What exactly is the goal of the Sudnow Method?

[Angelo]

Sorry if this is a “downer”post. But actually I’ve been using the Method off and on for years, and I can’t find a Method that has worked better for me. But it has had its frustrations. So in an effort to build some motivation, answers to my Questions labeled 1,2,and 3 would be helpful as well as answers to my questions labeled A and B below:

So what exactly is the goal of the Sudnow Method?

1) Is it to play songs?
Of course. But something seems missing from that answer. I can (perhaps) spend a ton of time learning a song from dots, or my own voicing. But again, the song for me evaporates from my hands if I don’t replay it and replay it. And that can get frustrating.

2) Is it to play by ear?
I’m not aware of anyone who can play by ear using the sophisticated voicings in this course. (That does not mean that no one has achieved this. If you can do that, I’d love to know!)

3) Is it to play “on the fly” from fakebooks?
Now that seems to me to be a goal that is possible to attain from using this method. Alas, I am not able to do that! I’ve voiced a number of songs and yet this goal has stayed elusive.

So I guess to summarize, I’d like to ask two things:
A) Again, what exactly is the goal of the Method other than offering a methodology by which the student can learn to play a few songs if they are memorized and played often?
B) I would love to see a whole topic thread headed by Markham in which he and others can pass on tips on how to build on the basics of the Method to learning how to play on the fly from fakebooks.

Thanks

[tbeltrans]

It seems to me the goal is to play songs, whether you do it by ear or from a lead sheet probably is up to you. I am now getting back into the course and have fairly quickly come back to playing Misty and As Time Goes By, and am nearing completion of the Danny Boy voicing exercise tune. From there, I am leaving dot songs and going on to voicing directly. All I intend to use the rest of the dot song collections for is to check my work against Sudnow’s, rather than learning any ore of his.

I figure that if I just open a fakebook at random and play through tunes, applying voicing rules as applicable, I will get better at doing that. If I just continue learning Sudnow’s dot tunes, I will get better at doing that. I would rather get better at voicing tunes on the fly. It will take time to get the “on the fly” part, but that will probably come the way it did on the guitar – by getting these chord forms into my hands.

As for playing by ear, I wrote another post here about my thoughts on that. Sudnow talked at length about that in earlier versions of the course that contained a much more complete recording of the weekend seminar. A lot was cut out in later versions of the course, presumably in the interest of brevity and lower cost. Essentially, what Sudnow said is that when you get proficient at voicing tunes, your hands will have learned the patterns that chords move through a song in, and that is far better than reading about it in some theory book. When that happens, as you pick out a melody, your hands will (quote directly from Sudnow) “fall into the patterns themselves”.

The problem with the “by ear” approach is that you have to be able to hum the entire song all the way through. As Sudnow said, “play anything you can hum…”. How many of us can really do that with enough tunes to, say, play a gig (i.e. 40 or more tunes in their entirety)? More realistically, the use of fakebooks as we become proficient at that, will afford us as many tunes as we have books.

After that, I want to apply Robert Conti’s “The Formula” to my voicing to be able to never need to play the same tune the same way twice. I can do that on the guitar, which is what that book/DVD was written for, but all of it would be directly applicable to expanding the Sudnow method. That book addresses whatever you would otherwise use all the chord substitution rules for. It is about creating a different bass lines under the melody every time you play it, and treating the bass note as the root of the chord as we do in the Sudnow method.

Many jazz guitar players have said that this book provides the best practical means of learning chord substitution. It certainly helped me for playing chord melody guitar. There is little more boring than having to memorize a complete arrangement and play it the exact same way every time. The fun comes from literally playing with sound, exploring new harmonic paths under the melody. However, to do that before becoming thoroughly familiar with being able to play “on the fly” from a fakebook is putting the cart before the horse, so on the piano, that will have to wait probably a year or two for me.

Tony

[Angelo]

Ok so it looks like I got an answer about learning to play songs on the fly from fakebooks: I’m going to quote below a response that David (Markham) gave to me a little while back about some hints to playing on the fly. For further discussion, see my earlier question (topic) regarding playing on the fly. But here’s David’s response:

“Not to sound facile, but by voicing a lot of songs and being lazy about writing fractions all the time. And finding the dots way too tedious.

Your hands just have to learn a lot of patterns. If you’re still working through fractions note by note and thinking about each one, you just can’t think and then consciously direct your fingers fast enough. When you see a Cm7 with a Bb melody, for example, the chord has to appear as a single shape to you, not as a collection of individual notes.

