Lighten Up – Doug Miller

Lighten Up is available as a piano trio edition, reflecting the original New Stories recording. Built around a bass pedal point, this is a song with a rhythm section arrangement.

The melody of this 32-measure song is based on a single, bouncy two-note theme, adapted into quirky stop-and-start rhythms throughout. The bass keeps up a rhythmic figure on a B♭ pedal through the two A sections. At the bridge the bass walks; the changes here "walk down" twice from A♭ major. Two measures before the end of the bridge, the bass switches to pedaling B♭ on beats 2 and 4, which continues through C. The melody at C begins the same as A, but over a D♭ pedal on 2 and 4 for four measures, followed by B♭ pedal until a rhythmic tutti for the last phrase. At A and C the piano has the melody in both hands, two octaves apart; to save space on our piano trio edition the left hand is written an octave higher.

A four-measure blues-scale tutti interlude (D) is used to launch the first solo. The solo section, as played on this recording, is very open-ended. As written, the solo changes alternate two measures of E♭maj7 and Fm7 over a B♭ pedal for the A and C sections (shown as E and G), with the bridge changes the same as in the head. However, Marc Seales' piano solo begins freely over a B♭ pedal, eventually going to one chorus on the changes as written. After that he continues soloing on "rhythm changes" (but still with the same bridge as the written solo chorus). The interlude comes back after the last solo to set up the out head.

Our audio excerpt starts right on A. The recording begins with eight measures of time in the drums, followed by eight measures adding walking bass before the head.

The solo changes come from Doug Miller's manuscript. Marc Seales' chorus over the written solo changes is a bit different, starting on Fm7/B♭ and then E♭maj7/B♭ instead of the other way around.