Well, I suppose neither of the two people whom I'm about to address will see this, since they are bowing out of this thread, and for good reason, but here you go:

Thank you, Markham

Nikalette - it does seem to me it would have been more straight forward of you to include the information that you had gotten a refund with no questions asked, and that you had only looked it over a couple of hours. JMO, of course.

I have been reading your past posts - have just gotten to the time period when you have apparently ordered your new Yamaha but haven't received it yet. Sorry you had such bad luck with your first older grand piano purchase - hope you're enjoying your digital -

Cathy

Not that my opinion matters, but hey it is as good as anybody's I guess. I don't mean this to seem harsh but Ragtime does seem to be on an endless search for something. I am not sure what it is but it seems he jumps around a great deal. When I originally saw the post, my initial thought was, "Man this guy must have a lot of money," and then "I wonder why he doesn't stick with one method."

As for Markham, I see no intention to "Come here and peddle his wares," as suggested. He is simply responding to the attack that was made on his product. There is a difference and he has been forthright and honest in his responses.

I am not sure what is driving Nikalette. I am sure her intentions are honorable and she is just trying to tell people what she believes the shortcomings of the method to be. But she did come across very strong and a bit snobbish sounding. I am not saying she is a snob but it just sounded that way.

I agree (not that I am any expert at all) that when it comes to music, there is no one right way or necessarily wrong way. Maybe she is technically correct but to the vast majority of casual players, sound and simplicity is more important than being technically correct. Heck I was happy when I played my first black key rendition of Ode to Joy out of my Faber and Faber 1 book. I am confident that it is about as technically incorrect as they come but I enjoyed it. Now that I am running into inversions and trying to understand them and why not so much fun (for me). But I am working through it. One day I may well realize that there just is no other way to make music without inversions but for now it is another stumbling block.

Anyway, my two cents is that I see no viciousness or impropriety in Markham's responses. But I do wonder why Ragtime Clown started this thread in the first place.

IMO any method will work if a person will just stick with it and practice regularly. To each his/her own. What works for one may not work for another.

Good luck to everyone and keep pounding them keys.

I have found that the Sudnow Method is not a "joke," and I can't see Markham as being "sleazy." I have learned from the program. Like anything else regarding piano learning, I have found that its what you Put Into the program that matters. Its takes time at the piano to be good with Sudnow's method, NOT time watching videos, reading, etc.

The course can charge more, and offer piecemeal little exercises designed to get you playing the way he does from the beginning. Instead, it offers concise info that you have to think about, and a forum of great folks offering guidance.

The folks there, like Swingin' Barb, have been wonderful to me. I have branched away from Sudnow's method at this point in my learning, but yet Barb still finds time to communicate to me and encourages me to "have fun" at the piano even if I don't do the Sudnow's method at this point in my development.

But I do feel that Markham's, and Barb's hearts are certainly in the right place. Its a great method, if you wanna do the work.

In a post I put on the Sudnow Forum at one point, I suggested that the Method is a rip-off, and it might still be a rip off. It might be a ripoff that the program doesn't cost more money, and it may be the heirs to the Method who are getting ripped off not charging more.

I agree with Nikalette in that the Method is not that easy. But what Method is?
I'm not sure with Nikalette's suggestion that the Sudnow Method doesn't teach good "musicianship," in that I'm not sure what that term means. Also, I am not knowledeable enough about the "voice leading" issue brought out here, so I can't comment on that.


By the way, of course the above is in my humble opinion, and I don't get paid anything for endorsing the Sudnow Method.

Its just a concise method that sounds great but takes work. Nothing more than that.

Everyone has an effect. Some people brighten the atmosphere when they enter a room. Some brighten it when they depart. Goodbye Nikalette.

I actually think that Nikalette has made some fine contributions to the forums and it's too bad she's getting flack from former or present Sudnow members regarding the "method". But I guess that's understandable with folks who enjoy a particular piano learning program. But what she said about voice leading is a perfectly legitimate topic and maybe the folks complaining aren't at a level yet to understand its importance. I understand it from nearly 40 years of playing guitar and vocals in the club circuit and playing with jazz groups. As a piano player, at this point, I pretty much suck and I'm sure most here are better than I but her point on voice leading and the Sudnow Method I think was a good one.

