You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Lydian Chord Progression: Why It Doesn't Work
- If you try to fix it by moving B♭ down to A, you get the chord C6. This removes the unrest of the tritone and a good part of the directionality because, in progressing to the tonic chord, the effect of the semitone resolution from the note B♭ to the note A vanishes.
- If you try to fix it by moving B♭ up to B, you get the chord CM7, which has no tritone. And you lose the resolution of B♭ to the note A, the tonic chord’s crucial third-scale-degree note.
As for possible relative keys, if the VI chord (Dm in the above example) serves as the tonic, it clashes with the IV chord, G, which is major. If the III chord, Am, serves as the tonic, the three principal chords are identical to the three principal chords of the key of A minor, which means the dominant seventh chord becomes E7— which contains a non-modal note.