David Haynes

[David Haynes]

You know Tom I looked around for ATGB and the only file I found was actually a MuseScore version of Misty. It may be that I had started to convert ATGB to the new format and never finished it. When I created the new site I went to some lengths to get the needed permissions to use “Misty” and the songs in the revised dot songbook. The process is puzzlingly opaque and the costs significant.Thus we limited what we tried to get permissions to use.

The short answer is that I don’t have an electronic version of David’s original dot rendition. You can go a couple directions from here:

1. My bias is to get to voicing songs on your own as quickly as is feasible. So I’d take a look at the transition version of “Danny Boy” or look at the old version dot songbooks (both in the Basic Resources section). The dot songbooks are somewhat incomplete and require you to have your own fake books. That was David’s way to avoid copyright issues – you can’t really use them without having purchased the chord charts.

2. You can buy the new Dot Songbook from the online store. They’re designed like the Misty dot song and are intended to help see the relationships between the dot songs and the chord charts.

3. You can dive right in to the voicing part of the course. I like the Frank Mantooth books from Hal Leonard but there are more good options these days than there were when Suds first create his Method.

4. In the Advanced Resources you’ll also find recordings of Sudnow talking through voicing specific songs in great detail. You’ll need chord books and a fair bit of patience to work through them but there’s a ton of good insights there if you can stick with David’s stream of consciousness presentation.

If this isn’t helpful just poke at me again.

[David Haynes]

Thanks Angelo, it’s always fun to hear what other students are up to.

Out of curiosity, is the opening your own creation or did you transcribe something from a recording? People might be interested in how you went about it.

[David Haynes]

Recap

Well, my “house to myself” time is over. Here are a few general thoughts about the experience:

1. Continuing to practice scales is more valuable than I thought. Especially over at least two octaves. You get a better internal picture of the paths and it also warms you up for whatever else you’re working on. I’m also looking at other scales: diminished and whole tone, again just to reinforce the paths.

2. The simple act of humming along (singing, scatting, whatever you like) begins to open the door to small improvisations as you find yourself “singing” something that’s a slight variation on the melody. Copying recorded solos or picking out melodies can also be helpful but there’s a bit of a technical overhead and frankly I just can’t remember melodies very well. Still, start vocalizing.

3. Left hand voicings can be learned but be aware that it’s like starting the whole voicing endeavor all over again. You’ll learn them faster if you already voice songs but it’s tedious. As I’ve often said, patience and persistence are the primary drivers of success (as in most things).

4. Don’t bite off more than you can chew (e.g. the blues is a big topic). You’ll never learn “everything” about any one topic. Pick two or three things to work on and set some reasonable interim goals. Don’t beat yourself up. Adjust goals or change your areas of focus – there’s no price to pay for changing your mind. And seemingly unrelated efforts often come together in unexpected ways.

As an aside, I’m going to start a different thread to talk about David’s “Ways of the Hand” once I finish it and have had a chance to chew on it for a while.

[David Haynes]

The “woodshed” description typically refers to a more cloistered and focused practice routine than I’m capable of. Professional musicians, faced with a difficult musical chore or preparation for a significant performance will sometimes “go to the woodshed.” My use of the term was probably a little flippant.

[David Haynes]

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.

[David Haynes]

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.

[David Haynes]

One more thing. As I was practicing the same left hand bass line over and over (and over) it occurred to me that if my wife was in the house she’d be gently begging me to stop – or practice something else.

Getting in a lot of reps is one area where I think an electronic keyboard with headphones could be very useful. Probably doesn’t have to be a very good one (although I wonder about differences in feel) but it might be good for you and for your housemates.

[David Haynes]

A few thoughts:

– If you’re not still practicing scales, you should be. I thought I “knew” them well. Playing over two octaves demonstrated that the paths weren’t as automatic as I thought. The value of that burned in sort of learning becomes more obvious when you’re trying to pick out melodies or learn improvisation.

– Voicing (I’m working on left hand voicings) is also facilitated by better scale sense.

– The fact is that everything I’ve been working on requires a lot of repetition and what your hands learn as a result of that repetition influences everything you try to play.

– I’m hoping Suds is right about being able to learn to create useful vocal tones. I don’t remember being this bad at it.

– All of these threads I’ve been working on have led me back to “Ways of the Hand.” I couldn’t finish the original version but I bought David’s revised edition and have started reading it. The first part is easier because I know his Method better. Some of what he describes early on I now have first hand experience with. Still, it’s a difficult book. What David wrote about your hands “learning” has deeper insights than I first appreciated. I’m looking forward to struggling through it.

[David Haynes]

Day 3

Well, this is going to get repetitive. So I may just skip the day to day recitation.

One thing dawned on me today. If you have an acoustic piano you should learn how to do a couple simple tuning chores. Buy an inexpensive tuning hammer and learn how to tune unisons. It’ll help you clean up some issues between professional tunings. It’s not hard to learn, message me or do a little on line research.

