Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Key Transitions to build medleys

I love your lessons and your arrangements. I have encouraged a number of others to check out your site.

The length of many of your songs are quite short and would fit beautifully into a medley. I would really appreciate a lesson on some useful and stylized key transitions - especially in the more common keys used here.

Thanks!
Bruce

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Hey Bruce! Long time no see. :slight_smile:

Did you have any particular songs you’re trying to run together? Which instrument are you playing?

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Good idea! I’ve often wondered how to build medleys.

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Hi Mark:
I play guitar. I have Just a Closer Walk about 95% of where it needs to be ( piece far more challenging than it appears BTW :open_mouth:). When played at a nice tempo it probably runs around 50 Seconds or so. It would make a great end piece for so many of the gospel songs but that would often require a C to G transition.

Bruce

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In that case, one nice way to get from C to G is to throw a D in between. D is the 2nd note in the C scale, and it’s also the 5th of the G scale, so it makes a nice transition chord.

You could also just walk the C down to a G since G is the 5th note in the C scale.

Are you looking for specific picking patterns?

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I think I follow you. I will give it a try! Thanks!

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I usually use the 5/7 chord (In the case of C to G, D7) to transpose to a different key :+1:

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Same here, we sometimes the relative 5/7 in combination with other passing chords that can be in either key, but at that point I’m not playing, just the piano.

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transition or transpose??

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Transition. He wants to start playing a song in C and end up playing a song in G.

I guess he could transpose the song to C, but that’s a long jump and may make it difficult to sing, depending on the song.

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Mark, OK, I think I get it now… I think Ben had a music where he jumped between G and C. Yeah it is a great jump normally. Let me think what it is. here goes if that something what Bruce is looking for… Discuss the Guitar lesson: Jingle Bells

Hey John,

Mark is right on here. He and Dave and Gunnar have written some great posts on modulation, The best lesson I can recall for illustrating modulation, is Ben’s “Red River Valley” on banjo.

He actually does it on two key changes and explains it perfectly.

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Try are you washed on guitar, it goes from C to G, and I use the same modulation in some other places too

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Hi Jack, I’ll check it out though I don’t play banjo… :slight_smile: Oh Gunnar has a guitar example, I remember that.

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