A Ghost of a Chance

TEXT: Victor Young
TEXT: [email protected]
MARKER: Rubato intro - last 8 bars
MARKER: On Fm7, an Eb scale - with accelerando and crescendo - start on 9th  - pedal  down
MARKER: RH plays 4 note chords(inversions of Dm9 melodic phrase)
MARKER: while  LH plays single melody notes connected chromatically.
MARKER: Leave out the 'turnaround - straight to ...
MARKER: In tempo to start of song. Basically  a modern 'stride' style with lots of variation.
MARKER: Block chord thing again - easy as the melody is all chord tones of Dm9
MARKER: Turnaround on E7,A7,D7,G7
MARKER: On each chord play notes 1235 - then the same on its tritone equivalent.
MARKER: i.e.E7,Bb7,Eb7,A7,Ab7,D7,Db7,G7
MARKER: Am11 voicing LH b3,4,5 and RH G triad
MARKER: Same voicing moves with melody down a tone to Gm11
MARKER: Drop2 block chordson Dm7
MARKER: On chord tones Dm chords, on non chords tones build a diminished chord
MARKER: For 'drop 2' LH plays 2nd top note down an octave
MARKER: On G7alt,  whole tone drop 2 voicings. RH plays augmented triad
MARKER: LH plays note from Whole tone scale a tone below the top RH note
MARKER: Whole thing moves up in whole tone steps
MARKER: Same idea as above - chords in cycle of 5ths.
MARKER: Melodic phrase transposed either down a tone or  by  a tritone
MARKER: Another sequenced phrase passed around the cycle
MARKER: Deliberate discords on each chord change in this turnaround
MARKER: Bb69 B69 C69
MARKER: On Em7b5 A7, a dim scale run
MARKER: Another whole tone block chord thing - the melody moves in whole tones on this G7alt chord
MARKER: Chords move diatonically here - CMaj7, Dm7 (Ebdim), Em7,Dm7, Cmaj7
MARKER: RhH and LH in unison arpeggiate the chord up to melody note
MARKER: RH vamps simple chords - LH plays melodically
MARKER: This time on E7,A7,D7,G7, a melodic phrase over the E7,A7 is played down a WHOLE tone.
MARKER: The melody on first 2 1/2 bars is one note. Here the lower neighbors are used.
MARKER: Rhythm is changed to triplets
MARKER: Pedal tone in LH on the dominant (G)
MARKER: More Whole tone stuff
MARKER: Glissando from one melody note (G) targets the G octave above
MARKER: THis time on repeating melody note (G) - play successive G's up an octave each time.
MARKER: Slow stride - deliberately stilted style - pedal NOT used to connect bass note and chord
MARKER: RH improvises at extreme treble end of piano.
MARKER: Notes in RH are quite clipped
MARKER: Same as before - this time short 3 note phrase transposed
MARKER: More of the high treble staccato  phrases in RH
MARKER: This time a pivot phrase (G and its neighbours)
MARKER: A different hythmic figure used over these 2 bars
MARKER: More of the octave displacement idea on the repeating G melody note
  • Path: Disklavier Jazz 1/003-A Ghost Of A Chance.mid
  • Size: 31 KB
  • Updated: January 31, 2026

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Otherwise, you can put them on a USB stick. Files will be playable natively on newer Disklaviers, such as the Mark IV, E3, and ENSPIRE. You can see my Disklavier compatibility table to see which instruments support USB.

For older generations of Disklavier using floppy disks or Nalbantov USB emulators, see my article on converting MIDI files to E-SEQ and creating PIANODIR.FIL.

Read more about the former Kuhmann Directory (Disklavier World).