Hi @mem, this is a great exercise. And it only gets better and more interesting as you continue down this road. After exploring what you’re calling “triad pairs”, you could certainly explore four-note chords or any other voicing that you imagine. And this chordal improvisation doesn’t have to be limited to pairs. You can improvise freely with all seven chords of the tonality in any harmonic environment, and this will lead to many interesting sounds which can be quite surprising but they still retain the purity of never stepping outside the key of the music.
(And I don’t need to tell you that when you DO begin stepping outside the key of the music, then the possibilities are truly endless.)
In terms of theory, the nice discovery here is just that you can use what you already know about the seven chords of the major scale to instantly visualize all of the diatonic chords of any harmonic environment. And you don’t even need to worry about changing the tonal numbers of all of these chords to find them in different harmonic environments. Because of the way we think about the tonal map in IFR, you always have all of the sounds available to you with no translation required.
In other words, what are the diatonic chords in the first harmonic environment? The answer is the 1 chord, the 2- chord, the 3- chord, etc.
And what are the diatonic chords in the second harmonic environment? Again it’s the same answer of the 1 chord, the 2- chord, the 3- chord, etc.
So beyond just improvising with the seven notes of the major scale in any harmonic environment, you can also improvise freely with the seven chords of the major scale in that same harmonic environment. This may seem obvious but many people don’t take advantage of this at first because it doesn’t occur to them.
Where this really helps is when you’re comping over chord progressions. For example if you’re playing the 6- chord, it’s really nice to be able to drop down to the 5D chord and then come back to your 6- chord, using what you know about the seven chords of the major scale to visualize all of this parallel diatonic movement very easily. I don’t know if that example is easy to picture from my text, but this is something we’ll be exploring much more in future courses about comping and improvising with chords.
But you’re already hot on the trail of these ideas! I encourage you to just keep going and to please continue to share your ideas and discoveries with the group.
David