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OK, I’m back on the site again after another period of getting distracted by other things in my life. I really must be more self-disciplined! Anyway, time to give this another red-hot go. After all this time I’m still a beginner but keen to make some progress, just the same.
But I notice the message boards are very quiet these days compared to when I signed up for the course originally. Does that mean there are fewer active students or are you all very shy?? I find the interaction with other students and mentors a big motivating factor – especially when I don’t have face-to-face contact with a teacher to keep me on track. Am I alone in this? Maybe if there are students out there reading this, you could say where you live and how you’re progressing? [I think I hear the sound of crickets!] -
Judy, Alexandria, VA. Long time member. Even talked with Mr. Sudnow. But I haven’t made a lot of progress yet. Recently started teaching piano to seniors at a local community center. Am using traditional texts but am also recommending the Sudnow Method. I am hoping that teaching and revisiting this site will motivate me to start playing and studying again.
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Hi Judy and Angelo,
thanks for replying. Good to know there is life out there!Judy, that’s great that you’re teaching others. I suppose I tend to assume that Sudnow students are beginners at learning piano. Clearly that’s not the case. I signed up for the course about the time that David was in the last stages of his illness. It would have been a privilege to meet him.
I hope you DO get motivated to keep going with this. I’ve been listening to David’s seminar again (must be about the 20th time now!). I’ve been reminded that I haven’t taken his advice to do exactly as he said. That is, to get the scales to where I can play them in 2 and a half minutes perfectly and on time, learn the first couple of songs and then start voicing my own. So that’s my goal now for the rest of this year! I’m sure it will pay off.
I’m in Australia (Canberra) so it’s not easy to meet other Sudnow students.
Angelo, I’ve seen many of your posts on the forum – both recently and from when I first registered. Good to see that you’re still going. So…why would you say you ‘struggle with the Method’? And what would help to fix that?
David
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Hi David,
I think I struugle because of a couple of related things:
1) I rush things. I want to learn too quickly. I end up having a song done, but not “on time” (rhythm-wise), and not “perfectly” (cluster-wise) and thus it doesn’t sound very good. Frustration creeps in. I have looked for short-cuts. Be better for me to take things slow and not rush things. On time, and perfectly!
2) I get frustrated when I memorize a song, then another, then maybe another, and then it gets difficult for me to keep them all “in hand” without getting them all mixed up, and forgetting parts. Again, frustration creeps in.
– What then might typically happen is that I would look at other methods, or go back to the guitar which comes more easily for me –
What might help me?
The best teacher is experience, in my case. Long story short: It would help me if I just listen to what David H., David Sudnow, and others have suggested:
Do as Sudnow says (mostly[!]), trust the process, take my time, and ENJOY the process!
What might help you in your journey?
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I’m reminded of a book by Nick Hall (you can listen to Dr. Hall talk about it on YouTube). It is titled, “I Know What To Do So Why Don’t I Do It?” Worth a listen – or, for the old-fashioned among us, a read.
I think there are four things you can try (but try them all at once):
1. Write down your near-term goal. Make it reasonable and specific. Maybe, “Be able to play my major scales perfectly as David proscribes in two minutes and play “Misty” all the way through with an even tempo.” You may have to break it into smaller chunks even than that.
2. Decide on a manageable length for your practice sessions (at least 20 minutes) and a frequency (every day is best but be realistic in terms of your life style). MOST IMPORTANTLY: Discus this schedule with your significant other or roommate and get them to agree to help you maintain your schedule – by encouraging your play, not scheduling other things with you during those periods, and trying to avoid interrupting you. Make sure they know that this is important to you – and why.
3. Map out each individual practice session. This can be as simple as “5 minutes on scales, then “Misty” for 15 minutes.” ALSO IMPORTANT: This can get boring so schedule some time that just says “goofing around” so you don’t feel guilty about not practicing what you think you “should”. Goofing around is an important part of the process just don’t make it a substitute for focused practice. As an addendum to this rule, also feel free to take a vacation – BUT call it a vacation before your scheduled practice session, not after you’ve skipped it.
4. If you feel like changing your goal (you will – and you should). Rewrite it, don’t just ignore it.
This might help. But you’ll still fail occasionally. That’s ok. Be supportive of yourself.
-Markham
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Thanks guys!