Markham mentions that what we're interested in is the sounds. But unfortunately for me it was the sounds of the Sudnow arrangements that didn't sound right for me. Just my opinion. Everyone has their own tastes.

I'm guessing Nikalette may have a lot of theory under her belt and to me was just giving her opinion and I saw no indication of her "attacting" Sudnow's method other than voicing her thoughts.

I don't know what kind of chord structure the Sudnow method uses, but voice leading is not that hard of a topic to teach. It's all about chord inversions and smoothly transitioning from one chord to another. No big whoop.

btcomm,

There's not a single person on this forum who would not be absolutely delighted if you would kindly illustrate the concept of voice leading as applied to jazz songs. Please give us an example of a song, say, maybe Misty.

We will all surely bow to your wisdom if we are sufficiently impressed as to the efficacy of the 'voice-leading' approach as regards an improvement of the sound of the song.

Jazz Mallets -----

You surely are an idiot with your snipes. Regarding voice leading, as Eweiss has mentioned, is no big whoop. Get your theory book out and learn.

Just to chime in here, Jazz uses a lot of voice leading. But voicing leading is not the end all in ballad playing. It can't be. In this style, the singing Melody drives the voicings, and the root in the bass.

So as a basic instruction, it is important to know voice leading but it is a supporting role, not the star.

The middle voices can be moving around less or more as needed, which is where the voice leading takes place. There's no one answer and it is determined tune by tune.

For example in the Autumn Leaves thread, we do LH shell voicings (1/7). Obviously there is no LH voice leading there when we do two handed voicings. The voice leading in this case happens in the RH. But only if the melody allows. The melody is always the highest note and sometimes the middle voices are pushed down.

btcomm,

That sounds like a compliment, coming from you. Anyway, put up or shut up.

My original post spoke to the OP posting in this thread under two different login names, and given that they had opposite views it seemed deceptive to me. I also have read many of his posts in these forums and I knew he had exchanges with Markham before, in which, as I said, I felt that Markham had been very patient. I had no comment on Nikalette until it appeared that she, too, had dealings with the Sudnow method, apparently quite civil on their part in which they refunded her money, which she did not reveal, and that seemed less than open to me.

I have no problem with people who dislike a particular program. Not everything's for everyone, as many here have said. As I said, with or without Nikalette's concerns about voice leading I like the music I hear from the Sudnow members on this forum. But when I read (all of) Nikalette's posts I wasn't under the impression she actually knew much about voice-leading in jazz - I was under the impression she had taken a community college course in theory. I, too, took a cc course in theory, and I learned about voice-leading in the context of Bach :\ I know, as she does, that it also turns up in other contexts. But she's had a "learn about voice-leading" priority for awhile (or at least she talked about it in many of her posts). If she expected that from Sudnow but wasn't explicit about it in her research of Sudnow (and in her posts here she wasn't) then I suppose she was surprised when she got her materials. It may or may not be a legitimate issue - it's not *my* issue at the minute. And it does seem to me that a couple of hours looking thru her materials may not let her know whether it is addressed either later in the course or in the forums. JMO, of course. Again, I think that was misleading on her part. It has nothing to do with whether I support the Sudnow method or not. I didn't know there were Sudnow courses until I read about them in the ABF.

If voice leading in pop and jazz is simply about using inversions to make it easier to get around on the piano then it's not what I was learning when studying Bach. It's what I figured out from necessity the first time I had a week to play dance accompaniment from a lead sheet. I simply had to use inversions because I didn't have the skill to jump around on the piano. But if I recall, perhaps poorly, Bach used it in choral harmony so there's apparently more to it, theoretically. I dunno. At any rate, I was using it on piano, in that simplified version, before I used the words "voice leading" to describe it. In fact, I still don't use those words.

I did, however, many years ago, read a book Sudnow wrote about how he learned to play jazz, so I knew who Sudnow was. And that is the only connection to Sudnow I have.

My sense of markham's answer was that he was, once again, dealing with Ragtime Clown's on-again-off-again method search, and not addressing Nikalette's concerns about voice leading. Of course, I didn't know she'd ordered the course and then gotten a refund. As I said, his posting here is not different, to me, than dealers posting in the piano forum, and there have been times when some of them have posted their perspective to a particular problem someone has had with them.

For those who don't like Sudnow - that's fine, and please say so. But to universalize your experience to "it's all rubbish" or some similar sense is a pretty broad brush. Some people like it. I don't think it's out of line to recognize that.

