Soloing: Sticking to the Root Key or Changing Keys with Every Chord?

[Robguitaruk]

I've been playing music for a while so I understand somethings about theory but there's a lot I don't know. When I first learned about scales, I would play the scale of the root chord and use that for my solo. So if the song is a blues in E, I stay in E for all the changes.

I've heard of people outlining or using the chord changes to solo. When I listen to more complex songs, like jazz or some kind of fusion, it's almost like different sections or changes are in different keys.

I understand there are no hard rules, but I'm trying to grasp if there's something else I should be keeping in mind to get out of my plateau. Should I be changing scales with chord changes? Do I need to memorize different modes instead?

[GearNerd]

"playing the changes" is the improv tradition.

"Sticking to a scale" is also a way to do it.

90% of the time, those are one and the same. If you can "feel" the changes with a scale you'll sound good.

What you have to watch out for are modulations (secondary dominants, chromatic mediants etc) which happen a lot more in jazz than in pop/rock/blues etc

[BluesGuy]

Outlining changes is sort of the essence of jazz soloing. We aim to be able to hear the chord progression in the solo.

So yeah, you want to be able to do both. Ideas within the tonic scale but also being able to convey the chord progression.

Start with notes of the triad on each chord. Then notes of the 7th chord on each chord. So arpeggios in 8th notes.

You can later expand to use all the notes of a scale that matches the chord. You can look up a chord-scale syllabus to see what scales are commonly used on what chords. But the arpeggios are far more important and musical and will actually give you the sound of the chords passing by.

[MetalPlayer]

I usually consider a key over several chords, since a lot of songs I play tonicize other key areas at the phrase-level, making it less-than-helpful to focus on one key area for the entire form. That said, its basically a 'both-and' situation of being aware of the current root/tonic area and the particular harmonic function of the chord-of-the-moment within that key area.

[StudioPro]

If a song has chords that all fit in the same key you can just solo over that key. For example in the progression C G Amin F every chord fits in the key of C major so you can write a melody or solo in C major and it will sound fine.

If you want to add more complexity you can start to imply key shifts over the progression. The way I think of it is you create a more complex chord progression over the original.

C G Amin F -> C D7 G E7 Amin C7 F

[MetalPlayer]

i don't change keys at all. i borrow notes