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Knots that sounds great that you will be continuing.

Knotty,

I'm just starting the course myself (on guitar, not piano - I gotta focus on one instrument for the time being - doing both jazz guitar and taking up jazz piano from scratch is just to much for me). I'm on Lesson 2, about to move onto Lesson 3. I'd like to ask you what you think of the course overall, now that you've completed it. Did you do both book 1 and book 2?. How do you feel the course benefited you as a musician, esp. in terms of being able to improvise? Any other comments (good or bad) on the course?

Thanks

Jeff

Knotty
I forgot to tell you that I’ve been practising hard to play in 4s. When I do my Hanons, I accent the first of every four notes, and almost ghost the other ones.

Could you please help me with a couple of other questions ?

1. How do I approach the accenting when the phrase doesn’t start on Beat 1 ?

2. For songs in ¾ time, do I accent the first of every six notes for eighth-notes ?

Thank you !
custard

Jeff,

I've been studying with Dave for a year and a half now, so I'm probably getting as much from the course as I can.
I have to say, Dave is not just a fantastic performer, he's also an amazing teacher. I've enjoyed it a lot. I never got bored. I never asked myself once "what should I practice today?", there's always plenty to do.

It took about 8 months or so into lessons before we started improvising. It's not like I didn't improvise before, but with Dave, I did it with a plan. We took it slow, focusing on what's important: Creating beautiful melodies and feeling in 4s. That's the bottom line. We started improvising on simple progressions, a few measures at a time, then simple tunes. At first, very slowly.

I'm starting to be much more confident playing more tunes, with more ease, and at faster tempos. Meaning I can play long 8 bars lines of 8th lines that make sense to me, much faster than before. I feel more in control.

I think it's great that C_A started this thread, and I'm happy to share my experience.

I would not know how to teach you guitar at all, I would not know whether the hanons made sense or not. I remember once Dave telling me not to try them on Sax. I can see why I don't know about the guitar.
I imagine the voicings would also be completely different.

I'm on lesson 50, getting to the end of book 2. I started working on Bill Evans arrangements, and we will start arranging our own tunes pretty soon (a couple months maybe).
The hanons will be replaced by tunes and licks from the Omnibook.

I'm not about to stop my lessons.

I hope you enjoy the program.

Apples,

>> I forgot to tell you that I’ve been practising hard to play in 4s. When I do my Hanons, I accent the first of every four notes, >> and almost ghost the other ones.
The feeling in 4 has 2 purposes
1. Slightly, as in slightly, accent the 1st. That's where the swing will come from.
2. It will help you think longer lines. By thinking in blocks of 4.
That's not to say you can't do something else, you can play in 2s or in 3s all you want. But the basic feel is in 4s.

>> 1. How do I approach the accenting when the phrase doesn’t start on Beat 1 ?
I don't overthink that stuff. If you just focus on blocks of 4 notes, I'm pretty sure the accent will fall on the right beat. In this case, I'd consider the notes before the strong beat some kind of pick up.


>> 2. For songs in ¾ time, do I accent the first of every six notes for eighth-notes ?
Good question. I never asked myself. To me the accent just falls on 1. I'm working on My Fav. Things now, I'll try to remember to ask that next time.

The feeling in 4 is something that I think will come once you practice it for a while. I think I'm getting pretty good with it, so now I don't really focus on this anymore. One thing at a time ...

Practice your feeling in 4 by improvising on a short vamp.
D-7 G7 Cmaj7 Cmaj7
Do 4 bars, then stop
At 72 bpm.
Improvise a line. Take a break, do another.
Think 4 notes at a time.

You could also practice it on the tunes from the book.
And of course, you should feel it when you sing with the masters.

Hi Knotty
Please post My Fav Things when you're happy with it. I never liked this tune from The Sound of Music until I heard Brad Mehldau play it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7fVnvJSRb4

I'm really interested in your treatment of it.

I'm going to try the vamp tomorrow. When you say to take a break, do you mean one measure ?

Bye
cus

>>When you say to take a break, do you mean one measure ?

I mean stop, breath, take a break. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever.

>> I'm really interested in your treatment of it.

The inspiration is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7aoPBzkYK4&feature=related

This is Coltrane's move to modal music with McCoy Tyner.

Sorry for the photo of the pretty girl, the other videos have horrible audio, this one's decent.

Hi Knotty,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions. When you say you're studying with Dave, are you taking actual lessons with him, or just working out of the book (or both)? I fear if you're actually working with him one on one regularly, that your experience may differ substantially from mine, which is of course just out of the book. But that said, I'm putting faith in the process, and just working through the lessons.

I'm also taking things a step further in some respects: rather than using the included CD for accompanying material, I'm recording myself comping the chords to the two weekly tunes, and then playing over top of that. The chord voicings are not always possible on the guitar, so I'm being a bit more liberal there - depending on the situation, I may opt to play just the top three notes to get a rootless voicing (which is pretty hip anyway), or just fall back on a stock drop-2 voicing that I already know (a good example of this is the prevalence of the m6 chords in the songs - those are very tough, if not downright impossible, to play as is on the guitar, but the drop-2 versions are quite accessible and sound just as good).

