C Lydian is basically the major scale that went to art school: same seven notes as C major, except it raised its fourth from F to F#, hung a scarf over one shoulder, and started calling itself "bright." That single note is the whole personality — and this little lick's entire job is to show it off while you barely move your fretting hand.
This is a 25-second open-string lick in C Lydian, where the sneaky trick is that you let the open strings ring into the fretted notes. The result sparkles, sounds harder than it is, and buys you a lot of credit for what is, honestly, mostly just laziness with excellent taste.
How this C Lydian open string lick works
Here's the nerdy payoff: C Lydian is C, D, E, F#, G, A, B. Now look at your open strings — E, A, D, G, B, E. Every single one of them lives inside that scale. That's not a coincidence you have to fight; it's a free gift. It means you can let open strings ring against fretted notes higher up the neck and nothing clashes — the guitar is basically pre-tuned to spell C Lydian for you. The one note doing all the flavoring is F#, the raised fourth; it's the difference between plain C major (Ionian) and that floaty, film-score shimmer of Lydian.
Concrete takeaway: pick a fretted melody note high up, then let a low open string drone underneath it and hold it. If you want to lean into the mode, land on or pass through F# often — that raised fourth is the color, so hiding it defeats the whole point. It's the same open-string-drone logic you can steal for riffs anywhere on the neck.
And yes, I recorded 25 seconds of open strings and a single sharp note and called it Lick #42, because apparently I'll number my laziness if it sounds pretty enough. Guitar Pro file, the tab, and the original videos live over on my Patreon — where the F# is always in tune, unlike my life.