As a musician, you might argue that choosing your favourite key is as controversial as naming your favourite child: surely you should love them all equally?
However, when it was put to Jon Batiste that “All major keys are created equal, but Eb is the best,” he was happy to agree.
The issue of ‘key supremacy’ was raised during a Q&A session for Wired, set up so that Batiste could answer the internet’s piano-related queries. Things started with the above statement, though, and Batiste didn’t argue.
“That’s not a question, but I agree,” he began, turning the conversation into an Eb major love-in. After demonstrating how he could make the key “moan” with some blues stuff, Batiste said: “Eb is different from other keys because, if you want a technical explanation, it has three flats. The tonality of Eb, it’s a brown shade that really creates a sense of warmth.”
Batiste contrasts this with Db major, which he says “feels like Mother Earth”. Eb major “feels like the tree that’s coming from the ground, so it’s the roots that are dug into the soil, so there’s a bit of an aspirational quality to it.”
We’re certainly digging deep into something here and, summing up, Batiste says that he has a particular fondness for Eb “because I like to keep my feet on the ground with my eyes to the stars.”
With that question/statement out of the way we get to some more practical advice. We learn that Batiste believes that the best way to improve your music-making is to improve your listening skills, and he describes ‘feel’ as “rhythmic intention and clarity of execution,” which is an excellent definition.
Explaining how to get more out of your practising, Batiste says that you should document your progress, focus on the fundamentals and try and take gradual steps towards meeting your defined goals, and he even has an answer when some wag asks “Why do pianos have keys? What’s locked?”
“If you want to go all philosophical I would say pianos have keys because music is tied in the universal divine alignment of things, which we see in mathematics, but music speaks to the unspoken within that language. And it also speaks to the mind, to the heart and spirit all in one.”
Proof, if it were required, that the ever-engaging Batiste can turn even a jokey question into an interesting discussion - we’d be happy to take one of his classes any time.
