Performance by Riddler (Ed) from Recital #35 - 2014-08-15

• Performer: Riddler (Ed)
• Location: Florida
• Experience: Two or three years of lessons as a kid; three years of jazz lessons as an adult; and a lifetime of noodling and playing by ear.
• Composer: Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg
• Piece: Over The Rainbow
• Duration: 269
• Music Link: click to play
• Video Link:
• Music Source: Book of Arrangements by Dan Coates
• Instrument: Yamaha P-120
• Recording Method: Pianoteq/Audacity
• Info: I've always loved this song. It is paean to hope, written during the Great Depression. It has been called the best song of the twentieth century, most popular song of all time, etc. A few years ago I tried to create my own arrangement, put a lot of effort into it, and ... failed miserably. It seemed the more good stuff I put into the arrangement, the clunkier it sounded. So I gave up, put it away for another day. Another day finally arrived when I found this terrific arrangement by Dan Coates. It looked a bit hard for me, but I really got hooked on it and persevered. His approach uses broken chords in eighth notes in the left hand, broken chords in sixteenth notes in the right. Sounds like a lot of notes, but since it is at a ballad tempo it never sounds cluttered. One thing that really impresses me is the way that his arrangement uses both the highest and lowest registers of the piano very effectively.