It seems like every book about playing Jazz or "Great American Songbook" piano emphasizes practicing everything in all 12 keys.

I can understand the need to play in all 12 keys if you play in a group setting or with a singer, but if your goal is to play solo piano for yourself and friends and family, what is gained by learning everything in all 12 keys ?

Well, how about something in between Irving Berlin and Bill Evans ? Say just focus on a half dozen keys you typically see in fake books ?

Incidentally, I'm of the belief that it is important to learn everything in all 12 keys, but I can't craft a succinct coherent response to my own question that started this thread. I was hoping some of the more experienced people here could put it into words for me.

Well, since a scale (i.e. a key) is used to form the chords and all their variations, it's a good idea to know the scales. If you play songs in all 12 keys, you'll get to know all the scales and all the chords, I suppose.

Some jazz pianists chose the most difficult keys for example Erroll Garner and he just did it as a natural sense for his own styles of renditions, thereby producing the unique Garner sounds.

Alan.

You should practice I IV V, blues, ii V I, and I vi ii V in all 12 keys.
Also, every chord voicing you want to use, all scales you use, and all arpeggios in all 12 keys.

There are hundreds of songs, there is not enough time to practice every song in every key. I am a master jazz pianist and I have only done it with a few common tunes like Autumn Leaves, blues, I Got Rhythm, etc.

Most standards are in either:
C, F, G, Bb or Eb

It's good to practise tunes, lines, licks and transcriptions in all 12 keys because they will come in handy for you when you are playing solo OR with a group. You may use play a line over the ii chord in one tune which (in a specific key), and then steal that line and play it over the ii chord on another tune (different key). It's just good to know your key centers really well. BTW are you planning on only playing solo piano for the rest of your life?

"a succinct coherent response"


Both playing and listening experiences will be far more satisfying.

The 12 keys are all inter-related to far more of a degree than you could possibly imagine at this point in your study. Transposition and the ability to do so instantly, whether a song, a melody, a riff, a chord progression, etc., is the key to unlocking creative limitation and becoming a superior musician. Technically, playing pieces like Transcendental Etudes in all keys will improve and hone your technique and control to unimagined heights.

Sinatra sang a nuber of tunes in Db!

Incidentally, we have it from the highest source, Nelson Riddle, that Sinatra, although able to sing in the key of Db, could not sing the note Db itself. Riddle used to throw his voice and sing all of Frank's Db's for him.

My thoughts would be that each key has it's own "color" one might say. Another way of saying it is that some keys are warmer sounding than others. So being able to play in any key fluently helps one to match the color of the key to the song.

Great answers, thanks for the replies.

You play in all keys to become proficient in your instrument. I don't have this same problem in piano as much as saxophone, where many view F#, Db and other keys to be "hard". If you look at the stuff that John Coltrane played, half of it is in F# or Db. He would play blues in F#, not to show that he could, but because it sounded best in that key. So if you were McCoy Tyner and said "Uh... Mr. Coltrane, I can't play E (transposition) blues... how about we stick to Bb" you would be out of a job with little hope of being rehired.

So to, if you are playing "I've Got Rhythm", you better know your scales. That thing jumps all around the place (with millions of progressions forever lodged in jazz take note). Autumn Leaves is all in one key. The chords all stem from the modes of the root key. Take note that it starts on the fifth, though ends on the root, if I remember correctly.

And about Sinatra not being able to hit a Db. In bass clef here: the Db above the staff is easily reached by any high school male singer. The Db in the staff is a tricky note for a tenor though easy for any sort of bass. I'm sure he could sing it though. The Db below the staff is unrealistic, as is the Db in the spaces of the Treble Clef. I could believe a higher F#, or maby a lower Ab, but being Sinatra, I can't believe that he couldn't hit a Db. He had a better range than one octave.

I was just kidding. Could you imagine a singer only being able to sing 11 out of the 12 different notes?

