If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Interesting that people have spoken of finding sharpened keys more difficult to perform at the piano than flattened ones. As someone who was always a poor sight reader, whose playing has improved a great deal (in my 70s!), and who mainly improvises without scores - freely improvising, making up spontaneous melodies, and playing standards - that improvement came at the point where I felt I just had to tackle John Coltrane's Giant Steps, in the key(s) in which he wrote it. I was thinking that given this tune is (or was once) considered one of the most difficult jazz pieces to play because of its relatively complex tonal structure, with many key changes over a short stretch, it might help improve my playing. And it has! - I now find it much more easy to improvise my way through even unorthodox modulations: it has also helped me get away from clichés I've too long depended on, and so I would strongly recommend this tune as a gateway to greater flexibility. But it must be played in the key Coltrane composed it in, starting in B major!
Jackie McLean taught himself to play "Giant Steps" when he was in prison c. the mid 1960s, when he had the time!
Comment