Whew.

At last, it's over, and back to things that matter. Like listening to music, and playing it.

I'm listening to Chet Baker, even though I guess he's regarded as a lightweight and I found about him through a Starbuck's ad. Or maybe it was Volkwagen. Who cares - this ocean of media can toss off flotsam and if I pick some up and make it into, say, a coffee table - great.

I'm playing what I've always called blues runs. There may be a hipper term. They are the flourishes that blues pianists use to (a) show off and (b) fill in between melody lines, whether a singer's or player's. Makes them sound shallow, but they're not. They're cool.

This would be the perfect place to paste an example, but I don't want to slow down, and this is all for me anyway. (Good God, I hope I know what I'm referring to.) The vaguely interesting aspect of the project is how to get comfortable with these babies outside the key of C. I've been using C runs for years, even in tunes in G, but that's about it. Time to go to another level (to use an expression that is awfully current but nonetheless fits) and hence work on this standard run - trying to make it second nature in C, D, E, G, and A. I love F, but it and B don't work, they'd require completely different fingering.

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