�Jazz piano students� who don�t listen to jazz...

[Jazz+]

I get dozens of calls from lapsed piano students whove had classical when younger more or less given up that route, and dont really play much if at all anymore who call me and say they want jazz piano lessons. I asked him who do they like, and they cant really come up with a single name. Then I ask them do you listen to jazz music. They typically answer no not really I like everything. Ive had this case so many times I couldnt begin to count where they come they last a few weeks they lose all interest and I feel like Ive failed. Im thinking I should Create a link where they can go and listen to some of the greats and then report back to me which ones they liked and which ones they didnt and so on. Then we can begin lessons. What do you think?

[BbAltered]

I am guessing the reason why they start lessons and then stop has little to do with how much or how little jazz piano they listen to.

 

Sure: go ahead and create a website with links to jazz piano greats if you think that is a useful teaching device. I myself doubt it will help much with student retention.

 

I am a dedicated piano player, and after deciding I want lessons, I have tried out three different teachers (over a period of 6 months) and am still deciding if I want to stay with the third or try a fourth. I will seek out a new teacher when I feel the one I am working with is limited to teaching only what they know and cannot teach me what I want to know - not because I am unfamiliar with great piano players.

 

[yannis D]

HI Jazz+

I think the problem is not about jazz students but about young musicians in general.

Younger generations listen to everything and... nothing. They download for no money (od for cheap) the entire repertoire of great artists, groups and composer, but they never really "listen" to anything. They are happy having quantities in their ipods/iphones but they rarely have the urge to listen and re-listen to the music that attracts them.

So i guess your role as a teacher becomes more and more difficult every day.

A link would help the small amount of them who really want to learn the craft - i think that would be good to try this option. Finally, if 10-15% of your students arrive to learn the craft, love the music, learn jazz history etc, that would be a great achievement for both of you

Good luck

[marczellm]

I used to be one of those students a few years ago. I wasn't loving jazz music specifically, but there seemed (and still seems) no other way to learn music that's not classical and not folk.

 

I went to a jazz teacher that had the same problem you have. He also seemed to assume that since I asked for jazz lessons I want to become the best jazz pianist on the planet. The second solo he had me transcribe was Keith Jarrett. I even lost track of the beat after a few bars... No wonder I left him.

 

I can try to describe what I was searching for back then. Find out what kind of music they like. It might be pop or Dream Theater or movie soundtracks. Then try to find common ground between that music and jazz. Maybe through fusion. I don't know if this works, it's just been a wish of mine.

 

If you have casual players that don't want to become musicians, when they ask for jazz piano lessons it might mean that they would like to be able to play a few showtunes and the oldest most famous standards.

[ElmerJFudd]

I get dozens of calls from lapsed piano students whove had classical when younger more or less given up that route, and dont really play much if at all anymore who call me and say they want jazz piano lessons. I asked him who do they like, and they cant really come up with a single name. Then I ask them do you listen to jazz music. They typically answer no not really I like everything. Ive had this case so many times I couldnt begin to count where they come they last a few weeks they lose all interest and I feel like Ive failed. Im thinking I should Create a link where they can go and listen to some of the greats and then report back to me which ones they liked and which ones they didnt and so on. Then we can begin lessons. What do you think?

 

Young people don't listen to jazz (or any other style) because unless they have had someone to turn them on to it, they are going to miss it entirely in popular culture with the exception of fleeting moments (like crossover classics, holiday music, movie soundtracks). But they want to learn to play piano, right? And given the choice they go - well, I tried traditional/classical lessons and didn't succeed, so maybe I'll give jazz a try. Now, failing at something for lack of effort and/or practice doesn't bode well for a new teacher, but you never know. I'd say having a great or perhaps the right teacher makes as big a difference as the method or repertoire. And of course, different approaches work better for this or that person (we've talked about eyes, ears, technique, methods, books, etc. a LOT here).

 

That said - hell yes. You should create a youtube account for your students and make a required playlist for them. Youtube is available everywhere that has an internet connection and runs on every device I can think of.