Angelo,
I relate very much to what you said. We live in a world where we want instant results. Modern communication via email means we expect others to reply in a few minutes or an hour. When I first started working, I would send a letter to someone and not expect an answer until the next week! Now we get frustrated when we have to wait. When it comes to learning to play the piano I suppose that impatience tempts us to take shortcuts (like you said). But that isn’t a quicker path to success and just causes more frustration. Then we give up.I like David’s (Markham’s) practical steps and I’m going to take some of those up. Great advice! What I had already decided on was a minimum of two practice sessions a day at the same time each day. If something intervenes then I force myself to re-schedule for later that day. I do that because I’ve decided it’s a priority. There’s no such thing as not enough time. I MAKE time for the things I place most value on. When I’ve let my piano learning lapse in the past I have to acknowledge that I didn’t want it enough. That’s the cold hard truth. David S talked about the ‘lack of caring’ factor and that’s what it is. I think my remedy for that is to make a promise to myself as if I was making a promise to someone else. It’s like making an immediate goal as Markham suggested. So I’m making a promise to myself that if I practise Misty and 3 scales every day (2 sessions of 20 minutes) that I’ll be able to play them perfectly by the end of November. Yes, I’ll aim to enjoy the process but I think the discipline will produce the rewards – more so in the initial stages. I need the discipline to get me past that initial barrier until I get to enjoy what I’m playing. The word ‘discipline’ sounds like a harsh word but it basically just means following a path set out by our teacher/leader. And we have that don’t we?
One other thing I’ve noticed. If I commit to sitting down to practise for 5 minutes, I usually practise for 10 or 15 – never less. Like most things, the hardest part is getting started.
David
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David – Suds said he purposefully proposed “5 minutes a day” for scale practice because he knew it would be better received than, say, 15 or 20 minutes, even though he knew people wouldn’t get through all their scales in two minutes and would, as you suggest, end up spending more time on them.
I would strongly suggest, however, you practice all your major scales at each sitting. Even if you only get through them once (with the correct fingering and also slowly with one finger paying attention to the spacial relationships) you’ll have better luck with them all becoming equally “easy”.
As an aside, a good friend of mine practices 4 hours a day (she’s a professional jazz musician) unless she has a big gig coming up, then she bumps it to 6-8. One the one hand I can’t imagine that sort of focus (obviously I’m not a professional musician) but on the other hand it becomes easy to imagine how good I could become if I did.
My point is that we all have to match our goals with our willingness to put in the work. I, for example, can play songs reasonably fluently and “read” from fake books. For the most part, I’m happy with being there. As that changes, I’ll find more time to practice.
Still the “crucial moments” for all of us are those times when we’re deciding not to practice. What do we do, how do we think about ourselves in those moments? “Maybe I just can’t do this…” is a common thought-or perhaps excuse.
If you want to be a successful amateur (you get to decide what “success” is) you must have a strategy for what you’re going to do and say to yourself in those moments.
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Just to put my voice out there – I am the same. I have been away from the piano for awhile due to work and Toastmasters, and my musical outlet has been Irish traditional on the tin whistle and flute. Just getting back into the method again. I think that’s one genius thing about it – you can spend some time away from it, and get back into it relatively easily. I’m still working on the songs I knew before, but they come back relatively easily because the changes are in my hands (as David might have said).
Judith, I love how you’re teaching at the senior center! I do a lot of volunteering at senior centers as well. That would be great, to teach them to play. It is a plus that Sudnow’s method fits the kind of music they really like. I play a lot of these kinds of songs for them on guitar and ukulele. What is your experience with it? I would think they’d have a hard time learning, since many of them are on a downhill slope, mentally and physically. On the other hand, maybe learning something new like this would help them prolong quality of life longer. I’d love to hear what you’re found. BTW I am right down the road from you in Leesburg.
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Hi Gary,
My students at the senior center are generally recently retired professionals, still spry and very motivated. Most are beginners, and we just work our way through the book. They make slow but steady progress. Two of my students surprised me recently with a little duet!
I haven’t tried teaching the Sudnow Method. I am struggling with it myself. Maybe when I get more comfortable with it, I’ll give it a try.
Thanks for reaching out. Good luck with your volunteer efforts.
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One of my students has advanced Parkinson’s disease. She has tremors in her hands, but amazingly she never misses a note! She had a good musical education and sight reads well, so despite her medical condition, she’s making good progress. We have talked about the benefits of music for the aging brain. I think she is a good example.
