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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
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
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
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
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
Hi David. I have, as a guitar player, learned material by ear off recordings for many years. For some reason, this seems much more common among guitar players than players of other instruments. Learning off of recordings is a bit different than picking out melodies by ear. The reason is that, with a recording, it is all there and all you need to do is match the tones you are hearing with notes you play on your instrument. Picking out melodies by ear is typically done from memory, which adds the component of knowing the tune by heart as in being able to hum it before you can pick it out. Sudnow said, in one of his earlier, more complete renditions of that weekend seminar, that as you get involved in picking out melodies, you begin to listen to music differently – more carefully, listening for the melody, etc.
The guitarist, Joe Pass, when I once asked him what he recommended to get started playing chord melody, answered very simply – “learn melodies”. I think his reasoning was very similar to your reasoning, since his focus was always improvisation.
Tony
Recently having “come back” to the Sudnow method again, I looked over the forum. I see a flurry of activity from 5 months ago, and then nothing. I wonder if those who posted then with the intent of coming back to the Sudnow method are still with it today.
Anyway, here are some thoughts on memorization. I have never been very good at memorization, but have found more success doing as Sudnow described than any other way. Still, getting even a handful of tunes memorized is a struggle, as is keeping them in hand, so I am in the same situation as others here. I think that has a lot to do with my being in and out of the Sudnow method. I get going, making progress, and then hit a brick wall with trying to maintain a repertoire of memorized tunes beyond, say, 5 or so.
In his course, Sudnow emphasizes being able to play any melody we can hum. He says that we need to spend time every day picking out melodies, and in doing so, we become better at doing it. The problem I typically face is not knowing an entire tune all the way through. This probably says more about my listening habits than anything else.
Somebody once told me that there are certain periods of our lives, mainly while growing up, that we really hear the music we are listening to because the tunes are on the radio and we hear them over and over, everywhere. For me, the body of tunes would be the Beatles. If I hear the first notes of any of their older tunes, my mind can fill in the rest. I was exposed to the standards, the body of music that the Sudnow method works with, much later in life when I had to seek them out and listen to them as an aside from my everyday life. I can recognize many of those tunes now, but they are not ingrained as the earlier Beatles tunes are. I think that in order to pick out the melodies by ear, I have to have them ingrained the way those early Beatles tunes are. I pretty much lost interest in the Beatles overall as they got into the more psychedelic stuff, while at the same time I was growing up. At 10 years old, the early Beatles tunes were probably just about right.
Joe Pas said that we should play the music of our generation because that is what we grew up with and therefore, what we truly know on several levels – cultural especially. I did not grow up with the standards, so it will take a lot more listening and effort to be able to hum one all the way through to pick out by ear. That has nothing to do with whether I like them or not, and everything to do with what my own experience and what Joe Pass talked about.
Sudnow described a time when we would be able to pick out a melody we could hum, and our hands would fall into the patterns we had learned by learning those first 15 – 20 tunes. Picking out melodies was to be as much a part of the equation as voicing and playing/memorizing tunes.
Somehow, I never hear anything about the picking out melodies by ear when I read or hear any discussion of the Sudnow method. The picking out melodies part seems to have importance only on the recording of that seminar. However, I am coming to believe that this skill is a necessary aspect of playing tunes so that we don’t have to memorize an entire tune with all the voicings and melody as one big blob that is easily forgotten. I won’t be able to prove it except by going through that effort myself and finding whether that was correct or just one huge misunderstanding on my part.
At this point, I have “Misty”, “As Time Goes By”, and part of “Danny Boy” memorized and well in hand. I found a list of songs to pick out by ear, each with the starting tone given as a numeric element of the scale so I can do them in any key. I know some of the tunes, but certainly not all of those in that list. I think that making my own list of tunes I can successfully play at least most of the way through would be useful.
Every day, I play the scales with one finger and then the whole hand exactly as Sudnow describes, followed by picking out the melody to a tune. For me, continuing to play the scales has simply become a way of easing into the practice mindset, rather than that I don’t yet know them. Then I play through whatever tunes I have memorized, and then work on the new tune. When I am finished with “Danny Boy”, I will switch over to voicing tunes from fakebooks, of which I have plenty. It will be interesting to see how far this approach gets me. It is about as close to what Sudnow described in his seminar as I can think of, based on my understanding after repeated listenings over a period of years.
Tony
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