It can start to seem like there’s way too much you need to learn before you can even really start to play a solo.
It’s overwhelming.
But it really doesn’t have to be that way. There’s an easier way to get started and still sound great playing over backing tracks, or with a band. You really can build a foundation of playing creatively with your scales, and add details from there as you improve and get more comfortable with jazz.
Introducing the Key Center Approach to Soloing
The key center approach to soloing can help you simplify the process of learning to improvise in jazz. Just because there are a lot of chords in jazz songs doesn’t mean you have to know a million scales or master every single arpeggio to get started playing solos and sounding good.
By learning to think about key centers in your improvisation, you can start using some basic scale patterns (that you probably already know) to play solos over entire chord progressions. You can learn to play creatively, create interesting melodies, and sound really good with a backing track or with a band.
What is Key center soloing?
Key center soloing is a method that simplifies chord progressions into one or more key centers. This can help you focus on playing a limited number of specific scales, rather than trying to navigate the complicated chord changes in real time.
A key center is essentially a home-base for a section of music. Your entire song might be one key center, or it might move through several. Once you establish a home-base in every section of music,
You’re essentially playing the scale that generates all of the chords in that progression.
This can be helpful for you because it will let you focus on creating interesting melodies and being creative within a relatively small group of notes at a time, rather than trying to think of a new key or a new arpeggio or scale for every single chord that you see in the song.
While “playing the changes” is an important skill in jazz, I’ve found that it can lead early improvisers into a fairly robotic approach to playing solos, rather than developing their ears, and listening for what notes actually sound good over which chords.
They’re working formulas and calculating what the next set of “right notes” are, instead of listening to the chords, and trying to create interesting melodies. This creates “correct” jazz solos, but it isn’t very interesting to listen to.
How do you do it?
In broad strokes: key center soloing is relatively simple. You would use a major scale for major keys and a minor scale for minor keys.
To simplify it a little bit further, your major and minor pentatonic scales are a great place to start for this, and they’re perfect for soloing over the blues.
Your major scale and natural minor scale are also great tools for this approach, and are what you’re generally going to want to use over songs with more chord changes that generally follow diatonic harmony.
Step 1: Find the key of the song
Your first step for soloing with key centers is to find the key of the song (or the section of the song) that you’re working on.
If you’re just getting started with improvisation, a major pentatonic scale is the perfect tool for soloing on a major blues, and the minor pentatonic scale is gonna be a perfect starting point for playing a solo on the minor blues.
The blues is great to work on because you can reliably use a single key center to start out with. The blues isn’t going to require you to change key centers all the time.
With jazz standards, you might have to do a little more work to find your key centers.
While there are some songs that you can pretty much play one key all the way through, you’re generally gonna have to learn at least a couple of keys centers for most jazz standard songs.
At first, it’s gonna take some homework to figure it out, and you do need to know a little bit of theory to do it (or have someone show you where the key centers are).
Again, there are some jazz standards that are generally in one key all the way through, and they can give you a nice starting point as well.
Autumn Leaves and Fly Me To The Moon are good examples of songs where you can pretty much stick to one scale for the entire song. (At least when you’re starting out)
Step 2: Stick to the scale
When you’re playing with key centers at first, it’s really important that you stick to the notes of the scale that you’re trying to use.
This might sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many people don’t really pay attention to this.
I’ve found that a lot of problems with early improvisers happen when they’re not actually playing the scale they’re trying to play.
Something about the thought that “oh I’m playing a solo now” makes you just wiggle your fingers and hope that something good comes out.
We’ve all done it, but it’s important to recognize that and work to stick up to the scale.
Practice your solos in a way that makes it easy to stick to the major or minor scale that your chord progression is built around. That might be playing really slow, or with a backing track.
Step 3: Get comfortable and explore
If you do it, right key center soloing is not a quick fix. It takes a lot of practice, and a lot of passes through the song or the progression with some kind of accompaniment.
The accompaniment part is really important, because it helps you get feedback on how the notes you’re playing sound against the chords of the song..
Using a backing track or a friendly rhythm section to play chords so that you can actually hear what you’re doing is essential – because without the background, it’s very difficult to tell if the notes and ideas you’re playing really sound good or not.
