A returning student's thoughts…

[nick]

Hello,

I’m a returning student, from the UK. I thought people might be interested in my experience with David’s Method. There’s also nothing like a public declaration of intent to keep yourself motivated!…

So. I bought the Sudnow Method (on CD) about 9 years ago. It seems incredible to me that it was that long ago, but there you go. I’d had some piano lessons as a kid, which had left me with a passable repertoire of major scales, half a Christmas carol, a fear of ‘difficult keys’ (flats? You kidding?!). In my mid-30s I moved into a house that was big enough to fit a piano in. I can’t remember how I found the course, but being a fan of ‘alternative’ ways of approaching learning, it just felt instantly right.

I spent, I think, about a year studying and practicing pretty intensively and being really quite obsessed. I’d regularly play for an hour or more every night, and I remember that some weekends I’d do 5 or 6 hours straight. I remember the *insane* frustration of literally weeks of trying to get the first few chords of Over the Rainbow into my fingers. I used to listen to David’s ‘stand up routine’ intro to the course over and over on my iPod when I couldn’t be at a piano.

At the ‘height’ of my Sudnow-ing, I reckon I had about 10 of David’s dot songs ‘in hand’, and about the same amount of songs I’d voiced myself. When I started, it took me two weeks to memorise Misty (and several months before I could really ‘play’ it), and two weeks to work my way through my first solo voicing. After a year, I could work out a voicing in about an hour, and fumble my way through on on-the-fly voicing of straightforward songs.

Then we had two kids, I changed jobs and was working way too much, and in general life took over 😉 In the years since, I’ve had brief bursts of piano playing: a month learning blues scales here, a month learning Maple Leaf Rag there. A couple of classical pieces. The occasional lesson. But I didn’t ever dive back in to my fake book. I’ve also kept up music in other ways: over the last couple of years, I’ve been playing the ukulele (more portable than the piano – and I think Suds would have loved how the uke has become the ‘youtube folk instrument’ for casual song-playing) and have learned to sing.

But my Sudnow year has always stayed with me, as an intense and somewhat magical time. I corresponded with Suds only a few times by email and on the forums. During the year I was playing, he had a burst of creating and posting some really interesting additional thoughts and material (were they called ‘fireside chats’ or something? — I think one of them was even about a song I’d been voicing). There was a lovely community of quite seriously focussed students on the site — I got to know Markham and Barbara Kane well, albeit only virtually — (and Suds had gotten over his assumption that all forum users were by definition timewasters who would have been better off turning off their computers and playing the piano instead!) There must be some recordings of me playing dot arrangements kicking around in the archives somewhere. I remember the shock of learning David had died. So suddenly, it seemed.

Even in the years I haven’t been playing, I’ve shown several people how Suds’s method works, and marvelled at its genius. It’s such a sublimely elegant and insightful bit of teaching, and seems almost unique in being pitched at intelligent and thoughtful students.

So, fast-forward to a few nights ago. I wasn’t planning it. I just sat down at the piano, and my hands played the first three chords of Misty. (I’d forgotten them years ago, or so I’d thought). I was knocked out all over again by the lushness of the voicings.

And, well, it felt like coming home.

So, I logged on to the site and renewed my membership.The new site looks brilliant, and the new format of the dot songs is excellent. I’ve just spent about 45 mins with Misty today, and I’ve got the A section back into my fingers again. It’s been weirdly emotional in a way I can’t quite explain.

[Chris]

Same here Nick but i had never really got past Misty,im a guitarist but always wanted to play piano,i am determined to get a lot further this time.

[David Haynes]

Hi Chris,

I’m curious about why you ‘never really got past Misty’. What got in your way?

Thanks,
David

[Mark]

Thanks for posting Nick. I’m in a similar spot only I first started almost 12 years ago! This is my third go round. The last one was a short return two years ago. I just came back to the site two weeks and I’m also really impressed with the changes. In particular I love the new dot song format. I’ve been working with misty and ATGB (still got my old dot songs) and I’m surprised at how fast it’s coming back. LIke Chris, I’m determined to stick with it this time. And I do love the sound.

