Are You A Sharp Person or Do You Like to B Flat?

People who play music that is most often in sharp keys tend to think of those keys as being the easiest. Those who play wind instruments prefer flat keys. Piano players fall right down the middle with their attraction to the key of C (all white keys - no flats or sharps). What it boils down to is the keys that people are most comfortable playing in are those where the chords or scales are easiest (most common) on the instrument(s) of choice in that style or genre. That might be D for Irish, E for The Blues or Bb for Trumpet Rock.

I don’t want to be one of those people who sees G as being easy but Eb as being hard, for example. I want to see them as equals. When working on an arrangement or interpretation of a tune I’m mindful of running it in different keys, different octaves, different positions and different fingerings. Was that an Irish jig, a free jazz freakout or a downstairs mixup? Who knows? Who cares???

Basically, I am striving to play stuff in as many different ways as I can think of, while understanding the “similarities” of each different way. I can easily spend a whole evening doing this with just one tune or one or A-part or even one phrase. As a result, I am having more fun than ever before practicing/playing music.

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