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There might be a difference here between senior centers and retirement homes that I didn’t discern at first. The latter are where I do all my volunteering, and most of the folks there have various stages of dementia. There’s also a senior center in town, where “senior” just means anybody over 55 (which includes me!).
Since it seems like learning to play would be good for their mental health, I would love to extend my volunteering at the retirement home… just not sure how successful it would be. It might be more frustrating for all involved. I also don’t know whether they’d be interested. I suppose I should talk to the managers there.
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The place where I teach now is a 55+ county facility. I tried to teach piano at a seniors day care center, but it was tough going for me and the students. They couldn’t retain anything I showed them. There is a good music program for singing and dancing that is better for these folks. You could expand your work at the nursing home or add a stint at a 55+ facility. You might enjoy the contrasts between the groups.
BTW, here is a link to a program called Sound Health that is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Kennedy Center. One of their areas of study is the effect of music on the brain.
http://cms.kennedy-center.org/series/sound-health-home/sound-health
I attended the first concert last year and it was fascinating. There’s a link to that program within the Sound Health site. Enjoy!
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Thanks for the link Judith – interesting.
Not specific to the “senior brain” but fascinating nonetheless is Dan Levitan’s “This is Your Brain on Music”:
http://daniellevitin.com/publicpage/books/this-is-your-brain-on-music/
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Another long time, on and off, Sudnow student here. I must say that the most I have learned in terms of understanding music and what to do, has been via the Sudnow method. We really do learn a lot that many folks using other approaches seem to puzzle about, via the Sudnow method with his unique approach to scales and getting involved in voicing chords under the melody right away.
I remember talking to Sudnow and asking him how I could transfer what I learn in the Sudnow method to other styles of piano playing. At the time, I was less interested in cocktail style, other than as a vehicle to other styles. Over time, I have become quite enamored with cocktail style piano and have recommended in these forums, Jim Haskins’ CDs.
Anyway, Sudnow’s response was to explain that what we are doing is getting our hands to “learn the shapes of the keyboard”, and that we are learning far more than we realize as we plunk away (not his words describing “plunking”…) at these standards. He used the analogy of having 20 bowling balls lined up, and getting our hands to be able to instantly grab the holes in them in various configurations. He said that once we are able to easily and automatically do that, we could then pretty much learn whatever else we wanted to do with our hands (i.e. other piano styles) with relatively little difficulty. This was one of those one-on-one side conversations during one of those time that Sudnow came to town and the Sudnow study group was meeting at Markham’s house when he lived near 55 and 494.
Tony
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Meredith here in Southern California. Just started the online class last week. Was a student of David’s in the 80s in NYC when he had space in the Village. I don’t remember it being a weekend seminar, but I think it lasted for a number of weeks on Saturday’s. It’s a bit vague … I was young, newly married, and having fun in the city.
I took the classes with my late husband who, at some point, purchased the cassette tapes. Who knows where they are now. I haven’t played since taking those classes over 30 years ago, but much is coming back.
I really like the online setup. It’s easy for me to maneuver and follow. Thanks for making this available. Back to learning Misty.
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Meredith – a while back I was contacted by the reporter who wrote this store for the NY Times. Thought you might be interested: Sudnow Class
This was when he was doing large scale seminars around the country.
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Hi Meredith,
I was born in Queens, but we moved to California when I was going into first grade, so I don’t remember much from that time. We ended moving to Southern California (the SF Valley) when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and lived there until I went into the Army. I never went back, and instead relocated to Minnesota.
Anyway, it would be really helpful and motivating to have some active students in these forums to keep each other focused and moving forward. I hope you stick around, as I intend to. I have been on again, off again with the Sudnow method over the years, and back on again now that I have re-retired. I have “Misty”, “As Time Goes By”, and most of “Someone To Watch Over Me” well in hand. I should be finished that one soon.
Tony
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Hi Meredith,
David has written somewhere about those early workshops in NYC. I have in my mind’s eye a photo of David and a bunch of students sitting behind digital pianos. I’ll have to nose around and see if I can find it.I have not yet gotten all of David’s Method-related stuff up on the web site – it’s a little daunting to see it all gathered together – but you’ve encouraged me to get back at it.
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Thanks Tony.