In that sense it’s not really different than reading traditional notation.

A few suggestions:
1. Actually write out the fractions for at least a couple dozen songs, even if you ‘know’ the chord. The repetition will help you see the patterns.
2. If you’re struggling with a song pick a different one. For various reasons some songs will be easier for you.
3. You’re not trying to memorize the song (a different sort of task, a different discussion) so quantity of songs is more important than retention at this point. You’ll need at least a couple good fakebooks. Full size lead sheets.”

Seems to me that practice time can be spent learning songs (I sure need practice playing smoothly) but also just looking at and trying to internalize chord shapes that are used in a multitude of songs.

Sound like a good strategy?

Thanks again

[tbeltrans]

Your quote from David (Markham) sounds very much like Robert Conti’s approach to chord melody. He has two books out on chord melody. The first is called “Chord Melody Assembly Line”. In it, he builds a vocabulary of chord forms to harmonize every note in the C major scale, plus the b/# 5 and b/# 9, plus the augmented and diminished chords across all string sets. He uses a simple folk tune to illustrate how to use these to harmonize all the melody notes. He then has you “count up” or “count down” to find the same chord form for different keys, done by harmonizing tunes in fakebooks.

The second book is called “The Formula”, and is to be used after you have all those chord forms well in hand, which was done by voicing lots of fakebook tunes. In “The Formula”, Conti describes how all the various chord progressions really move in 4ths, even if on the surface, it doesn’t look that way. From there, he shows you simple “rules” he developed for building bass lines that sound good, and then to use these as the basis for creating new chord progressions using the chords from the first book to reharmonize tunes so you never have to play the same chords the same way again – play the tune differently every time you play it and never run out of reharmonizing ideas. Like Sudnow’s “dot songs”, Conti has a series of something like 12 books of nothing but tunes arranged as chord melody style using these techniques. “Chord melody” is the guitarist’s phrase for “cocktail piano”.

Conti says that, when playing solo guitar, the melody should be most prominent and never stray from it so your listeners always know where you are, but in the harmony underneath the melody, that is where you improvise and keep it interesting for the listener. He should know, since he has had long running (years) “sit down” gigs at major hotels doing just that. He comes from real life experience on the bandstand.

In other words, what Conti does in just these two books is what Sudnow does with his method of voicing tunes except that instead of presenting rules for voicing the chords, Cont simply gives you the full set of chord forms you would end up with by using whatever rules he might have come up with. Then, instead of a bunch of Pianoside Chats discussing various ways to embellish a tune’s chord progression, he gives it to you straight so you can do it all by yourself and not depend on him for new ideas. I don’t know why Sudnow didn’t come up with a similar system, since he seems to be on a similar musical path in terms of his teaching approach.

It sounds to me as if what you described in your response to my post is that you end up with a bunch of memorized chord forms to harmonize any melody note. We just take the “long way around” to get there by voicing them ourselves, but still have the same end result – a vocabulary of memorized forms so we eventually don’t have to think about it, and then we can simply play with the forms to get the sound we want.

In both cases, Sudnow and Conti, we are encouraged to play with these forms to stylistically come up with our own sound – leave out a note here and there, change a note here and there, play single melody notes to change texture, etc.

I had the opportunity to talk to Sudnow on a number of occasions, and have talked quite a bit with Conti on the phone, as we have become friends in similar manner that Markham became friends with Sudnow. Both of these guys are (were) very practical in their approach to music, and had little time for all the BS discussions about music theory, preferring to play music instead. Conti is a well known, performing jazz guitarist. He is getting on in age, so he pretty much stays in and around Las Vegas now, but he used to tour extensively playing jazz festivals, playing solo spots in major hotels, etc. He has played frequently at the NAMM show and is always well received. You can see/hear Conti performing in many Youtube videos. So both these guys are the “real deal”, and not some “ivory tower” theory guys who have never tested their mettle.

Your quote from Markham really highlights the commonalities between Sudnow’s and Conti’s approaches. I went all the way through with the guitar, probably because I already had the finger dexterity (i.e. in Sudnow’s terms, my fingers already knew the “shape of the fretboard”) so I didn’t have that struggle to overcome. I came out the other end of Conti’s materials and can say with conviction that his approach works. I can hold my own in a performing jazz band, which I have done. If Conti’s method works, then so should Sudnow’s method – but (at least for me) it will take a lot longer both because we voice the forms ourselves and because my hands are learning the “shape of the keyboard”.