Cathy

Put up or shut up??? It sounds like I'm back in grade school. There's always on any of these types of forums whether it is music, photography, or whatever an over-confident windbag who enjoys sparring with other posters. It never fails. As I said in my earlier post, piano is fairly new to me and I'm not accomplished at all but guitar, vocals, music theory and performance are not new to me. I'm old! I've been doing this since 1965. That I will not apologize for so if you don't have anything constructive to say -- put a lid on it.

Wow. Just reading some of this should drive anyone who's thinking of buying the Sudnow program running and screaming away.

Jazzwee, have you bought this program? You made some comments on voice leading which are the opposite of what I have been taught. I've been studying piano for 8 years with a focus on jazz for the past 2 years with a very good private teacher.

I play in a trio and at a local church.

I've been taught that voicing leading is critical for playing solo and in groups.

Anyway it matters not to me whether this method makes people happy or unhappy. I've only ever seen one online course that was any good and it was very comprehensive and an ongoing package.

Ragtime you said something about Sudnow's system teaching people to play songs without having to study for years...I've never met or heard a good musician of any kind, on any instrument, who hasn't studied for countless hours and many years.

I'm going to bow out of this discussion now, in case anyone wants to pick on me next. I just don't like bullies.

btcomm,

we're still waaaaiiiitttiiiiinnnggg.

BarbaraTF, no I'm not involved with Sudnow in any way. I was just commenting on the Voice leading question. Voice leading is implemented differently in Ballad vs. Non-Ballad. Just from the examples, I noticed that Sudnow is focused on ballad style so that's why I made the comment.

In regular swing tunes, voice leading is a regular and integral part of the voicings. In ballad tunes due to hand placement and orchestration issues, the voice leading isn't the primary focus, although it may or may not exist. As I said this is due to the placement of the melody note which has to be above all the other tones, and takes priority position.

I don't know anything about the Sundown system other than for hearing some play here and I'm hearing the usual jazz tension notes. So the voicings appear to be consistent with jazz ballad voicings.

If this is supposed to be a *FRIENDLY* forum, what I wonder, is an unfriendly one like? Just because we are posting on the net does not mean we should become uncivil boors.

When I joined PW there was a lot of debate about PianoMagic now it seems the debate have move to Sudnow method.

Serge

I'm wondering if anyone can define good vs. bad "musicianship."

David Sudnow says ...



Stop arguing! It's just music.

This is a "friendly" forum. Today, we have argument about Sudnow and tomorrow we will agree on something else.

Here's a recording I did 3 years ago after one month using Sudnow method

http://www.box.net/shared/s9n5e4dotq


Serge

+1

I don't like to see junoir-high school type bullying and taunting passing without comment.

As someone with no particular interest in the method in question (more into clasical than jazz), and just reading this thread out of boredom and idle curiosity, it appears to me anyone who questions this method seems to have set themselves up for some rather personal attacks.

I just think this is bad behavior.

[edited to add]

I'd be interested in hearing the pro-Sudnow defend this method on it's merits, and take this into more positive territory. What do its users love about this method? How has it improved your understanding of music? What about it makes it mesh well with your tastes and learning style?

That's a fair request, I think -

here's a couple of links to some discussions here on PW in which they did chime in, and gave some pretty extensive descriptions:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1134494/The%20'Sudnow'%20Method.html#Post1134494

That one is from almost exactly one year ago. It was in the non-classical forum here, and it was started by Ragtime Clown.

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthrea...tml#Post1174459

That one was this past April, here in the ABF, and it was started by - uh - Ragtime Clown

It has also come up in other threads - if this discussion doesn't have what you'd like to know you can use the search function above.

But this thread seems a little iffy at the minute Nonetheless, tangleweeds is fairly new, and it's a fair question.

Cathy

This thread is closed.

There are too many people with multiple accounts pretending to be other people, it's like trying to keep track of Sybil.

I've warned people before, we do not like multiple accounts by the same members. People use this method to act as sock puppets, or make comments supporting their own arguements in a thread.

I've a good mind to turn on IP tracking so everyone can see the poster's IP address, making it easy to track those who have two, even three accounts.

I've also a good mind to close all the multiple accounts and ban those who use them.

Am I making myself clear here?