Waltz for Debby

Ah. It's October already. Can you believe it? Because it's October 10th today, I thought of giving you a song that had something to do with the number 10. But I couldn't think of any. Maybe I will for December 12th. (Hopefully I do, because for all of 2019 there are no Wednesdays whose numbers match the month number.) So I decided to stick to the good old jazz - and in fact a song that was written by a piano player.

This number (I'm talking about a song here) was written by the famous jazz pianist Bill Evans. Sometimes when I look for a recording of a song I want to learn, I see things on the side like, "Oh, yeah. This song wouldn't be the same if Bill Evans wasn't playing." Seems like people think he's a pretty good piano player. I don't really object to that - I don't really have a single favorite piano player right now, and I do like this song myself. If I didn't, I wouldn't be playing it. I might say that a lot, but I think it's important to do what you want to do when it comes to playing music. Otherwise, you won't be interested in the song, you won't be making yourself happy, and you won't really be playing it the way that it's meant to be played.

If you've heard the original recordings of this song, you might notice a difference in my recording. The original song changes the rhythm pattern (if you want the exact term for it, it changes from 3/4 to 4/4), after the melody has been played through once, making it sound faster and a bit more like jazz. I decided to not make that change, partially so I could use the iReal Pro backing track (that's where the bass and drum sounds are coming from) and partially to make it easier for me to play! If you don't have to switch time signatures, then it's a lot easier to play a song.

One time, I saw a post on Learn Jazz Standards (a website about playing jazz better - I think you can understand why I go there) that was talking about how to play songs with lots of changing time signatures. On the sheet music that showed what a song like this could look like, the time signature was changing at a crazy rate. Before you could play very many notes, you had to start counting in a different way.

Update in 2024: As I added the video to this post, I read this again. Now, sometimes I try to change the time signature of songs. It's a new way to experiment that I've learned.

Maybe I should try learning a song like that. I did Take Five. That counts in a way we aren't always used to. What about Take 7? Or Take the 7-3-5? There's lots of different possibilities when it comes to jazz. You can try doing this, you can try doing that, you can put these solos in here, you can change the melody a bit there..... It's a lot different from classical music, where if you wanted to have freedom beyond the written page, then people would say, "Feel free to write a song yourself!" But for those of us that don't want to write 16-page sonatas (I'm working on one now - I think it's going to take a while, but I'll finish it - eventually), but still want to have some practice with creating their own music, jazz seems to be a good way to go.

I'm scrolling up and down as I'm writing this. Is it too long? I feel like I shouldn't make it any longer. You are here to listen to music, anyways. So here it is.