Thanks for putting all this into perspective for me. It all makes perfect sense to me now.

Tony

[Angelo]

Tony: I play guitar too, and you are the guy who introduced me to the Conti material. His “Assembly Line” is one of the best teaching products I have ever purchased. I talked to Conti once on the phone, and we are both from the same hometown. Now if only the piano lent itself to the consistency of fingerings that the guitar does (in terms of “Assembly Line” chord melody ideas)!

David H:
With the goal of voicing on the fly from fakebooks, are you recommending that we voice:

a)various chord/melody note clusters and keep them in mind;
and/or
b) focus on “patterns” of clusters found in songs?

Thanks again

[David Haynes]

David H:
With the goal of voicing on the fly from fakebooks, are you recommending that we voice:

a)various chord/melody note clusters and keep them in mind;
and/or
b) focus on “patterns” of clusters found in songs?

Thanks again

I don’t think it’s any more complicated than just voicing a lot of songs. With perhaps one caveat: Write down your fractions. To begin with write all of them, as they become more familiar and you feel you ‘know’ the voicing just by looking at the chord name then change to just writing down ones you don’t know or you’ve changed in some way that you’re not very familiar with.

Eventually you’ll discover that even with new voicings you’ll get them in place under your hands, take a good look at the shape and then in some magical sort of way your hands ‘remember’ the new shape after only one or two passes through the song.

[tbeltrans]

I don’t intend to make long posts anymore because it takes too much time and I am sure reading them does too. I found, getting back to the Sudnow method, that I had not lost what I had already learned. It does seem to stick somehow. When trying some voicing, I found it rather easy to do, and grabbing the forms was not difficult either. It is through repetition that I seem to get these things into my hands, just as Sudnow said. By doing the work, it just seems to happen. The problem is staying motivated while doing the same thing over and over and over and … long enough to get the results Sudnow described. I can definitely see that it is possible, but going it alone for months and months for a couple of years is a very long haul. The real question is “Do I love it enough to sustain myself until the results come?”. In his early tapes (before all the extra tidbits were cut out in later versions of the course), Sudnow addressed the types of questions you and I tend to ask, saying that if we want it bad enough, we have the guidance we need already from the course and we will take it from there. The nature of our questions, according to Sudnow, is indication of our “level of caring”. By the standard Sudnow set down, my caring has not been enough for me to succeed. That is where my focus needs to be from here on out.

Tony

[Angelo]

I don’t know, Tony. I think the “level of caring” is up at a high level; in my original post I’m just not sure what the caring and practicing is really supposed to lead to utilizing the Method. The goal of the Method seems ambiguous; however, it seems like the Method is indeed useful for some things more than others. I’m going to go for the goal of reading in the fly from a Fakebook!

[tbeltrans]

I think either the playing on the fly from a fakebook or playing completely by ear, or a combination of both, is the goal. At least, that is what I understood from listening to the seminar. The course is intended to make us into very good “song players” at the piano.

One thing to be careful of is that too much discussion can tend to water down Sudnow’s core message and dilute our “level of caring”. Markham started a Sudnow group here in the Twin Cities back in the 90s. This was after I had spent a year working on the Sudnow method on my own and not knowing anybody else who was doing that. The group was a lot of fun, and quite informative. However, prior to attending the group, I was adhering strictly to every word on Sudnow’s tapes, listening to them every day while driving to and from work. I was very clear on exactly what I needed to do and why. I was making progress, but was always looking for ways to make it come faster or somehow better.

In that group, I heard alternative viewpoints from many well-meaning people who had prior piano experience with teachers in formal lessons. These people tended to question much of Sudnow’s very strict “commands”. I listened to all that and pretty much lost my momentum altogether. I can’t blame anybody but myself, but I learned that this really is a solo journey and, if we are to get involved with others on that journey, we must protect our own understanding of the course as long as it is working for us, and change only what isn’t.

We will each work out our own unique application of what Sudnow taught. For me, it turns out that Sudnow’s original strict approach is exactly what I need until I am very comfortable with the method. Then, I can start to experiment and loosen up. Others may have much different ways of applying his methods. I would be curious to find out how “Swingin Barb” did it. She is one of the very few (other than Markham) who I remember as being very successful with the method over at pianoworld.com. Whatever happened to her?

By the way, Markham stayed the course through all that. He played at every meeting and was truly on target. His approach was not as rigid as mine, but it was working for him quite nicely.

