Piano: C# Ionian Over the Changes

C# Ionian runs 7 notes to the octave, laid out here across 88 keys with every C# flagged. Mid-chorus the pattern is not what you need; where the root is when the chord changes underneath you is.

Bright, resolved, and stable. The foundation of Western tonal music and the most common mode in pop, classical, folk, and jazz.

Heard in: Pop, classical, country, folk, gospel — the default major tonality of Western music.

The right hand takes the line and the left keeps stating the chord under it, which makes a scale at this seat a two-handed problem: the notes have to work against a voicing you are choosing at the same time.

Play it slowly against the audio until it stops being a shape, then put it over two bars of a form and let the chord tones decide which of the notes you actually keep.