I probably have 20 or more songs he recorded that I have yet to get onto the site. As I get a chance to listen to all of them I try to add a couple here and there in the “Song of the Month” section within the so-called Advanced Resources. And probably other stuff floating around that I should be organizing too. -
Wow! I had no idea there wee that many. I thought that what you had was pretty much what there was, since I knew that he had not followed up much on those series. That is a lot of material.
If you want to “divide and conquer”, I could digitize those recordings as MP3s and return them and the tapes to you so you can get the material on the site. It is time consuming, I know since I have done much of that sort of thing on other material. Ripping CDs or DVDs is relatively quick, but digitizing tapes involves having to play through the entire tape to record it as an MP3 or wav file.
Tony
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Thanks for the offer Tony. I have everything digitized (I think). I’d just like to listen to the tapes before I put them on the site in hopes I can speak to what’s on them. Many are over an hour long. I’m a little amazed at how much time David spent on these. The original Song Of the Month experiment didn’t last very long so I’m not exactly sure where all these tapes fell within David’s never ending quest to make a living from this work (it’s still never ending, sans the effort..).
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Thanks David. I always had the sense that Sudnow was a bit “anti-establishment” and had a sense that the economics of trying to live off the students by extending lessons needlessly was immoral, in a humanitarian, rather than religious, sense. He seemed, at least on the 12 tape course that I have, to be almost “giving away the store” in an effort to make the course as complete as possible for the student, while not pricing it out of reach of the intended audience. He seemed to go almost overboard in trying to provide guidance for those who really wanted to learn.
In a way, it reminds me of the lab instructor when I went through electronics school. He was an older guy, probably in his late 60s or early 70s at the time. I was involved in collecting and restoring old radios from the 1920s, the ones with the big tubes and horn speakers. He would stick around after school and show me how to rewind those old horn speaker voice coils, wind the spider-web coils, and other stuff that only someone of his age would know how to do. He never charged extra for it because he loved the fact that there was anybody interested in learning the stuff he cared about.
You probably knew Sudnow better than any of us, so I realize I am on the outside looking in, and I may be way off base. That is just the idealized impression I had of Sudnow, that his passion was playing piano and showing adults that they could do it too.
It seems to me that the way to make a living online is with a lot of hype and a little bit of product (i.e. big margins). The Sudnow method just doesn’t seem to fit that model. 🙂
Tony
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RE: Tony’s comments about Sudnow’s attitude about lessons, et al.
David Sudnow was a complicated and sometimes volatile personality – and I didn’t know him as well as many. Tony, I think you’re right about his attitude towards extending music lessons. He more than once quoted me Glenn Gould’s comments on teaching piano (reproduced on the home page of the web site).
What he said to me about the course is that he wished it would generate enough money for him to do the other thing he wanted to do more of: write. But I will say that he loved being in front of a crowd – especially of piano students.
Sadly we won’t get more of either.
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Wow, the song of the month – I had not seen that before. That looks like it would be really helpful. I see that I am going to have to really start exploring this site!
David, I was just recently going thru the weekend seminar again, and I really like how you’ve done the animations. I remember listening to the seminar repeatedly in the car, always having to try and picture what’s going on. The animations make things a lot clearer.
One question: you mention the “12 tape course.” I’ve gone through the weekend seminar, several times but not lately so it’s due for a re-listen. What is the “12 tape course” and is it on the site?
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One thing that Sudnow stressed was that we should adhere strictly to the basic method when voicing our own tunes, for the first 15 or 20 tunes. These would then sound rather mechanical since we were not to add any flourishes or otherwise “jazz up” the tunes. The idea was to focus strictly on grabbing those clusters until that became almost second nature for us.
This would then also mean that we would not be working on Song of the Month, Pianoside Chats, etc., until after those 15 or 20 tunes. Referring back to the 12 tape course, he spent time on what it means to “know” a tune and being able to play it well. Our hands needed to know where to go without hesitation and fumbling, and that wouldn’t happen until we had that many tunes well in hand.
One problem Sudnow described that stems from not being able to readily grab those clusters, is that of choosing appropriate voicing when voicing our own tunes. The problem is that, until we can easily move from one chord to another, how can we hear in context, how our voicing choices will sound?
Another is that until our hands can easily move around the keyboard on their own, how can we begin to tackle (with any success) the rhythmic variations such as stride if we are still fumbling around to find our way around the keyboard?