I'm also writing down my master solo transcriptions in addition to learning how to sing over them, and then learning how to play the solos on my instrument from my transcription. I've got the first two Louis Armstrong transcriptions ("Struttin' With Some BBQ" and "The Last Time") on google-docs if anyone wants to take a look at them:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0...00Yjg0LWFiYzMtNThjYTY1NDZmY2Ey&hl=en
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id...00ZGI0LWFhNWEtNDE1MzczM2M2NDVh&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0...00YTZjLWI0MTQtZjRkOTkwYTRiMDM3&hl=en
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id...00NjcyLWE1ZjktYmM5ZTZkNWIwY2U3&hl=en

As for the Hanon exercises, they are not always easy on the guitar, but I'm doing them anyway, in all 12 keys. It certainly is good for my fingers.

I have another question. I've seen previous posts in this thread where people are talking about making their own compositions and arrangements. Is that part of the course? I'm not seeing it anywhere in the books.

Hey Jeff,

yes, I have a one on one every other Sunday.
We follow the course, but we do some things slightly differently.

For example, we don't practice the lines in 12 keys. Not that you shouldn't, but he doesn't really emphasize it.

And then, there's everything else.
We do composition early on. That's a great exercise prior to improvising. I've described it in the previous pages, if you want to check it out.
Also we do improvisations, for that, there's a path too.
And we do arrangements. We have a path for that too. Obviously, this would be very different on guitar ...

Knotty, what's your take on Skype lessons? Do you think they would be as effective as seeing him in person? I've been going through the lines in all 12 keys and it seems to take forever.

In some respects, guitarists have it easy when learning things in different keys compared to pianists - most of the chords, scales, arpeggios, and anything else that is pattern-based can be moved around the fretboard verbatim and instantly be in another key. As long as it doesn't include that pesky B string, of course. :-) Then the shapes/patterns change. So BPF, I feel your pain.

On the other hand, piano has advantages over guitar in a lot of ways. too. Guitarists as a group shriek and run away in horror when they encounter keys with more than one flat. Show them a bass clef and watch as their eyes glaze over. And because most notes in one octave can be played in up to 5 different places on the guitar, it makes picking a particular voicing a real thinking exercise.

Choose your poison, I guess. :-)

Anyway, I'll be spending most of the summer cranking through the Book 1 exercises (or at least as many as I can get through - I estimate I will finish 1-10 by the beginning of the fall semester). I'm glad to hear others have had success in working through this method.

BPF,

The skype lesson format works perfect for me. It's very convenient.
If I lived in NY, I would take in person, but I don't think it matters that much.

The limitation is playing together at the same time. You can't really do that.
But what we do often is he'll play a line to set the feel of what I'm supposed to do, then I will take the next line. Dave is really good at putting himself at your level. When he shows something, he doesn't bury it under all sorts of embellishments that you could only dream of playing. That makes it easy to understand.

Again, you don't have to do the lines in 12 keys.

Hi Knotty
Thanks for the amazing Coltrane modal interpretation. I especially like the way the modes lead back to the original My Favorite Things melody in 4:35 and 9:20.
Would you say that Brad Mehldau is tonal ?

FatJeff
Thank you for uploading the transcriptions for the Louis Armstrong songs. I slow the Armstrong songs down on Transcribe but because I’m new to jazz, I can now check all my phrasing back to the transcriptions you’ve provided. I hope you’re having as much fun singing them as I am.

Re compositions, it was the general fun and positive vibe of the JOI course and the analysis of artists’ songs on Dave Frank’s masterclasses which inspired me to do them.

Bluespianofan
Because I don’t do the JOI line, I find the length of each practice session very manageable.

Sorry, guys--I meant to say that just the JOI Solo pattern (not the JOI line) is taking me awhile to get through. At 88 bpm it still takes me a couple of minutes on each key to play it smoothly (because my chord changes aren't fast or smooth) I'm still on Lesson 1!

Hi Bluespianofan
I am VERY sorry. I didn't have my book in front of me at my computer. I meant the JOI Solo Pattern the first exercise of each lesson.
You only have to worry about it when you have time.

You can move onto the next lesson if you are spending more than two and a half weeks per lesson, because one of the components of each lesson is to keep on revising previous tunes.

Are you finding that it is the JOI Solo Pattern that keeps you from moving onto Lesson 2 ?

Also for Lesson 3 I slowed down the jazz tune from 96 bpm to 80 bpm so that I could move on.
For Lesson 4 I slowed down the jazz tune from 80 bpm to 76 bpm so that I could move on.

Don't worry about perfection. As Dave said, it is the learning process which is important.

Yes, it's just the Solo Pattern that's holding me back--I'm a bit of a perfectionist I guess...thanks for the encouragement.

I also meant the solo pattern. We don't do them.

I think it's great that you could transcribe to different keys at 88 bpm for Lesson 1.

Hmm, no wonder I am breezing through it - I am just playing the solo line by itself, not the chords (kind of hard to do both at the same time on the guitar). I didn't think about that aspect for pianists! I do get exposure to those chords though, since the pattern is taken out of the last tune in the lesson.