Upset at my Jazz Piano Course

[jason_sioco]

I will be having my keyboard lessons this Friday. My teacher is actually the pastor in my church. He specializes more in guitar and bass guitar, but I want to learn keyboard from him. He was my guitar teacher before I knew that he was a pastor. It's a long story, but my mom and dad end up going to his church.

He is a brilliant keyboardist by the way, my experience with how he teaches is that he teaches the real thing. How he plays keyboard, he'll transfer it to me.

[jason_sioco]

I finally had Keyboard Lessons with my Pastor last Wednesday. We have lessons once every two weeks. I decided to do it two weeks, because of two reasons: the lessons are held at his home and he has a wife and family, I'm kind of infiltrating his home and he is our pastor and the second reason to save money and gas.

The lessons was a bit upsetting, I did not learn any new chord voicings, and when he plays during the lessons he was using chord voicings that I already know. It is kind of weird, because the next sunday, he played a little bit of keyboard at church and the voicings that he used sounds much richer. I remain optimistic, I know he is very pragmatic, when he teaches.

Pretty soon I will be playing keyboard exactly like him. He did a lot of rhetoric preaching on music. Lol. It changed my point of view in music and it encourages me to really develop a good ear. The only way I can start playing legit keyboard is to develop my relative pitch.

On the other hand, I am still considering lessons with Amanda Tosoff. I need a job to pay for the lessons. If that doesn't work then there are jazz transcriptions sold at Amazon.

[outin]

The lessons was a bit upsetting, ...

Why am I not surprised 
Seriously, I think you should try to get your head together instead of complaining about every teachers' methods. Or just study without one. Jazz is all about theory and/or improvisation and if you have it in you, you can learn enough by yourself to start making music.

[jason_sioco]

This week for Keyboard Lessons was much better. I learned about the theory of passing chords. For the first time in a year, I learned something new in music. My pastor said he is going to teach me more and he started saying stuff like "fancy" chords.

[dcstudio]

Pretty soon I will be playing keyboard exactly like him.

but he spent a lifetime developing his ability to play...  to play "exactly" like him you would have to know what he knows and have the chops to pull it off as well.

maybe...  

pretty soon you will sound more like you want to sound.  you will feel more confident because you will know more about what you are doing.  pretty soon you will understand just how much there is to learn...and that this is a lifetime pursuit.

really it's impossible to play "exactly" like someone else...  you are not them

forgive me... I am only saying this because I have seen this type of expectation, and the disappointment that always follows. destroy the hopes of many aspiring musicians.

what I hear you saying is --- "this teacher will make me satisfied with my playing"

that's a lot of pressure...lol.  there was no one teacher that taught me everything...if you find one that's awesome.

[jason_sioco]

There's no keyboard lessons this week, but what I like to share is that, this has been my best keyboard lessons yet. I remember when my first lesson ended, there was a blonde girl on the street walking her dog. I remembered I said hi to her and she said hi back.

The significance of that is I want to marry a blonde girl and I want to go far in piano. It happened on the same day.

[mjames]

Blonde girls are great.

[jason_sioco]

This week I learned about a new way of playing keyboard. The first one is that you play the tonic, dominant, and octave of the tonic on the left hand, while the right hand plays an eighth-note rhythm. I also learned an accompaniment rhythm for up tempo songs.

[jason_sioco]

This week I learned something new. Hard to explain, but it's basically I play a stepwise melody and I add a third in the bottom of each note of the melody.

There is a new segment in my keyboard lessons. We decided to add ear training. After all, all the musicians down in my church play by ear. My pastor plays a progression and I have to guess the right chords, whether it is a IV,V ii, vi and so on. According to my pastor, I will learn complex progressions later on.

I remember doing interval recognition. I was bad at it at first. Can't tell the difference between a Perfect Fourth and a Perfect Fifth. A couple of years later, I mastered Interval Recognition, which was useless after that. I think the same thing will happen with my training with chord progressions. The more I do the exercise, the more I ID the chords and it becomes automatic and permanent.

[dcstudio]

ear training will change your life.