If we take on too much too fast, we would become overwhelmed and frustrated in our efforts and give up to soon, before we started to see the results from our practice. He stressed over and over, careful attention to playing on time, perfectly, and that we can only play what we know (i.e. the current chord and the next chord to learn), rather than fumbling and skimming carelessly through a song to get to the end. He said that his approach is counter to what our culture celebrates – the easy fix and immediate gratification.
Now, whether or not we individually choose to follow that advice is, of course, up to each of us. But one thing that Sudnow cautioned was that if we didn’t follow his advice, we would become bored with the method because we would not be achieving the results he had described.
We have seen that many of us have strayed from the course, come back, strayed again, etc. For me, it has been because the process becomes one of drudgery after a while of constantly “plonking” (a term coined by one of the folks who used to attend David Haynes’ Sudnow study group) through the tunes, chord by chord. It can be difficult to maintain long term interest going it alone for long stretches. I think this is where a forum or, even better, a local group (as Sudnow described in his tapes) meeting regularly can help each participant to maintain that focus and commitment. It is just how us humans seem to work. That is how AA keeps folks sober, churches keep people focused on their commitment, and all manner of hobby groups keep members growing in the hobby. It is why I chose to attend night classes to finish my college education, rather than do it long distance via a web site.
Tony
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Thanks for the feedback Gary. I used to put my cassette player (I actually still have my little Marantz with the ability to slow down the playback to help pick out melodies and runs) on my piano so I could listen and look at the keyboard at the same time. Technology improved and thus the rework you describe.
The original 12 tape course was very long. It went through a couple of edits that Suds made to shorten it and remove things he decided didn’t really have much to do with learning songs. The made it shorter but I think the weakness still was that it was difficult to see how topics were organized and find your way back to a topic when it became more pertinent to one’s progress with the Method.
What I did was take David’s last edit and pull it apart into smaller chunks, define and reorganize topics to separate the voicing info, which I felt wasn’t really necessary for getting started with “Misty”. And for most beginners the voicing info just muddied the waters and discouraged some people from even getting to “Misty”.
Your post has made me think that I should digitize and upload those original tapes just for historical purposes if nothing else. In my spare time…
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When I got my first version of the Sudnow method, it was 5 cassette tapes and a 3 ring binder with text and diagrams accompanying the method. The diagrams are probably still the same in later versions of the course, and the text is greatly expanded. I used to listen to those tapes every work day, driving to and from work. The drive time was approximately the length of one side of the tape. I must have gotten a pretty good understanding of the seminar, because when I later talked to Sudnow, he didn’t seem to have to correct me very much when discussing the method.
I was the one who mentioned the 12 tape course. There were apparently several different incarnations of the course. As far as I know, the largest was the 12 tape course. The first incarnation that I had, 5 tape course, contained only the recorded seminar. The 12 tape course had the 5 tape seminar, but the first half of the first tape was largely an additional introduction, and the second half of the 6th tape was an explanation of what to do with the remaining 6 tapes, so that took up the first 6 tapes.
The remaining tapes had, according to Sudnow, what he felt he needed to add to address the questions students were asking at his seminars, especially those students who were currently working through the method. He had added several new “dot” songs (the 5 tape course only had “Misty” and “As Time Goes By”, after which we were expected to voice our own from there on). He always seemed to be wrestling with his desire to get students voicing right away and off of the dot songs, and students’ feeling unprepared to do that. So one of the extra tapes was him playing and discussing learning each of the dot songs. There were a couple of tapes dedicated to voicing drills, where he would call out a melody note and tell you what chord to voice under it, and then he would give his solution. There was a tape devoted to adding rhythmic variation, including details on learning to play stride piano. There was a tape that introduced his first additional tape series, that had one side devoted to blues, and the other devoted to how to select a suitable piano to buy.
At the time, that course cost $150, and you could also buy an additional book of voicing practice that had several “dot” songs that you had to fill in the blanks on the keyboard and fractions. He would give part of each solution and you filled in the rest.
In later incarnations of the course, he cut back dramatically because he was concerned that the 12 tape course was too expensive for many students to afford. It seemed to me that he was always trying to find the “sweet spot” for his course in terms of who his market was and how best to position his course. I was on the outside looking in, so that is only my impression from a distance.
Thanks to David Haynes, I was able to meet and discuss the course directly with Sudnow. I asked him how I could get from his course to other styles of music that interested me at the time. He gave me an answer in the form of a somewhat short lecture (he was an academic after all, and being college educated, I was used to taking notes from a professor 🙂 ). I wrote out my notes on the inside front and back pages of the book that came with the 12 tape course, and did type them into a post here some years ago.
