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Foundations Tuesday: Turnaround Progression

A week or two ago, I went through Lesson 2 of the Lead Sheets course, which focuses on the popular "turnaround progression" (I explain it a little here, before getting rudely interrupted.)

My Struggle with the Lead Sheets Course

I am having trouble connecting this course to my piano goals of playing and writing/arranging blues, ragtime, and gospel. This course seems more focused on cocktail jazz piano, which I am not interested in. I do think it's good to learn the progressions, though, and learning to play (without thinking) in inversions is valuable time spent. Also, if I decide to start playing at nursing homes, it will be good to know how to play anything from a lead sheet.

So, I am sticking with this course. It's been slow going because I have so much other stuff going on (in both life and piano). On Saturday I bought some colored sticky-tabs and started marking pages in my three giant real books so songs with different progressions are easy to find. (Part of my lack of motivation with this course has simply been not wanting to dig through literally 1,000 pages to identify all of the Cycle of Fifths and Turnaround songs.)

Recognizing Progressions

As I drove my daughter to Athens (GA) Sunday afternoon, I let her listen to her music for the whole ride over. She played a Phoebe Bridgers cover of a John Prine song, "Summers End." As I listened, I thought, "That's a turnaround progression." So when I got home a few hours later, I played it ... and it was indeed a turnaround progression.

I've identified these progressions (both Cycle of Fifths and Turnaround) several times listening to music in the car. They're very easy and basic, and I've always sensed when one song sounded a lot like the other ... but I didn't have the language to describe it, and I didn't understand the theory behind it. Now I'm beginning to do that, which is a big deal.

Making Progress with Progressions

Yesterday morning I picked up a new lead-sheet piece, "The Way You Look Tonight." I played through it for about 15 minutes and ended up with this video. It's definitely not perfect, but it's not terrible. Most importantly, I'm not playing broken chords in the left hand, and I'm not going to the root position every time. So that's progress!

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