Piano Fills With C# Gypsy Major

C# Gypsy Major 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.

Brash and colorful — a #2 crushed against the major 3rd and a #4 give it a Lydian-dominant swagger with a Romani twist. Bold, spicy, and unpredictable.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Bartok and Liszt, gypsy-jazz flourishes, and fusion lines over dominant chords.

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 C# and let the melody choose which notes the fill keeps.