The basic idea of that little lecture was an analogy – you have 12 bowling balls and, each with a different configuration for your fingers to go into, and your job is to learn to grab any of those configurations quickly. Once your hands can do that, you can pretty much learn to grab any configuration (i.e. different piano styles).
Not everybody appreciated/enjoyed Sudnow’s long lectures. I actually enjoyed that aspect of college, doing the research and writing papers, and attending lectures when done by professors who clearly had passion for their subject material. The original seminar had plenty of that. He delved into the politics of why piano is formally taught as it is, the economics of having to teach and make courses long enough to support the teacher, the cultural biases that we as students have to contend with regarding talent and other “myths” as he put it, his studies of how adults learn and the physical aspects of learning to play, among other subjects. To me, it was fascinating and I enjoyed all of it. I still go back and listen to it.
Also, he spent a lot of time on the history of the style of piano we were to learn, all the great jazz players, and the history of that style from its beginnings through today (current at the time of the course), as well as how to select proper fakebooks to work with and even the history of those. I got an appreciation of the style and players that I didn’t have before that. He also talked a lot about the singers we should listen to, since many of us didn’t really have decent exposure to the standards (i.e. the Great American Songbook). I really benefited from that, and went out and bought a lot of what he recommended.
So, for me, the 12 tape course was what I always go back to. Based on discussions that went on in the meetings of the Sudnow study group that David Haynes formed and ran for a time, I was pretty much alone in my appreciation of Sudnow’s lecturing. So I really don’t think that anyone is missing out on not having that version of the course. David Haynes has done a really good job of presenting the important (to learning to play piano via the Sudnow method) parts of the earlier versions course on this web site. The site has all you need, and then some, to get into the method successfully. I especially appreciate David having put up the Song of the Month series and the Pianoside Chat series, since I never signed up for those.
I hope that helps clarify things…
Tony
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David and Tony, thank you for explaining. There are definitely some aspects of the 12-tape course I’d be interested in (e.g. stride and more information on voicing), but it looks like David has made most of that type material available elsewhere on the site in the form of chats, song-of-the-month, etc. To be honest, I don’t really enjoy the bits about the political and economic aspects of piano teaching that much, but I guess that was all part of the man Sudnow. I wish I’d have been able to meet him!
David, you have done an amazing job with this site. Surely your work has completed Suds’ desire to give people the tools to get piano into their lives themselves. I always recommend it to anybody who indicates an interest in learning to play this style of piano. There’s definitely enough material on the site to keep me busy for years to come!
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Fortunately, there are enough versions of Sudnow’s course available now (including this site), to please everybody. I personally found Sudnow to be a very interesting person. Whether I agree with a person’s view or not, I always respect those who think through their take on things and then present it well. Sudnow observed well and processed deeply, and was always the academic, and probably a difficult person to be around for any length of time. 🙂
I have digitized the 12 tapes as MP3s, and that is what I listen to these days. However, I honestly question whether much of that material would be of use to anybody, since very few would be interested in Sudnow’s lectures. 🙂
Tony
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One final comment I want to make about the Sudnow method so I am not cluttering up this forum with my comments any further (except by responding to other posts) is this…
A big advantage with the Sudnow method is that you always know exactly what you are to be doing each day as you sit at the piano. If you have any doubts, just go back through the seminar and really listen to what Sudnow is saying. It really isn’t complicated at all. If you go to youtube (as I am sure many of us have by now), it is an absolute mess, with everybody posting a piece of this and that, with little or no continuity. There are several youtube channels devoted to teaching piano such as Creative Piano Academy, Marigold Project, and others, but none seem to present as well lit a path as Sudnow does. They all seem to teach a bit of something in each video, with no continuity or logical progression. The same is true for many of the various piano courses available online at various teaching sites. Sudnow put a lot of thought into his method and tested on many folks before putting together his method, according to the story he tells on those early tapes.
