Weekly Workout: Full Circle

Most folk, country, and rock songs remain in one key, allowing soloists to wrap their head around one tonality at a time for at least eight measures or so. But some songs are based on circle-of-fifths progressions that change tonalities rather rapidly, and often. There are circle-of-fifths progressions that stay in one key, but also ones that rely on dominant-seventh chords and undergo changes in tonal­ity or in the underlying scale with each chord that make them trickier to navigate for soloing. Here are some ways to navigate these quick tonality changes.