Tony

[Angelo]

Tony, is there anyway you might private message me? I can’t figure out how to do that, that is, I’m not sure we even can. Thanks

[tbeltrans]

I don’t see a way to do that either. We can certainly keep this conversation going here unless you have a specific reason not to. I really don’t see any other activity going on in these forums anyway, so we won’t be bothering anybody. Besides that, it is your thread, so no worries about hijacking it if you want to change direction on the topic.

Tony

[Angelo]

Tony:

I might try to private message you from that jazz guitar forum.

Thanks

[tbeltrans]

OK.

[tbeltrans]

I suspect that this thread has run its course. Looking at the dates for the last post in other threads here, it appears to me that somewhere around 5 months ago, activity pretty much stopped for some reason.

Is anybody else still around, interested in/practicing the Sudnow method, and reading these forums at all?

I will check in here daily for the next week or so and if there is no activity, I will stay directly in contact with David occasionally to see if anything is cooking, but will otherwise just continue on my own. It would be a real shame if the Sudnow method has lost favor and folks have simply lost interest and moved on. It really is a worthwhile course – if you have the time that it deserves. As I am re-retired, I am able to once again put in the time for listening to music intently and playing as per the method. Surely there are others…

Tony

[Ted]

hi there Tony! i am still reading through your posts, but just wanted to say hello 🙂

i grew up a jazz bass player but never really learned what the hell i was doing. to this day i can still pick up a bass and play with a band given a chart. ah how i miss my easily movable shapes 🙂

i’ve actually been thinking a lot about what you said re: the chord forms. i’ve been playing songs from the dot books, and my hands seem to be remembering some shapes now – i’ve learned Misty, Someday My Prince Will Come and Fly Me To The Moon from the old dot books, and started voicing Nearness Of You but got tripped up on some chord that i didn’t know the rules for.

i would very much like to be able to play charts from a fake book with a band, but to be honest, my primary interest in learning the piano is to use it as a composition tool – i would love to be able to use a piano keyboard like a computer keyboard. i am most interested in composition…specifically of electronic and popular music, as well as r&b, but i crave rich harmonic content.

i would love to hear more about the method you described, as i’ve been trying to distill sudnow’s thoughts into something more mechanical. i want to be able to use the piano as a writing tool, but i also want to be able to PLAY it.

one thing that has put me off from voicing my own chords is that i do not feel confident in my ability to do so, and there is no way for me to check my work except against the existing sudnow dot books. i also find it tricky since suds does some clever things. to make matters worse, despite years of playing jazz in my teenage years, i have a woefully weak understanding of harmony – i get tripped up on voicing my own chords when they don’t follow sud’s rules.

however, i spend all day programming. i am also extremely lazy, and i like to learn things quickly. i also believe the numbers are in our favor in terms of forms to learn…there are at most a couple hundred forms, and this is a hilariously large upper bound.

as such, i’ve been considering building the following tools:
1. given a melody note+chord, output the fraction
2. given a melody note+chord, output the fingering
3. given a bunch of chord changes and melody notes, output an entire dot song

doing this would allow me to double check my work. but…there aren’t THAT many forms, right? so what if i also could generate every possible fingering for every maj7/min7/dom7 + melody note? this set simply cannot be that large.

another thing that just came to mind as i was writing this is perhaps it would be interesting to take every dot song that suds put together and see if there are shapes that he used to move between certain chords to ascertain implicit rules. the sample size is unfortunately small (the old song books are 30 songs each, plus Misty and some of the others, plus the new song book), but it may yield some interesting data and patterns.

anyway, if there is anything mechanical you thing we could do to approximate the Conti methods you described, please let me know…i am tempted to check out the Conti books you mentioned, but if there are some simple principles that you can share with me, i wonder if we might be able to Conti-ize suds’ writing 🙂

hope to see you around! if you are interested in chatting, please shoot me an email at ted.kalaw@gmail.com

thanks!

[tbeltrans]

Ted,

Personally, I think you are making this far too complicated. Sudnow wanted to simplify the process for us by giving us the voicing “recipes”. I think the bet approach is what Sudnow put forth. Follow the voicing rules “assiduously” (his word…). Download the PDF of “Danny Boy” here on the site and work through the voicing exercises in that, taking time to read the explanation for each voicing as many times as needed to understand. Then, get that tune into your hands so you both understand the voicings and have them in your hands and ears. Then, start on a tune from a fakebook, referring back to the explanations in “Danny Boy”. In Sudnow’s book that accompanied the seminar recordings, there was a section on difficult voicings. I am sure that it is somewhere on this site as a PDF too. Study that.