McCoy wouldn't have played it in E anyway. He would have played it in G (G Aeolian). Tyner would have bounced back and forth between thumblessly voicing E-A-D, F#-B-E, and B-E-A quartal harmony in the left hand, against E natural minor/G pentatonic patterns in the right .. E D B E D B A D B A G B A G E, etc., etc., with an occassional foray up or down a half step every once in awhile ad infinitum.

Harsh....but true Oh, you forget the open 5th in the bass along with the octave tremolos plus a 5th in the right hand while stomping on the damper pedal.

.

There's no E in that quartal triad. I don't think McCoy would have been able to conceptualize that voicing in this application.

virtuosic1

{{Man, I'm listening to your version of Lennie
Tristano's "S & V" as I write this...oh yeah I love it }}


Great thread BTW


regards


Lee

Thank you, Lee. Lennie was the man. Almost blind at birth, completely sightless at age 9, Lennie's was a world of sound. Here's the original. I play it differently every time. I've transcribed everything Lennie recorded, even from his personal unreleased recordings (studied with Lennie from age 10 to 20). I play them all in every key, and get this, even backwards. :

http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/B00000337V/ref=...5Frd%5Fi=507846

Track 13. Check out tracks 1 and 4 also. Absolutely killer stuff.

I wrote this in a PM to someone about transposing and thought it might help someone else if included in this appropriate thread:

The ideal way to approach transposition is to view what is to be transposed as waves. A contour or shape that must be intervalically preserved regardless of the starting point. For example, regardless of which rung of a 12 rung ladder you place any object on, the object itself remains unchanged, only the object's relative position to the rest of the room has changed.

It's best to imagine this by transposing while sight reading something. That's why I advocate the use of movable clefs. When we first start to read text, we identify individual letters, then how these letters form a word, which we identify. Then the words form a sentence and convey an idea. At some point, when we're fluent readers, we no longer see the individual letters or words. The shape and content of the sentence's components take on a macro-meaning, and at some further point, we visualize the words, seeing the action described by the words.

Most don't read music this way, but they should. They should see the melodies and harmonies by their contours, not reading individual notes. Once you can view music as a series of contoured, interconnected lines, a fabric, then preserving this contour is an easy task, regardless of which rung of the 12 rung ladder is the starting point!

wonderful wonderful stuff virtuosic1.

Another post I found hit home with me:
"Transposition and the ability to do so instantly, whether a song, a melody, a riff, a chord progression, etc., is the key to unlocking creative limitation and becoming a superior musician."

I have been studying popular music and accompanying singers for about 3 years now, with about 5 years of quasi serious piano study before that. Before that, I studied the cello for 20 years.. As I go along, I am juuuuuuuust now getting to the tip of the iceberg and being able to understand these ideas. The more I think in terms of transposition, the more I think I begin to understand music. Even using the transpose button on my digital, when I study and really listen to the difference, it helps to feel the difference. I learned a song years ago but couldn't sing it in the original key, so I used to use the transpose button down a half step because 'I can't transpose.' I've been studying this a long time and have always kind of had this nightmare of what if I wanted to perform a song somewhere where all there was was an acoustic piano. Anyway, the point is, I sat down to play it and I thought, lets just learn it in the right key WITHOUT the transpose button. The strange thing is, I could do it. I am not saying it was smooth, but within about 4 run throughs, I had it in the right key, a half step lower without using the transpose key. That felt really good for some reason. If you know all the major progressions and riffs, scales, in all keys, incl voicings etc, THEN I believe you really get familiar with your instrument. HOWEVER, it's getting there... It's quite a mountain to climb..

incidentally, I could have sworn Sinatra hit a tenor G in a recording but didn't find it.. I found this though:

What is Sinatra's vocal range?

