Once while driving I heard a set of variations, presumably dating from the nineteenth century, on the American traditional song, Yankee Doodle. I never learned the name of the variations, nor who wrote them, but hearing them left me filled with longing for all the variations the composer did not write, and I helplessly found myself beginning to write some of these variations out. This piece is the result of that effort. Somewhat like another of my compositions, Skeletons from the Tune Closet, this piece takes the tune to regions previously uncharted. The clip here presents the tune more obviously than anywhere else in the piece, and in a fairly traditional setting. Astute listeners will notice, however, that the tune always starts on the wrong scale-degree, thus failing to mind both the music and the step, and eventually getting hung up in a loop from which the only harmonic escape is chaos. The story behind "Yankee Doodle" is interesting. The British army invented the lyrics in derision of the the hayseed colonial troops, but the colonials wore their derision with pride, and eventually adopted the song as their own. This piece is most effective if the audience has a chance to discover the tune for themselves. For this reason, the program notes should always omit its name.