Remember that Sudnow said to expect to be frustrated when first doing voicings. We just have to work through that. We are doing the voicings at first, chord by chord and our hands can’t grab them fast enough to be able to experiment and really hear what is going on. That comes with time and experience.

In the early versions of the course, Sudnow provide only “Misty” and “As Time Goes By”, and wanted us to do our own after those two songs were well in hand – memorized. If you were to study the voicings used in both of those, you would encounter most of the situations you will encounter voicing other songs. Personally, I think that if you get those two tunes in hand and then do the Danny Boy exercise voicings, that should be enough to get started on your own.

I have been a software engineer for more than 20 years. An “engineer” typically works close to the hardware, writing firmware, delving into the kernel and drivers if there is an OS (typically embedded Linux these days), working with schematics and scopes, etc., so that the work is a combination of software and hardware. I have also done some application programming, though to me, engineering work is much more interesting (and pays better…). Despite that experience, when it comes to Sudnow, I think that adding ANYTHING beyond what Sudnow describes, does little more than separate you from the all important process of voicing tunes and getting them into your hands.

So, my recommendation overall, in addition to what I already said is to go back and really listen to the seminar. You may come away with a bit different sense of what Sudnow really said and what that means you should be doing every day if you really want to acquire this skill on the keyboard.

Tony

[tbeltrans]

After thinking more about this, I can give a very short and direct answer to Ted’s questions:

The only way to internalize the procedure of voicing and memorizing tunes is to do it via the process that Sudnow lays out. Getting a computer to do it will only serve to bypass the learning process entirely, leaving you with a whole lot of misspent effort.

Knowing this, the decision to go through the process or not can only be made by you, and will depend entirely on how badly you desire to learn this skill.

Tony

[David Haynes]

Interesting thread – too many topics to speak to all of them but…

To Angelo’s initial question (a very good one) I’d first be clear about separating ones personal goals from the “goal” of the Method. And I’d suggest that the goal of the Method is simply this: To demonstrate to yourself that you really can learn how to play the piano.

Think about it this way: The Sudnow Method gives you the basic tools to build a house and a relatively simple project (the garage?) to give you some idea of how it might be done. Maybe all you really want is a garage. But there are innumerable ways to design and build a house – not a single “right” way. And the Sudnow Method doesn’t describe all the possible houses available to you.

But you can’t just skip over the garage and go directly to the house. The garage is simpler but it’s still a significant task that requires time, patience, and attention to detail. Still, you do have some choice in what the final product looks like – but that doesn’t mean you can build the roof first.

In regard to Ted’s comments, I think you’re misreading how voicing should be thought about. And perhaps what “playing by ear” can be thought of to mean. While I agree with Tony that completely working out the harmony of a song by ear is a very difficult task, I’d also suggest it’s really unnecessary. You can find accurate lead sheets for just about whatever you want to play.

David’s “rules” for voicing are to give you a place to start. If you study some of his stuff in the Advanced Resources you’ll begin to see how many more approaches there are. BUT, you can’t learn to voice well if you don’t listen well. You’re making choices based on context and your own predilections. At the end of the day no one cares about your voicing as an intellectual exercise, they only care what it sounds like – so should you.

Formulas and “answers” are exactly the wrong approach. What’s it sound like? David’s rules give you a consistent place to start – but if you’re experimenting and you decide you like that b13 in a major chord, just use it. (Look into David’s discussion of polychords for some insight into possibilities). But you’ll never get the richness you might like if you’re only thinking of chords as single entities, independent of what comes before or after. For that matter you can even change a melody note if it fits a chord progression you like (although probably not a good idea if you’re playing with a singer.)

Blah, blah, blah. To Tony’s point, it’s easy to make this more complicated than it needs to be and thus be in a state of constant unease. Narrow your focus and get really good at the ‘simple’ part.

As I’ve often suggested, separate your practice time into “narrow and focused” and “just goofing around.” But keep them separate.

Thanks for all the provocative stuff guys. If anyone wants to spin part of this off into a separate thread, please do.

[Angelo]

Thanks, David H.
Yes, I have the tools to build a garage and that’s a very cool thing. Trying something else on the piano now but I’ll keep perusing the forums.
– Angelo

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