teases at it.

 

That is what I thought.
Most songs just hint at Mixolydian mode and it is used purely for modal contrast to other parts of the song.

 

For sure, on its own one dominant 7th doesn’t mean we’re in a Mixolydian key. It depends on it’s relationship to the overall harmony. But if we resolve to a Dominant 7th chord, Mixo it is.

 

I think a couple of Neil Young songs use the minor in the dominant.

 

So even if there is no bVII chord and the dominant is not the minor, you are saying it is Mixolydian mode?

 

What would be an example of that? And which minor are you referring to? Both the II and VI are m7 chords in this mode. III is half-dimished as mentioned above.

I should add that my perspective comes from jazz improvising. Perhaps someone with a vast knowledge of classical harmony can go deeper.

 

Example. If the root is a C major and the song goes to G minor or B flat major then you are likely to be in the mixolydian mode.

Example on the “Root is major, 5th is minor” progression.

 

I get confused with the term sometimes. For instance, most folks say the song All Blues is Mixolydian blues. But how can it be without the dominant being the D minor chord? Since the dominant chord is a D 7th#9 chord, it is technically in G Ionian and not G Mixolydian. It technically is not in Mixolydian but everyone calls it that.
In fact, folks call the album modal jazz. That technically is not true. But this is outside the discussion here.

 

Another example of a song typically in the mixolydian mode would be the thousands of songs with chord progressions like this:

C - Bb - F - C

 

Used by Pete Townshend (in different keys) in about 100 songs. Haha. I love him but man did he get mileage from that progression.

 

I'm very sorry, yes I mean Dominanth 7th, this is a major(!) problem for me when talking music theory because I am Swedish, we have different words for major chords ("dur") where your "major" refers to the third, and major seventh ("maj"), it is very confusing for me somtimes. When I write "major" I am always thinking of the third, not the seventh, the language does not translate. Sorry!

But I maintain that what you said is wrong. First of all you said "Mixolydian is blues", most songs in a mixolidian mode are not Blues. If we change it around to "Blues is mixolydian" it gest a bit better but still wrong. Most of the time when I play a Blues improvisation I do not flirt with minor, it's the other way around, I play the minor and flirt with the major third (this is againt the I chord), playing a straight mixolydian scale all the time would sound very corny. Also a Blues will have a Dominant 7th chord as the IV chord (and if it's a dominant then it's not a IV chord, but that's another story), the seventh of that chord is the minor third of the scale, so we are at that point definitely not in a mixolydian mode. In fact analysing a Blues this way it would change key all the time (all the chords are V chords), which is why it doesn't really make sense.

I saw in a later post that you're a Jazz player, that makes me understand your point of view a bit better, in a Jazz context more clearly mixolydian Blues, with maybe a minor third as a blue note, is more common, I come from guitar based Rock, and Blues in a guitar tradition is different.

This is what I am saying, a Blues cannot be in any one mode because the I, IV and V chords will all be dominant 7th chords, no mode has that. If using function analysis to it a basic three chord Blues is in three modes and shifts key each time you change chords. Which is why traditional Western music analysis is not really applicable. But it would make sense to use the mixolydian mode as the key signature, for notation for example, which I think is what this refers to with "All Blues". I mean to simply notate it in G major would make it unnecessarily complicated and would kind of miss the mark.

 

But is that purely mixolydian? It could also be just C Major.
In fact doesn't the cadence make it C Major?

 

An even simpler example would be Tomorow Never Knows. C major but sometimes the chords are C/Bb. Also clearly a song in mixolydian mode.

 

No. Sounds like crap playing a pure C Major scale over that chord progression. You will be playing the note B over the B flat chord.

These are the chords in C mixo mode. C Dm Eø F Gm Am Bb

 

Well, that brings up the fact that not many tunes/compositions, or even sections of them, are strictly in some key (or mode) or other. It's far more common to have "outside" notes and chords in something than not. That's why key/mode often ends up being something of a judgment call. Things can easily get blurry enough where the same thing will strike different people as being in a different key/mode. And of course, all this has been exacerbated by the fact that rock/pop and even many jazz musicians aren't constructing things by closely following (simple) theoretical conventions (and classical composers, even though they tend to be more aware of theoretical conventions than most, often want to experiment a bit). The arbiter is what sounds good to the composer (sometimes tempered by what they can play/what comes naturally to them), and that results in mixing things up a lot.

 

If I understand you correctly, you're saying "how can blues be Mixolydian if the 5th is major"? Very perceptive of you that the 3 of that 5 chord would be the major 7 degree of tonic. It seems wrong because Mixolydian is b7.

Blues is a strange phenomenon from a theory pov. In a sense, it changes key with every main chord (I-IV-V). It shouldn't work but it does. When improvising over blues, you can use the tonic Mixolydian (or blues scale which is a variation) or change key with each chord. They both work.

 

Isn't what scale you play over the chords irrelevant to determining whether music is purely modal? It can help in the determination but I don't think it is the only determining factor.
@Terrapin Station ?
Edit-There are many songs that have modal melodies and such but that does not firmly establish the song is modal.

 

I fear we've thoroughly confused the OP! Anyway, at the end of the day "music theory" is nothing more than an attempt to explain the magic of music. It helps a ton but can never tell the whole story. And great writers break these rules constantly.

 

Not irrelevant at all. It would be the same scale you sing.

 

Another example would be CCR Born On The Bayou. E7 with little detours to D and A.

Textbook mixolydian mode.

 

Right, I was going to say that major blues often seems like it stays consistently in Mixolydian but modulates with the chords: G Mixolydian, C Mixolydian, D Mixolydian. Hence the use of dominant 7 chords on all three roots.

Btw, one reason the V chord is often kept major is that it gives you a leading tone (the major 7th of the scale), providing a more satisfactory resolution to the tonic chord than you'd get with a v minor chord.

 

But you can play many different modal scales over a certain chord progression but that alone will not be the determining factor of the establishment of a song being modal. You are right in that it is not totally irrelevant though.

 

Yep. It's funny to write charts of bluesy songs because it confuses players if the song doesn't resolve to the one chord of the key. But technically C Blues is in the key of F, but in my experience that will mess players up looking at that key signature on paper.

 

Those chord do not tell us what mode we are in because we do not know what the tonal center is, but we do get a key signature. The primary interpretation, without knowing anything else, would be that we are in F major (Ionian). We could of course theoretically be in any of the other six modes as well, but these chord do dictate the content of a certain diatonic scale. Anyway, it cannot be in regular C major (Ionian) becaue we have B flat in there.