Originally Posted by Todd Tipton
A second reply. With sincerity, I hope that some people find my post useful.
Having said that, I also have a tendency to miss some very big and important information sometimes. All Bar One wrote, "I Have a chord progression for my latest song." That was a pretty important part of the post. My response leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. As a result, I feel compelled to offer an additional reply.
First off All Bar One, congratulations! That is a nice sounding progression. I've taken a minute to play it. While I don't know exactly what you are doing with it, I like it.
The first thing I want to briefly mention is the role of theory and composition. I mean, you are asking questions related to theory. And, you wrote something. That makes you the composer. It is not the composer's job to try to follow the "rules" of theory. Rather, it is the theoretician's job to explain to the rest of us what composer's are doing.
You wrote something. You like it. I like it. There. :-)
Jazz is not my area of expertise, but it is worth my briefly discussing because classical musicians and jazz musicians talk about theory in different ways. Other styles of music may be influenced by either. One way isn't better than the other. They are just different. They are both tools that do different jobs very well.
To solve your problem, I wouldn't try to find a key. There isn't one. Although not technically correct, you might want to think of the key changing for every chord. Again, this is not correct, but it might get you thinking about this in a better way.
Find a different scale that sounds good for each of the chords. For example, I'll tell you what I did:
Look at your A6 chord. You can play an A major scale and it sounds great. But you can also play A Mixolydian and it sounds great, too (just think of it as a D major scale if it is confusing. My personal tastes? I like the A Mixolydian (or D major).
I'd simply choose B-flat major for the second chord.
So, whether or not I was writing a melody or soloing, I would go back and forth between the D major scale (A mixolydian) and the B-flat major scale mirroring the chords.
For the chorus? I'd go back and forth between the C major and G major scales. That really means that sometimes your F is sharp, and sometimes it is natural. With either your solos or your melody, you can really play with that. 6 of the 7 notes always stay the same, but 1 changes. Knowing when the note changes is what will get the results you want.
Now, take it a little further. What if you studied the verse in the same way? Look at the notes in your D major scale:
d, e, f#, g, a, b, c#
Look at the notes in your B-flat major scale:
b-flat, c, d, e-flat, f, g, a
There are three notes in common: d, g, and a. The other four notes are always changing depending on which chord is being played.
Taking it even another step further, and getting some great results with just a little bit of work:
Do you know your five major scale patterns and how they connect? If you don't this might be the motivation to learn them. Why? Because your melodies, and solos are going to sound very, very cool and well learned when you can shift back and forth from one key to the other, but not have to shift positions. To be able to stay in one spot and move from one scale to the other. Learning five scale patterns and how they connect is the key to being able to play in all keys, everywhere at the same time.
Happy practicing! And again, this is really cool what you have done. Have fun with it. I hope something I wrote helps. :-)
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12-09-2017, 11:36 AM
