Student’s question:
I understand that we can use the tonal map to find the notes of any key. But I’m not sure how I should be thinking about this when I’m improvising. Do you literally picture the tonal map when you are playing?
Some ideas to think about:
You won’t always picture the tonal map drawing when you’re playing because the drawing itself is merely a summary of lots of information. It’s an incredible visual tool for understanding harmonic relationships, and in the beginning of your journey you’ll spend a lot of time studying this drawing. (And even in the future, whenever you come across a new harmonic concept that you want to study and understand, you’ll return to this drawing as your basic workspace for understanding the relationships between the notes.)
But over time, all of the information contained in our tonal map drawing will be available you in TWO different ways:
- 1) One of these ways is your visual memory of the map itself. Just like when you began your IFR practice, you can always come back to this visual map drawing to recall the intervals between any set of notes.
- 2) But another way this knowledge will be available to you is as a set of facts. For example, what’s the interval between notes 2 and 3? That’s a whole step, right? Did you have to picture the tonal map drawing to answer that? Probably not. By this point, you probably simply KNOW that there is a whole step between notes 2 and 3. So this is an example of one of the facts contained in the tonal map drawing. And because you know this fact so well, you don’t even need to consult your visual memory of the drawing to answer that question. But if you ever struggle to recall an interval, you could always return to your tonal map drawing to picture that relationship.
So what happens is that over time, our use of the drawing slowly gets replaced by a deep and instantly available knowledge of all the facts contained in that drawing. There is a half step between notes 3 and 4. There is a minor third between notes 2 and 4. The note #5 is a major third above note 3. And so on. Over time, you’ll find that you no longer need to return to your drawing very often, because you already know all of the facts and relationships contained in the drawing.
This is the mental space that you’re free to navigate when you’re improvising. You should always be aware of the tonal number that you’re playing, but you always have several ways to picture the next note you want to play. The clearest way would be to literally picture the tonal map drawing in your mind, but this is also the slowest thought process. It’s faster if you can simply recall the interval between the note you’re playing and the next note you want (e.g. a half step). And on some instruments (especially brass and woodwinds), we’re also hyper-aware of the absolute note names. So you might even find yourself simply knowing that the tonal number you want (e.g. note 4) is going to be the note Bb because you’re playing in the key of F.
I hope that this vision of the road ahead is helpful. But let me also assure you that all of these answers are found in the practice itself. For now, a good habit is to just picture your tonal map drawing whenever you need to. But as you gain experience improvising in all different keys, little by little you’ll start to notice that you have multiple ways of picturing the notes, and each point of view reinforces the others.