If you watch the piano world forum, you will find that folks are going from one method to another, rather than sticking with one method all the way through. That just seems to be a difficulty experienced when self-teaching. If we can overcome those long periods of being alone and plunking away at the keyboard long enough to really see the results of our efforts, then I see no reason that many of these courses would “work” (as is so often asked). At least with the Sudnow method, we have a clear, unwavering path – get a few “dot” songs into our hands, then voice and learn in the same manner 15 or 20 tunes of our own choosing from fakebooks, and then we can begin to explore whatever interests us. By then, we shouldn’t need that strict level of guidance because we will have developed our fundamental skills by then. We are learning far more than we realize at the time while “plonking” away at those dot songs and then voicing our own to plonk away at, though that may seem to difficult to keep in mind while in the midst of doing that.
Consider this…
Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that the simplest solution tends to be the right one. Being a software engineer by career, I have certainly seen the value of this concept in practice. If you look at the various piano methods one could take, Sudnow’s method seems the most simple and direct.
Tony
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New learner here.
I just started and this morning was my first morning of doing the scales.
I’m very excited, this is pretty dang brilliant.
I knew a lot of things because I stumbled on learning modes on guitar many years ago and the system is very very similar to what David says about major scales and how they are constructed and all of that. I played those modes every day for at least a year straight and they got into my brain so that they never came out.
I’m hoping these shapes/clusters and scales do the same for piano for me.
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Having played guitar as my primary instrument, professionally full time for a few years (Holiday Inn circuit and supper clubs and resorts) and then in several jazz groups after that, I have had my share of practice too. The problem for guitarists is that they are told to practice all manner of stuff that is really unnecessary. I see modes in that light too. I wrote a paper back in 1995, detailing what a guitarist really does need to know, and eliminating everything else. It builds very logically and is available free. Here is one place you can view it, where another guy kindly reformatted it from its original ASCII:
http://www.lickbyneck.com/Lesson-CHORDMELODYGUITAR-AnOrganizedApproach-FormattedByColinSobers.htm
The Sudnow method does a similar thing – eliminates the unnecessary stuff that many teachers pad their methods with to continually generate revenue.
Tony
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Yes. There seem to be a growing number of folks moving from guitar to piano as they move toward retirement age. I still play solo fingerstyle and chord melody guitar, as well as piano. I found another piano course that teaches through learning tunes. It is at artistworks.com and the instructor is Hugh Sung. I am currently working through that as well.
Tony
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That is true, but being able to have that on the guitar has its advantages. For arranging tunes on the guitar, you have to know basic diatonic theory which includes how to spell chords, and instantly know where all the notes are on the guitar. My paper details how to gain that ability painlessly. Once a person learns how to understand and work with the fretboard, arranging tunes is not any more difficult on the guitar than on the piano.
The problem with the guitar is how it is taught. I can tell by what things about the guitar bother people. If taught correctly, the layout of the fretboard is not an obstacle. Sudnow says much the same things about the piano. When people talk about “easy” and “hard” keys, that is a clear indication that the person was not taught correctly. With the Sudnow method, there are no easy or hard keys.
Tony
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Hello,
I started with the Sudnow method years ago but didn’t keep up due to work, moving several times, etc. I had studied classical piano for a few years prior to that, but stopped because like David said in the course, it required too much practice to maintain pieces and I never felt comfortable without my sheet music. I couldn’t sit down and just play something. I started back again last week and am working away on Misty. It’s coming along fairly well, although it’s hard for me to believe that I won’t need a teacher eventually. I guess I just have to learn to trust the process! Would love to hear advice from people who have followed a similar path.
Thanks!
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Hi Yvonne, you definitely will, if you stick with it. I totally agree with what David says about getting chords into your hands. Believe it or not, your hands will start to automatically move into the right shapes at the right times. Whether you’ll “need” a teacher depends on what you want to do. If you just want to play on your own, including arranging songs on your own, you almost almost definitely will not need a teacher.
If you want to do your own arranging, you will likely need a better understanding of harmony and song structure than the course provides – that’s not really David’s purpose – but you will pick that up some also. (If we really took advantage of all of the resources that David Haynes has provided us on the site, we’d have enough learning material for years of study!) Another good free resource is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_progression – chord progressions, especially the ii7-V7-I (aka 2-5-1) are super important, and Sudnow’s voicings work with such progressions really well.
