Playing the Changes - part one

We come to practice with humility. (Steven Pressfield)

This Sunday’s songs include “As the wind-song through the trees,” a marvelous text by Shirley Erena Murray with tune by Swee Hong Lim. It is what amounts to a ballad, complete with written-in chords, one to a bar.

It is perfect for “playing the changes,” a skill I want to learn. Normally I work from the other direction, starting with the tune and seeing what develops from it; in jazz and pop improvisation (blues also), the tune is certainly in mind, but you are working with a fixed chord progression (the “changes” as they call it) – especially if you are in an ensemble, where the other people will be playing the chords and you can’t go wandering off in your own direction. Improvisations tend to start with the changes, and the right hand makes a new melody that fits them. This is done by working within the appropriate scale for the progression. More advanced players add chromatics and all sorts of other things, but the scale remains the foundation.

So, to work. For this, I needed Dave Frank’s beginning lessons, the first of which is here. I watched the first and second lessons over my second breakfast, and took the song upstairs. I set the metronome at 60 to a quarter note and took off.

It was horrible. And that was a good thing.

The musician must never fear making a fool of himself. That is the only way you can learn anything new. But it remains painful to stumble around. My work for the week is not even as complex as what Mr. Frank is doing on his videos; it is a simple song in G major with six chords. Triads, mind you, not even seventh chords (though it is easy enough to add the sevenths to them). No key changes – “Planet G” as Mr. Frank would say, beginning to end.

Play the chords to a steady rhythm in the left hand – for a while at first, this was all I attempted, no right hand at all – then play any notes from the G major scale in the right hand, in eighth notes with some “swing.” Stay with the groove. Make phrases with clear-cut endings and a breath before the next phrase. Two-bar phrases. Four-bar phrases. Nothing fancy.

I did this for about twenty minutes, stopping for staff meeting. Later on I did it for another hour, all on the same tune, the same set of chord changes with the metronome. It got better, a little. After a while I expanded beyond eighth notes to some triplets and syncopations and “straight” eighth notes mixed in, and a bit of countermelody in the inner voices. There were a few stretches where it sounded fairly decent. Then I would lose control of the chords and play something outside of the given progression. Or a chromatic note outside of G major would slip into the right hand. I kept going.

My goal: “play the changes” on this tune on Sunday for the middle service piano improvisation. If I can find one or two hours a day, I might make it to a fairly acceptable standard. Any musician who happens to hear it – such as the professor of jazz from the university, who often attends that service – will find all sorts of mistakes. At best, it will sound like a third-rate cocktail lounge pianist on a bad day. I will certainly feel like a bumbling unmusical idiot when I am finished.

The thing is, I could improvise on this tune in my usual manner with little difficulty; I have done so on past Sundays, several times. It would be better than what I am likely to give the people (and my Lord and Teacher) on Sunday.

But my sense is that I need to give this a try.