How To Change Keys

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:05][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> If you listen to standards for any period of time, you'll notice that on a lot of the early big band recordings of these kinds of tunes, you'll hear the band change keys midway through the song. This is a really expressive and really cool thing to be able to do. And I didn't think about it much until I spent more time recently listening to one of my favorite guitar players, Guy Van Duser. And in his duo with clarinetist Billy Novick, I heard them doing it as well. And I thought, "Oh, yeah, that's a really cool idea. It's not just limited to big band recordings.

[00:01:08]You could do it on the guitar." So, in today's lesson, I want to show you how to change keys from C to E, and then how to change keys back from E to C.

[00:01:18]I'm going to demonstrate these ideas on the tune Exactly Like You, which is a 32-bar AABA tune written in 1930.

[00:01:26]If you'd like to learn my arrangement of Exactly Like You, you can find lessons and tab inside my membership, the Fingerstyle 5. If you want to learn more about that, just go to the link below or visit fretboardconfidential.com to find out more.

[00:01:40]In the meantime, let's get on with these key changes.

[00:01:48]>> [music] [music] >> So, the place to make these key changes is at the end of the form or at the end of a 32-bar pass through the tune. Now, this being an AABA tune, that means the last eight bars you're going to hear are the third or final A section. So, for example, like you in the key of C, that means the chords are going to be two bars of C, two bars [music] of D7, two bars of G, and then when you come back to the C chord, >> [music] >> you might either sit on the C for a bar and play a G7 to get you back around to the top, or you might play a whole turnaround.

[00:02:33]>> [music] >> Some kind of, you know, C to A to D to G [music] kind of thing.

[00:02:39]But, if you're going to change keys, instead, you could play a bar of C, and then you use the last bar to get from there to E. And one of the simplest and most effective ways to set up a new key is to play the two chord and the five chord of the key you're going to. So, that would mean playing an F# [music] minor seven chord of some kind, and then a B7 chord.

[00:03:07]That's really all you have to do. So, you've got a bar of C, half a bar of F#, half a bar of B7, and there you are in E like you were there all along. Pretty cool. Now, when you're playing the song in the key of E, you're going to have the same AABA structure, and the last A section of the 32-bar form in the key of E is going to be two bars of E, two bars of F#7, >> [music] >> two bars of B7, and then you're going to come back to E. And if you were going to stay in E, you might play that two to five in E again. But, if you're going to go back to C, we need to set up the C chord. And so, the simplest way to do that is to play two beats of E, two beats of C [music] sharp minor 7, which is the sixth chord in the key of E, and then go up a half step >> [music] >> to D minor 7, and then G7, and then >> [music] >> there you are back in C. Now, working backwards is the best way to understand why this works. Going from C to E is pretty straightforward because why does this work? If we're trying to land in the key of E, the strongest resolution to someplace you want to go, it's five to one. So, if we want to land in E and sound convincing doing it, if we count up five steps, E, F sharp, G sharp, A, B. We get to B, which is the root of a B7 chord. That's the five in the key of E.

[00:04:52]And then, working back just a little bit more, we can say, "Well, F sharp is the second note up from E, and that's the root of the two chord in the key of E. So, we can play two, five, one, which is an even stronger resolution." So, what happens is you're going along in the key of C, you hear this F sharp minor chord, which does not belong in the key of C at all, >> [music] >> but it's followed by a B7, and then by the time you get to E, you sort of realize retroactively that >> [music] >> you just landed on E in a really satisfying way. It's a similar idea for how we're going to get from E back to C. And again, if we work backwards, the five chord in the key of C >> [music] >> is G, and the two chord in the key of C is D minor. So, D minor 7 to G 7 to C is going to be a really persuasive way to land on the C chord. The only thing here is that we are going to be coming from E, which is pretty [music] remote. And so, the setup is to play two chords that belong in E, the one chord and the six chord. So, E and C sharp minor. And then the D minor to G, which is So, it's one and six of E and then two five one in C.

[00:06:26]Now, the thing that makes these things sound good is paying attention to what's going on on top as well as what's going on with the harmony. So, when you're going from C to E, >> [music] >> there's a couple things going on. First of all, we have a really close connection between the what's going on on top, between the C chord and the F sharp, because I'm playing an F sharp minor 11. Here's the root, the flat 7, the flat 3, and the 4, the 11. And so, the melody is going >> [music] >> the melody, meaning the top note of the chord, is going down a half step when we go from C [music] to F sharp. Moving by a half step is a really strong and sort of comfortable sound.

[00:07:15]>> [music] >> And then we play all common tone, meaning we keep the exact same note on top for the next three chords.

[00:07:26]>> [music] >> All right, so we can have a B note on top of the F sharp chord, we can have a B on top of the B 7, that's the root of B, and then we can have a B on top of the E chord, which is the fifth of E.

[00:07:38]So, we hear this.

[00:07:42]>> [music] >> Which is all pretty satisfying. When we're going from E back to C, we can do a similar kind of common tone trick where going from the E we can [music] keep the E on top as we go to the C sharp minor chord.

[00:08:00]And then we can even keep the E on top when we go to the D minor.

[00:08:04]E is the ninth, [music] so that's a D minor nine chord. And then we can keep the E on top >> [music] >> when we go to the G chord because now we have a G 13 chord. The E is the 13. So we get this really satisfying >> [music] >> We even have an E on the top of the C chord if we want. So that really helps to tie things together and it does two things at once. It makes what's going on underneath, it sort of sugarcoats it. It's like everything's cool. We have this common note on top.

[00:08:40]You you can follow that around with your ear. And it also increases the sense of like, hey, what is going on? Because you do hear something very familiar on top and yet your ear kind of knows that something is not really, you know, something interesting is going on underneath it.

[00:08:59]>> [music] >> I feel like you kind of sense that even if you don't know exactly what's happening. Now of course this also supposes you can play the tune in both keys. And you know, you don't necessarily have to be able to play the melody in both keys. One of the reasons that I like this idea of, you know, borrowing this device from a big band move where maybe it's good for the horns in one key but it's good for the singer in another key is that's kind of analogous to the way the melody might sit really well in one key on the guitar.

[00:09:32]Like it works great to play the melody to Exactly Like You in the key of C, but maybe it's more fun to solo with the chord shapes that you get when you're playing the tune in the key of E. So, you don't necessarily have to play the melody in both keys. You could just play through the melody in C, for example, and then improvise when you get to the E chord. So, if you were coming out of that last four last eight bars uh in the key of C, and then you wanted to start improvising in E, you could do something like this.

[00:10:05]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> And so on. So, that's the idea. It's a pretty sophisticated device, but if you're at the point where you're playing through tunes and you've got the whole 32 bars going on, it's something you might have fun experimenting with, and this gives you a window into how to make those key changes so that if you do want to switch to a different key or try to figure out what the chords would do in a different area of of the fingerboard, you now have the means to do it.

[00:10:51]Again, if you want to learn my arrangement of Exactly Like You, I've got tab and lessons for all of that inside my membership Fingerstyle Five.

[00:11:00]You can learn more about that at fretboardconfidential.com.

[00:11:04]In the meantime, if you have a question about today's lesson, please leave it for me down below. I would love to hear from you. And as always, thanks for watching.

[00:11:13]I'll see you next time.