Is this backing track in A minor, or C Major?

Yeah I suspect that if you arrange your musical phrases such that there are a lot of resolutions on the C chord, the listener’s ear will start doubting Am as the home chord and focus on C (even though the backing track seems to emphasize Am as the home chord).

Would be cool to hear someone try this, sadly I am not very good at improvisation over chord changes so it won’t be me :slight_smile:

1 Like

First chord is the key per usual. In this case, who cares? It’s all C baby! Rock out! I support you on this time of trouble.

1 Like

That’s kind of what I was getting st, actually.

There’s two ways to think about this. The simple but effective one, and the coimplex but REALLY effective one.

The simple one is, you can play either an A minor or a C major scale over this progression, and it doesn’t matter which. It doesn’t matter which because they both contain the exact same notes, so if one is more inspiring to you than the other, play that.

The more complex one is, you can play pretty much whatever you want over this…

  • but the first chord is an Am, so while that chord is sounding, you want to resolve to the pitches A, C, and E.
  • The second chord is C, so when that chord is sounding you want to resolve to the pitches C, E, and G.
  • The third chord is F, so when that chord is sounding, you want to resolve to the pitches F, A, and C.
  • The fourth chord is Dm, to my ears with a m7, so when that chord is sounding you want to resolve to the pitches D, F, and A, and maybe C.
  • The firth chord is F, so again F-A-C.
  • The sixth chord is Am, so again A-C-E
  • The seventh chord is G, so when that chord is sounding you want to resolve to the pitches G-B-D.

…and if you want to find a single scale that contains ALL those pitches so all notes are at least relatively safe, then A minor is your choice, or C major if you want to think of it in terms of the relative major… but you can push that a bit as long as you make sure you’re resolving to the right note at the right time, and if you don’t want to push it, then your soloing will sound a lot more cohesive if you still stick to those notes as resolution notes while playing within A minor or C major.

And, as I suggested earlier, C is a common pitch for just about all of those chords, so if you keep resolving lines to C, except for on the final chord when instead you resolve to G, B, and D, it’s going to sound pretty resolved no matter what you do.

It’s actually kind of fun to take a backing like this, and start to intentionally incorporate notes that DON’T work, to resolve to one that do. Simple example, in the first two chords where you go from Am to C, you could walk it down A to G# to G and land on the G right as you hit the C chord, and while G# doesn’t belong in this progression at ALL, the chromaticism will help your ear accept it as a passing tone. Or, do the reverse, coming off the Am, play a Gb and slide that up a step to G on the C chord, to add some tension that still has a really strong resolution onto the next chord’s chord tones.

But, I’m GUESSING you like C major here more than A minor, because when you “play in C major” you play a lot of C notes, and when you “play in A minor,” you play a lot of A notes. Maybe try this - play in A minor, but whenever you can, try to resolve to a C. Let me know how that sounds.

1 Like

I can just mindlessly solo over it, but thats not going to improve my ear or theory lol

1 Like

Thank you that along with others replys helps a lot. :slightly_smiling_face:

There are a few soloing approaches you can do to help your ears.
One I’d recommend is soloing using only the triads of each chord. Just slow simple melodies using only the chord tones. This will really help your ears.
Pick even just four of the chords at a time, record them at a slow tempo, and restrict yourself to chord tones only.
After doing different exercises like this, once you lift those restrictions, you’ll really start to hear which notes you want to resolve to and how the notes sound over each chord.

1 Like

Sound major? Nope. It’s minor.