Home Row Scales Part 1: Major to Mixolydian

Home Row Scales, Part 1

When I was trained to touch type, the method was to start with your hands in “home row.” This gave the hands a fixed position to work from and muscle memory allowed the eyes to stay off the fingers and on the text to be copied.

I think the concept of having a fixed position to work from is particularly useful when learning scales and applying scales. Home row is like position playing and have a starting point scale is like feeling the raised bumps on the F and J keys.

First, you need a scale to be home row. I think there are 3 scale shapes that guitarists should learn as home row. I will show each of these scales in a Single Position. This allows them to be “moveable” so the root of a scale can be any of the 12 notes while keeping the same finger pattern.

Major

Minor

Pentatonic

It almost doesn’t matter how exotic or altered a scale or mode is, chances are really good it can be played with small changes to one of the three scales above.

Major and Mixolydian

Today’s lesson is on the Major Scale and how changing one note makes it a Mixolydian Mode. Mixolydian modes are useful when improvising over dominant 7th chords like A7 or C7 or anytime you want to play more than the pentatonic or blues scale.

Let’s start with how to change the Major Scale to a Mixolydian Mode. If I lower the 7th scale degree of a major scale by a half-step or 1 fret, then I have made a Mixolydian Mode. In the case of A Major - we have A B C# D E F# G# A ……to make Mixolydian we lower the G# to a G natural. This is the A Mixolydian Mode = A B C# D E F# G A. That is the difference, 1 note.

Here’s how I remember it:

The Mixolydian Mode is the same

as the

Major Scale but with a Lowered 7th.

I have mapped it out in this video I show you how to play it. Practice it using the “3 Things to Learn any Scale” and hopefully you will be able to start using this mode any time you want. Jam on it using this chord progression |A | G| A| G|. Put that in iReal Pro, use a loop pedal, or voice memos on your phone!