Does this have a name: skating close to the key?

[timscarey]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles

Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm not playing three octave scales up and down the neck! Originally, I was thinking of the situation where you try to make up a new melody on the fly, but keep it more-or-less in C. I know you can analyze any one clutch of notes as the Transmogrian hyper-locrian mode, but that misses the point entirely.

Nice,

I tend to call that "playing an inside melody" or "as many common tones as possible"

I don't have a name for it except "awareness of the useable common tones" which would hopefully be learned in conjunction with a fair amount of "awareness of the useable uncommon tones"

I find that the more you stick to common tones between chords you sort of "tie the chords together" using the melody, whereas the use of uncommon tones would serve to expose the difference between two harmonic structures.

Of course, this only needs to be considered when you leave a strict diatonic collection of 7 notes.

Whoever's theories you use to increase your awareness of the common and uncommon useable notes is up to you. Modal interchange sounds like a good route, I like to think "what are my possible modes, and which one has more notes in common with the last group of notes I played" I do this by creating "mode shells"

Minor 1-2-b3-4-5 pretty much always. the rest are my "choice notes" TBD by the previous melodic/harmonic fragments, and the desired "inside/outside" sound.

Major 1-2-3-6-7
Dom 1-3-b7

word.

[Reg]

Hey gang... What was the point of this thread, I'm not quite sure.... Are we trying to come up with a way of using our "ears" to make on the spot decisions to decipher which notes are correct or incorrect when soloing through specific chord progressions... or are we trying to explain why our "ears" make those decisions... Thanks Reg

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

My point? I was wondering if this has a name, and if others had some other similar ideas.

[Stringbean]

I'm already referring to it as "the big daddy observation". For when I run into those chords that shouldn't be...but sound so right.

[franco6719]

Good thread!

Coltrane, and probably many others before and after, used this a great deal as a chord substitution in his soloing, in the pre-Giant Steps period:

orig: Dm7 | G7 | Cma7
sub: Dm7 | Fm7 Bb7 | Cma7

Now I see the theoretical basis for that anyway.

Also, I remember reading in one of Bill Leavitt's books about an approach to improvisation that sounds exactly like what BDLH is describing in the OP. He didn't call it anything in particular. He just said something like "You can stay in the key of the tune and then adjust the notes of the (major) scale to fit the chords that fall outside the key (or key center)."