Tonight brought up the challenge of working full time and carving out some uninterrupted practice time. I probably defined too many tasks but I managed to get a little bit of all of them in tonight. A little over an hour total. We’ll see. Part of teaching yourself is learning what works for you.

So tonight got reduced to several 15-20 minute sessions of rote practice and then another 20 minutes of just playing whatever I wanted to – in this case the beautiful Gershwin tune “But Not For Me”.

I find that a little mental fatigue sometimes results in better playing afterwards. Perhaps just less thinking and more listening to what I’m playing.

[David Haynes]

Day 2

“Picking out melodies” (about 20 minutes) – Decided to start here because it’s more fun than the tediousness of the beginning blues work I’m doing. Reread some of David’s stuff on this topic and decided to just start on trying to generate a decent tone. So stuck mainly to melodies. Played the notes, “sang” the tones. It’ll be interesting to see how this skill progresses – I’m not very good at it. As an aside, I flipped open a fake book and stumbled on “When Sunny Gets Blue”. I used to play this song but had completely forgotten about it. I don’t know much about the tune but Sarah Vaughan did a beautiful rendition.

“Beginning blues” (about 30 minutes) – pretty repetitious. Just practiced the basic left hand walking bass and added in major triads on top. Trying to get the bass fingering automatic and the coordination between hands. Having a Sudnow background on scales and chords helps but right now it’s just reps. I can tell I have a long way to go with this.

“Closed voicings” (about 30 minutes) – Made some good progress. This is just a lot like working out voicings within David’s Method – it’s just like starting over for me. But once I’ve written down the voicings and played the shapes a few times, my hands learn the shapes pretty quickly. Having already gone through this process is a big plus. (Except for feeling like you’re starting over again.)

“2 octave scales” (about 10 minutes) – I was a little mentally fatigued by the time I got to this so I only did a few passes. I continue to be surprised by the challenge of seeing scale paths as continuous rather than as one octave-long chunk. I think this will be good for me.

[David Haynes]

Day 1 –
Today I soaked my hands in some warm water (it’s COLD here!) and headed to the piano. Warming up my hands seems to make me play better. Or make me feel better anyway.

Task 1: As I imagined, the hardest part was just getting started. I decided to practice my major scales over two octaves. For some time I’ve felt that the scale paths and the hand movements are significantly different if you’re playing two or more octaves. Now I’m sure of it. The paths look different, more complete somehow, and the fingering isn’t always obvious. Someone has probably defined those fingerings but I was mainly trial and error. I’m thinking that if you’re playing fast some of these fingerings wouldn’t be so effective.

At any rate, playing two octaves gives you a better picture of the path. I spent 25 minutes on these today.

Task 2: Picking out melodies
I printed out the material on the web site about picking out melodies and started on a couple of the songs listed. I quickly discovered that I didn’t really know these melodies well enough to “sing” them. Thus I had little to “pick out”. Eventually I ended up playing songs I knew and sort of scatting along as I played, sometimes anticipating notes and eventually adding melody notes that weren’t written.

I seemed to gain some ear/finger connection. I’m going to spend more time with this approach.I spent 35 minutes on this work today.

Task 3: Left hand voicings
After little break I started working on left hand voicings with “Satin Doll”. I struggled some with figuring out voicings and chord types. The voicings didn’t come quickly – I remembered what it was like when I first started the Method. After getting stuck on a couple measures I found a some voicings that I liked. When I took the time to analyze them I realized they were actually the “B” forms of the chords on the lead sheet.

I didn’t get very far into the song but I’m sure now that I’ll figure it out. I spent 40 minutes on this task.

Task 4: Working with Tim Richards’ “Improvising Blues” book
I was a little brain tired. Next session I’ll work on this task first. Mostly I just worked on the beginning left hand fingering for a simple walking bass. Got a fair number of reps in.

I’m of two minds on this. The reps are probably fine if I’m a little tired. We’ll see as I get further into it. I spent 30 minutes on this.

So about a two-hour session. Smaller topics seem to help me stay engaged. We’ll see.

[David Haynes]

I don’t know that there’s any significance to that but that sort of spatial recognition will be helpful to you as you work through the Method.

To that point, look at the spatial relationship between white and black keys (on your piano) and tell me what you see.

[David Haynes]

Not sure what you’re saying here. What’s a ‘flat version’?

[David Haynes]

David mentions somewhere the obvious breaking of his “rules” right out of the gate in Misty. Doubled up b7ths happens with some regularity – it’s mainly a matter of what’s available under the melody note. The missing b3 is a similar issue. It’s possible to spread out your right hand and grad the b3 with your thumb but I think the real message is that the “rules” are rules until you learn them, then you’re free to mess around with them. Your ear will become your guide – don’t get hung up on what’s “correct”. Follow the rules until you know them and hear them well.

[David Haynes]

By the way, what chord are you trying to play in the photo?

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