Take your time. You don’t have to be trying to play a great solo right off the bat. Play up and down the scale a little bit. Experiment with just changing at different points in the scale. Play with skipping notes in the scale and jumping around a little bit… just make sure you’re actually playing notes that are still in the scale.
Step 4: Change keys when needed
If your song has more than one key center, then it’s important that you switch to a new scale with the new key. The smoother you can make this transition, the better your solos are going to sound.
At first, you’re probably gonna have to write this stuff in or map it out in some way that makes sense to you. There’s no problem with “penciling in” keys at the beginning of each new section or chord progression.
The important thing is that you have some kind of reference as you’re learning this, so that you don’t have to think too hard. There’s enough going on when you’re trying to play a solo without you trying to “just remember” where all of the key changes are.
For my guitar students I like to create a little map with fretboard diagrams so they can plan out the closest place to play to scale.
You can also mark key changes on a printed copy of the song…or however you like to do it. It’s just important that you write it down.
Eventually you’re not going to need to write things in as much, but it’s an important part of learning how to recognize where the key center changes.
Now before you decide that this is a baby step that you don’t need to take seriously:
The people that take the time to write these changes in (whether they think they need them or not) tend to be the ones that sound better when they play solos.
The people that decide they don’t need to write in their key changes tend to not make it very far in their jazz improvisation journey.
Step 5 Use your ears
The most valuable tool you’re ever going to have for learning to improvise is your own set of ears.
As you play over a song or chord progression, you wanna be listening to yourself and thinking:
- Do you like the sounds and ideas coming out of your instrument?
- Do you notice what your notes sound like with the backing track for the band?
- Are you coming up with melodies that you like as you play?
It’s important to be able to listen to the notes that you’re playing against the chords in the background and see for yourself what sounds good to you.
Using your own experience and your own personal taste is going to be much more valuable for you than learning a set of rules about what notes to play and what notes to avoid over certain chords.
Did you like that note right there? Great! Do it again. Did this other note sound bad on one of the chords? Great! Avoid that note on that chord, or at least don’t stop on it.
Because in the right context, anything can sound good. And if you’re making your note choices based on personal experience, you’re going to develop a deeper, personal approach to improvisation that works well for you.
The catch here though, is that you do really have to listen and you do you really have to think: “Does this sound good to me?” and then be honest about the answer.
If it sounds good to you, you’re on the right track. If not, take another run at the song or chord progression and try something different.
Using key centers for jazz improvisation is a great way to get into playing solos without having to dissect every single chord. But you do have to use your ears a lot to tell you if the notes you are playing are really working for you.
It’s not the end, it’s the beginning
The key center approach to soloing is just one of many ways to develop your approach to improvisation.
After years of teaching and experimenting with different methods, I would argue that simplifying your improvisation down to the key centers is the best way to get started, and build yourself a solid foundation.
It’s going to build your basic understanding of key centers and chord progressions in jazz standards, and it’s going to get you playing creatively… rather than trying to compute what your next set of correct notes should be.
You can always add more details to make your solos more interesting as you get more comfortable. And this is the approach I use with my own students to develop their improvisational skills.
Start with key centers, and gradually build complexity from there. But start with key centers. And be prepared to stick with them for a while. It’s a lot of fun, and you can really start playing some good jazz solos quickly.
Conclusion
The most important thing you can do to develop your key center soloing is the dive right in with practice.
Use a program like iReal Pro or band in a box to generate endless backing tracks for you.
While these programs are not a substitute for playing with real people, they definitely won’t get tired of playing Autumn Leaves 300 times in a row while you work out your skills.
Get a group of friends together who love to play jazz, and back each other up as you practice. If you have other rhythm section friends that’s fantastic. If you want to get together with other people and just play over backing tracks together that’s great too.
The more you use key center soloing, the better you get at it, and the more creative you’ll be able to be. If you put in the work on this, you’re gonna be able to play some great solos without hurting your brain thinking about all those chord changes.
For a more personalized approach to developing your skills in the key center approach to jazz improvisation, email me here to set up a lesson.