I realize this is an adult beginner section and seriously I am only a beginner in reading music I play professionally so this post may be above some of your heads but I think that most of you if not all can get some benefit out of this

basically this is about some improvisational ideas
and i will keep it short

in essence you need to know two things
how to count half steps

lets say you are in the key of C
count up four half steps you arrive at E
the relative major
count up six half steps from C you get F# the tritone subsititution

this is all you need to know to start sounding more advanced
well not all but basically

if you can play in all your keys then this is a God send
because you can play a song in the key of C and during various turns in a song you can go into one of these other two keys to lead you back to your C or G or F

let me back up a bit

most songs will center around the one chord in our key of C example that would be C
and the four chord F
and the five chord G

so if you were playing a song lets say blessed assurance
during those moments like this is my story which usually is done as a walk up
you can actually play that in the key of Emajor resolving the last chord back to the key of C this will take a little experimentation to figure out what sounds best but you will quickly hear that this is exactly what pipe organists do to embellish their songs

and this is my song can be played in the key of F# reslsoving it back to C
the key to this no pun intended


is to invert the chords in a way where the top note of the chord is not clashing with the melody but remember some of the notes will be outside the key.

how do you resolve back to the key of c when playing in such a different key that is not closely related

by looking for naturally occuring passing chord points

look for notes that lie a half step below or above
or that are a fourth away
or a whole step away
these three points will help

so if your target chord is C
you and you are looking to do a quick progression in F# you can walk the Abminor to F#major
F major
G major to C
notice the F major chord was in the key of C
the F# major was a half step above

pracitce your own ideas
have fun amaze your friends

E is the relative major of C# minor. There is no relative major of a major key.

C, D, C#, what's a little half-step among friends?

It's interesting to figure out ways to resolve one chord to another chord. I will check this out.

Here's one way of resolving from key to another, which hopefully I won't have to use again. One day in church we were singing a hymn, in the book it was written with 3 flats. So to start, I usually figure out the key signature, lower it half step to a white key so the acoustic guitarists can strum along, then play by ear. But I had a little confusion this morning, and thought 3 flats was A flat, so I announced "G" to the guitarists. As we began, and I started hearing some really operatic diva soprano sounds from the congregation, I thought what is going on-- I lowered it already from A flat-- I looked at the 3 flats signature again-- realized oh nooo!!

So do you know how i resolved from G to a singable key of D-- **while the congregation was still singing**?? Well I didn't (but if anyone can manage that trick, please share). I stopped playing, shook my head and held my hands up, saying "stop, stop." Then we started again.

(If nothing else... that'll teach you in a hurry to recognize the difference between key signatures with 4 flats and 3 flats!!)

Aren't there "tricks" like this?

If there are flats in the key sig, then the key of the song is designated by the second to last (second from right) flat.

If there are sharps, then the key is a half step above the last (furthest to right) sharp.

you are right I was thinking C#
when I wrote the thread

on to your point call it what you want but Eb is relative to c and e is relative to c# I call it a relative major because you can do progressions inn the relative key that will move you back to your target key.

lol sorry that happened we all have had our wait wait stop moments you actually coud have continued to p=lay in g moving up a fourth in the harmony while the melody remains in the oriiginal key is a reharm device