Today I am inspired by transposing, on the fly, the first 16 bars of Waltz for Debby, from the written key of F, to the key of Bb.

Most recently I’ve been looking at turnarounds (in Volume 16 of Jamie Aebersold’s jazz series) — in particular, starting with the humble “plain old turnaround” — I△ vi ii V7 — eventually, in all 12 keys, is the aspiration, as always. Immediately I heard Waltz for Debby — it begins with those exact chords, playing the 5th on the first chord and the 3rd on the subsequent three chords. I’d listened to the piece enough times or it has affected me sufficiently deeply that I immediately heard it as I began to practice the turnaround.

Transposing leads me to do a harmonic analysis of the music, and this leads me to simplify and search for the essence of what is written there; to form a “map” of the piece in my mind.

After the first 4 bars that consist of the “plain old turnaround” in the home key, the piece modulates for 8 bars among several keys around the circle of fifths, before eventually, somehow entirely “naturally” — to my ears, coming back to the home key for the last 4 bars to conclude the phrase with another instance of the “plain old turnaround” (though in the recap the iii functions as the I△). There is a beautiful simplicity in this design.

Bill Evans’ simple composition is a shining example of what music “ought to be” in my mind (music can be anything, but this is an excellent piece of music). The melody sounds simple, and yet the composition features some very peculiar modulations — much like Beatles songs. And all of the simplicity hearkens back to Bach and the kind of voice leading normally associated with music of that era.

Since I can remember I have always felt that classical music (and jazz music, as it eventually followed the arc of classical music) went too far in complexity — that the right path was lost somewhere along the way, perhaps might be another way to put it.

Bill Evans once said in an interview that this composition did not come to him in a “flash of inspiration” or anything like that; that instead it was born of a long struggle and playing with the notes and sounds and chords.

It is a joy to walk along that trail.

Long-term visions

  1. Play a beautiful piece in all 12 keys — in the process, form a “map” of the piece
  2. Improvise over the piece using the “map”
  3. The notion is not to play Bill Evans or to play Rachmaninoff or Debussy, but to master the building blocks with which they composed their music

Practicing little recurring atomic blocks, such as turnarounds, in all 12 keys is an aid to the above, as are a multitude of other topics that can be studied independently in music.

Studying various composers opens the door to different building blocks. I started studying Bud Powell’s Strictly Confidential recently.