Piano: Scales for a Country Fill

Pick a root and one of 24 types and see it as it lies on this chair's keyboard, every key numbered by degree. Three of these carry most of the repertoire; the rest are for the song nobody warned you about.

A piano fill lives in the right hand over a left hand that never stops comping, so the scale is read two ways at once — which notes sing over the held chord, and which ones walk the song into its turnaround.

A fill is not a scale played straight through. It is a handful of notes pulled from one, timed to land before the vocal comes back in — which is what a scale map is actually for.