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Two Neighbors
and a Stranger

How to solo on a tune you barely know: find the key, then find the handful of notes that leave it.

Most tunes are one key plus a very short list of exceptions. Learn the key, learn the two or three notes that step outside it, and learn where they happen — and you can play through the form before you have memorized a single lick.

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Four pages. The one-note rule for neighboring keys, a standard worked end to end, and a method you can run on any chart.

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Your key has two neighbors

On the circle of fifths, the keys either side of yours are one note different. Not similar — exactly one note. That is what makes a trip next door so cheap.

F G A B♭ C D E

one step

→ B♭ becomes B

C D E F G A B

one step

→ F becomes F♯

G A B C D E F♯

Step toward the sharps and the 4th of your key rises, becoming the new key’s 7th. Step toward the flats and the 7th falls, becoming the new key’s 4th. It is the same single move in both directions.

8 adjacent key pairs checked across the practical range of the circle. Every one differs by exactly one note, and every time it is the 4th that rises.

One key, three exceptions

Take Só Danço Samba (Antonio Carlos Jobim), in the key of C — AABA, 32 bars. Across the whole form, exactly three notes fall outside the key.

CDEFGAB B♭C♯F♯

The seven plain boxes are the key. The blue notes are visits to a neighboring key. The orange one is not a key visit at all.

Note	What it is	Happens on
B♭	the key of F, one step flat-ward	Gm7, C7
C♯	not a key — it identifies one chord	A7♯5
F♯	the key of G, one step sharp-ward	D7, D9

Two of the three are neighbors — whole keys you can step into for a couple of bars. The third belongs to no key at all: it is the 3rd of a secondary dominant, one note on one chord, and it is what makes that chord sound like itself.

What’s in the guide

The one-note rule for neighboring keys, with the full table of adjacent pairs and which degree moves.
A standard worked end to end: the key, the exceptions, and the exact chords each one lands on.
The difference between a neighbor and a stranger, and why you play over them differently.
One altered note that costs nothing — an alteration you can see in the chord symbol that is already in your key.
The three layers over any chord: chord tones, in-key notes, outside notes — and why knowing which is which beats avoiding two of them.
The half step that ends a phrase: the ♭7 of the V falling to the 3rd of the I.
A six-step method you can run on any chart in a couple of minutes.

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Every musical example in the guide is original. The key relationships, chord spellings and note counts were computed and checked rather than recalled. No melody or transcription of any copyrighted composition is reproduced; the tune is named in prose only. More lessons, play-alongs and practice tools at fretprints.com.