Why -and how- the seminar was changed

A returning student asked me how David’s seminar had changed. Here’s my reply:

The original Method, as you know, was a collection of audio cassette tapes and some printed notes. This was edited by David somewhat for length and became what was on the first web site. He also took the ‘book’ in the original course and reduced it to some downloadable notes.

In the course of listening to all the tapes (many times!) and as a result of years of talking to students about their experiences, I decided that the organization of the material could be improved. Given that I couldn’t re-record anything (I wanted it to remain in David’s voice) it became a significant challenge.

As the technology became more readily available, I decided it would be useful to reorganize the web site and connect the original audio to animated videos so that I could show what David was talking about as he was talking about it – doing away with the need to refer to a printed booklet.

In essence I pulled everything apart and reorganized it into three ‘lessons’ consisting of a number of ‘topics’:
1. An introduction to David’s philosophy of teaching
2. The information needed to get started on the ‘Misty’ dot song
3. The additional information needed to create your own voicings from so-called fake books

So, all the audio is the same but significantly reorganized. Almost all of the graphics have been updated – including the ‘Misty’ dot song – and some new ones have been added where I thought necessary. This is true of the ‘additional resources’ sections too. As an example, check out the new scale practice chart and, in the Advanced Member resources, some sheets to help you learn and practice left hand voicings.

We also licensed our version of ‘Misty’ so everything is on the up and up. The new version is more connected to learning how to play from fake books and make the dots unnecessary. A skill that I discovered most students were not mastering and which, if mastered, opened up a huge library of great songs. The link to the new ‘Misty’ is several places but you’ll see it on the right hand side of any seminar page towards the bottom (and also in the ‘Reading the dot song’ topic.

As to the question about being forced to work through the lessons in sequence, my thought process was based on two things: first, as I listened to David’s seminar (for the first time in years) I realized that there was lots of good stuff that I had forgotten about, and second, I’m convinced that many students never really made it through all the original tapes (it’s a little tedious, really more compelling as a live performance by David) and thus didn’t have as complete an understanding as they should and could have.

So, you can mark topics ‘complete’ without viewing the videos, thus allowing you to navigate directly to topics, but my suggestion is to spend a couple hours (in small chunks if you like) working through things again. You may have a couple new ‘aha!’ moments.

As always, I’m looking for ways to improve and clarify David’s Method, so don’t hesitate to post ideas in the “Suggestions” forum. Thanks.