Lesson 3: Live an Empty Life, Discovering Lydian

Welcome to Lesson 3

0:00:14 Hey, what's going on? This is joEy from Eternal Crane. This is Lesson 3, 13 Weeks of Music and Spirit. Welcome. Today we're talking about living an empty life, and we are discovering the Lydian, the Lydian Mode. The Lydian Mode is a gorgeous mode. I can't wait for you to hear it. This is a place to belong. We're a friend group. We're a spiritual group. We are interfaith. This is built on sharing. You don't have to be a musician. You can be any skill level of musician.

0:00:55 You do not have to earn your way. You belong just because you are you. And as always, we follow the same format. Welcome, spiritual talk, musical lesson, and then we improvise.

Live an Empty Life

0:01:12 So today we're talking about living an empty life. Wow, in the Western culture, that sounds so negative, doesn't it? Well, we follow a Taoist life, and we understand that opposites turn into each other. So if you want to have a productive life, you should live a very empty life. And if you want to go further, you should travel less.

0:01:57 And if you want to achieve great things, you should give up your ambition so you can strengthen your resolve. And the most productive life is one with nothing at its center. So I want you to reflect on some of these. The spiritual talk will go into these in more detail.

0:02:24 For me, I'm starting a new routine where the first hour of the morning is nothing time. The biggest challenge for nothing time is my laptop and my desktop computer and my mobile phone. Nothing time really does mean nothing time. Now, there are some nothing activities that fit very nicely in nothing time. For example, doing yoga first thing in the morning is a great way to start your day. It's a great foundation to build your life on.

0:03:15 Something as grandiose as building your life can be as simple and small as doing an hour of yoga first thing in the morning with your laptop closed. That's all it takes to change your next footstep. And every great journey of 10,000 footsteps is a single step. That's how you change your life, by doing less. Lower your ambition. Build that resolve. Do the next small thing in front of you to fix your life. And it will work.

0:04:00 It's like a snowball that rolls itself up the hill. It seems impossible to rebuild your life because that's too much. It's too large of a topic. But starting small with a single snowflake, you'll find that it gets sticky with other snowflakes. And you can start building a foundation. And once you build it, the snowball will roll itself up the hill. As a Tao, always a wonderful idea to invert the teaching. We usually think of snowballs as going downhill.

0:04:43 But in this case, because restructuring your life is an impossible task, doing it one snowflake at a time and having a snowball roll itself up the hill is a nice metaphor. So I am changing my life. I hope you join me. You're welcome to put in the comments how you'd like to change your life. How you'd like to live an emptier life.

0:05:11 Empty life means that you fast your heart's desires. You fast your mental thinking. You fast your behaviors. You fast your productivity. Allow yourself to have empty time, no time, no objective.

Do Less, and the Empty Center

0:05:35 This is from the Tao Te Ching, of course, written by Lao Tzu. Chapter 48. If you want to go further, give up your ambition. If you want to accomplish more, do less. This is an interesting comparison. Learning, you do day by day and you accumulate. He who devotes himself to learning seeks from day to day to increase his knowledge.

0:06:17 But by doing the Tao, every day we do less. He who devotes himself to the Tao seeks from day to day to diminish his doing. Having arrived at this point of non-action, there is nothing which he does not do. The Tao does nothing and leaves nothing undone. Additionally, the Master does nothing. Nothing is left undone.

0:07:02 So what are you pushing for that you could put down? Some ways to help. Think about the wheel. The wheel has 30 spokes and an empty hub. The 30 spokes unite in the one nave. But it is on the empty space for the axle that the use of the wheel depends. I researched this from an engineering perspective. By removing material in the center, the wheel becomes more efficient.

0:07:54 That's why wheels have empty hubs. This means that you will be carving out some very precious and dear parts of yourself. You may be making some large sacrifices. What feels like sacrifices at first. It's going to get to the center of your life. You will have to live with an empty center. That's a different experience than most of us learn in our society. Especially if you've reached accomplishment or achievement. Another is the bowl.

0:08:46 What makes the bowl useful is that the inside is empty. Clay is fashioned into vessels. But it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. And a great one is the window. It's cut out of the wall. The door and windows are cut out to form an apartment. But it is on the empty space within. That its use depends.

0:09:20 Where is your empty space today? Feel free to answer in the comments. Where can you find more empty space? And here's a great one. Where is the empty space hidden that you don't see?

E Lydian, the Raised Fourth

0:09:37 Okay, so on to the music lesson. We're talking about the Lydian. Today we're going to do E Lydian. Play major first. Harmonize the triad. Do it in both hands. Slow down. Harmonize. Harmonize back down.

0:10:19 Lydian is raising the fourth degree of the scale. So in E, the A becomes A sharp. So let's listen to that. Beautiful, bright sound. Sounds major. But with just some more depth to it, to my ears. It does sound brighter. I agree with that. But it also has an undercurrent. It has a beautiful darkness to it because the raised four is a tritone. So you get to play almost like a major scale with a tritone. You're even welcome to play major up top and play the tritone in the left hand.

0:11:50 So I'm basically playing the major in the right and the Lydian in the bottom. This time I played Lydian on top. What I want you to understand is these modes. The major scale is the Ionian mode and the Lydian mode are closely related. So you can get away with both.

0:12:34 So practice the Lydian in all 12. So if we continue down the circle, this is A, D, G, and so on. So get your ears familiar with that Lydian sound. And then start to explore the Lydian just like you would the major scale, also known as the Ionian.

The Triads of E Lydian

0:13:14 What we do when we learn the major scale, most students learn the major scale first. One of the first things we teach after the descent, the ascending and descending scale, we teach how to harmonize. So harmonize the scale in triads. And Lydian is E, and then it's F sharp major. So that's a different chord quality.

0:13:55 In the major, the 2 chord is a minor. In the Lydian, the 2 chord is a major. So you get this beautiful 2-1. The 3 chord is a G sharp minor. So this is actually the same minor 3 chord on the major scale. The 4 is different. The 4 is A sharp diminished. This adds to the beautiful, rich, dark quality of the Lydian. I'm just inverting this diminished. Play it over the root. So it has a wonderful 4 chord.

0:15:12 The 5 chord is a major, just like the major scale. The 6 chord is a minor. So the 6 chord goes nicely with the A sharp diminished because they're both darker, richer chords. You still get a strong 5, which sounds like a resolution. And it is because it's a major chord. Once you go back to E, you're more strongly emphasizing Lydian tritone.

Improvising in E Lydian

0:16:24 Try to play that A sharp diminished. Go to that strong B. Quickly back to the root E. I'm just running down the Lydian in my left hand. Since this is the improvisation, I'm going to add a little, just added a little whole tone scale. Resolved it. That's the improvisation today.

Thanks and Goodbye

0:18:36 And you're welcome to write me a question about the Lydian. Join the Discord and share your Lydian practice with the community. Keep with this course. It's going to go until the end of the year, every Tuesday and Thursday. Check out the website, of course. And you're welcome to hire me for all sorts of things. So with that, I hope you are well. And I hope you move towards creating an emptier life. All right, I'll see you later.