Mark

[Chris]

Hi David
I think it was because i had,lol still do so many things going on plus my guitar takes my main study but guess just other stuff came up but its always been there waiting fir me to carry on and maybe this is the time,cant fault the method 🙂

[David Haynes]

I’m curious about students who started the Method (any method, for that matter) and then sort of drifted away despite a strong desire to learn. One of my other projects addresses the behavioral and environmental issues that tend to get in the way when we’re trying to change daily behaviors – like practicing the piano.

Like Nick, I had a period early on with few distractions when I was deeply immersed in the Method. That was when I really came to believe I could learn to play songs. I am not, by nature, someone who focuses well over long periods of time.

Behavior change is harder than we think. I do, however, believe that one can learn how to learn. If you’re interested in taking part in a little experiment in ‘practice behavior’ over the course of a couple months, let me know.

By the way: Nick’s version of ‘Misty’ is on the Students Play page. And the ‘fireside chats’ he refers to (called ‘pianoside chats’) are on the ‘Student Resources- Advanced’ page.

[Angelo]

Hello All:
Another blast from the past here. Angelo here. I first got the course in 2007 and I also had times of really getting into it. The sounds coming from those clusters are something that hit me.
I originally started my music career with the guitar, and I currently play guitar in a jazzy/rock and roll type band (we mostly play for free). I’ve been able to notate a way of playing what are called “chord melody” arrangements of songs on guitar that kind of sound like Sudnow type stuff.
But not really. Nothing beats the sound of the piano, to my ears, anyway. Being 53 years old, I am thinking I’m too old to play piano like I would want to. I want to play piano with songs in the Sudnow style.
I’ve had starts and stops with the Method. I know how to voice (by “voice” I mean getting the fractions written down) quite easily.

But the Achilles heel for me has always been twofold:
1) if I don’t play a song over and over and over I simply forget it. Very very frustrating. I just can’t seem to hold more than a few songs in my hands at any given point in time. I can play none now except maybe a little of “Misty.” So if you want to hear one of the biggest frustrations I had, well that was it.
2) I never could get around to playing somewhat on the fly from a Fakebook. Now if I could accomplish THAT, then that would REALLY take away problem #1 above!!!

So that’s my dilemma. I want to play songs in the Sudnow style, but my memorization skills continue to betray that desire. So close, yet so far from my goal of just playing standards.

Now if there can be a method that someone can teach of playing the Sudnow style on the fly from fakebooks, the I am most extremely interested!!

Thanks for listening,
Angelo

[David Haynes]

Hi Angelo, good to hear from you.

Seems to me that the ‘voicing on the fly’ issue deserves its own thread. Why don’t you start a new topic and I’ll make some comments and observations there.

[nick]

Hey Angelo – good to ‘see’ you again.

Ah, the forgetting. The constant forgetting! Yes, I know that well. It seems incredible to me now that I had over 20 songs at my fingertips. I’ve just found a recording of me playing ‘betwitched, bothered and bewildered’ over on the Students’ Play section, and I can’t even begin to remember what I was playing.

It’s been the same with the ukulele for me: I’ve spent two or three weeks learning a new song, playing it literally hundreds of times, only to take a week off and return to find I’ve forgotten big chunks of it. How does that happen?

And I’ve got friends who learned languages – did degrees in French and Spanish, who lived abroad for a year – who tell me that they’ve forgotten most of it now. Which makes me feel bad for them, but relieved that it’s not just me. And, of course, music is a language innit.

What I do know: that every time I practice and learn something new, I might ‘forget’ the piece, or lose two or three chords at a certain place, which makes it feel like the whole thing is useless, but *something* always sticks: my technique improves, a chord shape becomes part of my repertoire – something. And if I want to ‘relearn’ the piece, it doesn’t take nearly as long.

And: if I keep it up, little and often, — just a few minutes a day — that can keep the whole thing trundling along.

So, my aim with Sudnow this time — is to get to voicing on the fly, however badly, and just keep that up, little and often.

[Author]

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