“Change the whole idea of the song,” Moran said. “Change the time signature, too. Make it entirely different. Could you play it stride piano?”—meaning in the ragtime-like fashion of James P. Johnson, where the left hand plays single

notes and chords on the beat.

The student seemed startled. “That would be weird,” he said.

“It would, but that’s where you start to find stuff,” Moran said. “You put

different factors into the equation. Play it backward. Upside down. Your left

hand might use something 1940 and your right hand is 2000, and what you find becomes part of your vocabulary.”

- Alec Wilkinson, ’Jazz Hands’

_