The following notes were compiled from some of the postings from the Sinatra Internet Mailing List. Lowest note:
Wave 2/11/69 low Eb
Highest note:
All The Things You Are 1/29/45 high F#
All Or Nothing At All 11/22/61 high F
The Tender Trap 10/3/62 high F
Ol' Man River 12/3/44 high E
The Song Is You 12/9/58 high E
East Of The Sun 5/3/61 high E
Where Or When 1/29/45 high Eb
The Song Is You 10/26/47 high Eb


from songsbysinatra.com

note the f# was from 1945..

Well, this is offtopic, but couild anyone tell what is the highest note in Sinatrs´s My way.
I think that the highest note is sung in word MY near the end of a song (after ... yes, there were times .... and I stood tall and did it MY way)
If maybe someone knows.

Can you say that also applies to reading chord symbols?

Well, yes, chords should be understood in their relation to the current key or mode. It's the only way to understand jazz.

When you think about it, you must conclude that it's simpler--you remember single relationships, like the ubiquitous ii-V instead of the chord pairs in 12 different keys, dm7-G7, gm7-C7, cm7-F7, etc...

Back to the original question: why do we play in all keys?

A: Because that's what Charlie Parker did, according to the legend.

And it works!

Sorry, didn't see an off-topic forum, but I am a Sinatra fan with perfect pitch and I can answer some of these questions!

Sinatra's highest reliable note was probably high F, which he did in numerous songs; I feel the songsbysinatra list is incomplete. Moreover:

[highest note in Sinatrs´s My way]
F# twice, during the bridges. The "Myyyy" is only an E, but is definitely the most goosebump-inducing note in the entire song.

[Sinatra hit a tenor G]
At least three times: Day by Day, Fly Me to the Moon, Let's Face the Music and Dance. Most impressively, he NAILS a high Ab in a rare recording called "You Are Love," I'm guessing from about 1950.

While I agree that chords should be understood in their relation to the key to properly understand jazz, and for transposing, I also have inadvertantly memorized all the ii-V chord pairs.
And if you are going to transpose I think it is easier to have those pairs memorized.
For example, you are playing Autumn leaves, which someone in this post incorrectly said starts on the V chord. Actually, it is:
iv-VII7, bIII-bIV, ii(b5)-V-i.
For me to think of this when transposing would complicate matters. I would simply know I am starting on iv minor, going ii-V-I from there, and then the IV relative to that I. Then a minor ii-V-i in the key.

What if you want to substitute with the following chords:
iv-VII7, iii-VI7,biii-bVI7[/b] ,ii(b5)-V-i
the chords in bold get 2 beats a piece instead of 4.

It seems much easier to just think you are doing 4 ii-V's each a half-step lower from the previous. It wouldn't make sense to think of the roman numerals. Of course you would have to memorize the ii-V chord pairs to think this way. It is basically thinking of one type of motion (ii-V) and then repeating that 3 more times a half-step down. Otherwise you have to think about 8 different roman numerals (some not diatonic) and relate each one to the key. That seems to be the hard way to do it.

Maybe you agree with me and do this yourself, but it was not clear from your post advocating knowing the roman numeral relationships of chords to the key they are in, over memorizing chord pairs.

As for the topic at hand:
I second what guidovivaldi said, It's how you become proficient on your instrument.

Someone said you should practice all your voicings in every key, and I agree, but that same person implied that doing that was sufficient replacement for practicing tunes in all keys. You will never learn to transpose, though you may be able to play a line or a voicing in every key, if you do not actually transpose tunes to other keys.

A disadvantage of transposing your patterns and
voicings to every key will be that you will sound the same in every key. (maybe that is an advantage)

I like playing in different keys because it makes me come up with different voicings and lines that I would not think of in the keys I am used to.

Also, some tunes sound better in other keys. And to all my objectors, if you don't agree, try playing East of the Sun in G and C and tell me which key sounds better.

Interesting side note: I spoke with a gentlemen who had worked in the publishing business and he told me that the keys selected for tunes were picked based on where the melody would sit on the staff, I don't know if they considered an average vocal range though. So East of the Sun in Eb would not be as ideal as G.