Piano Fills With A# Ionian

A# Ionian runs 7 notes to the octave. Below it is lit across two octaves of this chair's keyboard with every key numbered by degree, because what a fill needs mid-song is not the run — it is which degree the right hand is sitting on when the chord changes under it.

Bright, resolved, and stable. The foundation of Western tonal music and the most common mode in pop, classical, folk, and jazz.

Heard in: Pop, classical, country, folk, gospel — the default major tonality of Western music.

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.

Work it over a held left-hand chord until the right hand stops thinking about the order, then take it to a song in A# and let the melody choose which notes the fill keeps.