Once you really start to “get it”, you may want to consider a teacher. In my opinion – and I’m not a teacher – we as adult learners do better starting on our own. It is my view that if you don’t have the wherewithal to learn a good deal on your own, you won’t do it with a teacher, either. The time to bring in a teacher is after you’ve learned a good bit and struggled with it on your own. I’ve recently started singing lessons after years of performing music in public. I go into lessons having practiced and having thought about my shortcomings; she tells me how to solve them. When she tells me to do something with my mouth, it’s like a revelation, the solution to a problem I’ve struggled with and puzzled over for years. When I sing the way she tells me to, and suddenly I can almost effortlessly add another whole step or two to each end of my range, it’s like a God-given gift. Maybe I should have started earlier, but I do think I did right by trying it and having some successes and some failures first. Maybe that’s just me, though.
Best of luck and keep at it! David’s method works!
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Hi Yvonne, welcome back.
Let me just piggyback on some things Gary brought up. I guess I’d ask what, exactly, is it that you’d expect to get from a teacher? If it’s Sudnow-specific insight, I’d agree with Gary that it’s not really necessary. What most people struggle with, frankly, is that they don’t do exactly what Suds suggests and they don’t do it long enough to get to the point that Gary describes.
That being said, I would never discourage anyone from seeking out a good teacher if you have some specific things you’d like to accomplish. As I’ve said many times (and Gary alludes to), this isn’t really a matter of learning something in your head, it’s a matter of learning something in your hands – which is simply a matter of mindful repetition. A lot of repetition.
As far as arranging goes, there’s plenty of information on the web site to get you to a pretty advanced theoretical understanding of arranging popular songs. But again, get to the point where you can do voicing as David describes before trying to branch out into all the possible variations and substitutions. (As an aside, I’ve arranged a few Xmas carols just for fun and created some pretty ‘out there’ variations – great fun!)
Above all, have fun. Everything else will find its place.
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Thanks Gary and David for this insight.
When I think about needing a teacher, my concerns are that I don’t use the pedal correctly and that I don’t know how to add the extras that make a piece sound good. And perhaps my timing is off and I don’t even know it. Or my touch is too heavy or too light or…the list goes on. Probably just lack of confidence from having studied so long and still not feel comfortable playing in front of others. I don’t even try out the piano when my tuner works on it until he leaves! I think I just need to sit and see what happens. I’ve only been back at it for a week or so and I’m already at the bridge in Misty, which seems to be reasonable from what David S. says in his lectures for people who studied before starting his method. I do appreciate the advice and will definitely check out the page on chord progressions.
Thanks!!
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Great! I also agree with David H here. I would never discourage taking lessons, but there’s something to be said for experiencing the school of hard knocks first, (I’ve considered taking some piano lessons and I probably will eventually.) Just hunk about how you learn, and try some things first.
If you want to, check out my YouTube channel where I play a bunch of songs I arranged myself using basic chord progression knowledge plus David S’s techniques:
Best wishes,
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Very nice. Thanks for sharing Gary.
“Satin Doll” has an interesting history. Initially recorded by Duke Ellington in 1953, it appeared during the time that big bands were largely disappearing from the music scene.The song sort of got stuck between the diminishing ballrooms of the Swing Era and the looming rise of rock and roll. It was not a particularly big success by Ellington’s standards and not many jazz artists covered it until the latter part of the ’50s, helped along by the addition of Johnny Mercer’s lyrics (to me a rather forced bit of wordplay) and a popular rendition by Ella Fitzgerald (with a couple lyrical tweaks).
Billy Strayhorn drew the song’s title from his pet name for his mother. The Strayhorn and Ellington history is fascinating in its own right but their heirs got into a legal fight over the song, Strayhorn’s eventually getting a share of the royalties.
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Thanks David! My Satin Doll story is that back in 2000, I had just gotten a bit of money so I decided to buy an upright bass. I’d played bass guitar for a few years, but never the doghouse. I had no idea how to play the thing! But I wanted to start playing bluegrass, so an upright it was. I was told a coworker played the upright bass, so I asked him to give me some pointers, and he invited me over to his house. Turns out he’s a jazz bassist and he got me started with the basics. Came time to find a song to learn and he said “how about Satin Doll?” I’d long liked jazz, but didn’t know much about it, and actually had never heard of the tune at that point. So I learned the tune and learned to play the bass at the same time from a Jamey Aebersold book at his house with him playing the piano. It was a baptism by fire, but it was fun!
The question of songwriters getting royalties is actually an interesting one to me. I’m a software developer by trade, and I don’t get royalties for the programs I write. It’s arguable that programming is as creative a venture as songwriting. So the fact that songwriters often didn’t get royalties is not that hard to imagine after all!
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