 

Now here's a more important question - what will you put on this playlist? Let's start a must listen list for newcomers to jazz and jazz piano.

 

[video:youtube]

 

[video:youtube]

 

[David R]

I've had an increasing amount of students who do not know what they're listening to, jazz or otherwise. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, the advent of Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube playlists that run on an endless loop without announcements has led to a glut of passive, instead of active, listening. I had one student in particular cite the tenth minute of a two-hour YouTube "jazz piano to study to" playlist that was generic, uncredited instrumental music that Shazam couldn't even recognize. I had to tell him to try again but at least it gave me a (tiny, tiny) window of where he wanted to go.

 

I have no problem teaching any style of music as long as the student can tell me where their interests lie. I've used everything from Horace Parlan to Robert Glasper to teach. While a lot of teenagers will say they listen to "everything" because they don't want to cop to listening to something potentially uncool, if they can't name me an artist or track in their music library then I know we have a very uphill path ahead.

[The Real MC]

My piano lessons got me into Ragtime by age 12 due to the popularity of "The Sting". By then Mom had records by Herb Albert, Chuck Mangione, Burt Bacharach. That was the extent of jazz I was exposed to. They found me a piano teacher to teach me jazz. He didn't accept just any students - I couldn't name a renowned jazz pianist by then, but when I played "Maple Leaf Rag" that won him over. He got me into advanced classical, jazz, lots of scales and theory. He was a big fan of Bill Evans - while I never latched onto Evans I did like jazz from the golden era. I heard Chick Corea through him and really got to like fusion.

[Jazz+]

While a lot of teenagers will say they listen to "everything" because they don't want to cop to listening to something potentially uncool, if they can't name me an artist or track in their music library then I know we have a very uphill path ahead.

.

 

I would also include most adults who are not musos.

[niacin]

When I started jazz piano lessons I cited OP. I'd heard Night Train and some other stuff. Teacher said ok, you need to understand where Oscar came from. So I started out with classic stride and a few Ragtime things for good measure. What I really loved about Oscar's playing was actually what I thought were blues influences. Later I realized that while that's partly true, it's where he integrates blues with some gospel figures that really hits the spot. E.g. Georgia from the same album. He uses a classic gospel walking figure a few times along with some tasty blues things. What I really wanted was some New Orleans blues piano and some genuine gospel stuff. Took me the best part of 30 years to work that out, lol.

[MathOfInsects]

Probably half my studio is adult students, maybe a little more. Enough that I can make a few generalizations that might be relevant. The biggest one is that adult learners are almost always addressing some unfinished business, consciously or not. Whatever that business is, is the "third" person in the room in all my adult-learners' lessons.

 

This manifests in a couple of ways. Sometimes, an adult student will come in claiming they barely play, and it turns out they could probably go take some gigs in relatively short order.

 

Sometimes, they come in with no real experience, and yet are still completely unforgiving of any slight "mistake" or gradualness in their learning.

 

And sometimes they just have a sense that music might be "the thing" to address whatever crossroads or newly found free time they might have now. Those are tough ones, because every note has the weight of personal "validation" in some way.

 

Anyway. My sense is that when adults call you for "jazz piano" lessons, all they mostly mean is that they want to be able to improvise a bit over changes, because for them, that's what they envision as their coolest musical self. It's not so much that they heard an Oscar Peterson record and wanted some entre into his style and harmonic sense. For most people, improvisation of any kind is witchcraft. They want the smallest bit of that magic--and have had many years to become convinced that it's beyond them in some way.

 

This is especially true for people who burned out playing classical music as kids (which is actually how you describe the people calling you). But it's also true for those folks who sort of always wanted to be able to improvise, but thought they weren't up to it, so stayed away from lessons.

 

So what they're coming to us for in those cases isn't Oscar Peterson boot camp, it's some "way in" to a concept that is completely mysterious to them. For these students, the idea is to set them up for small successes very early: get some root-position chords under their hands, and put two or three or four notes that they choose from the relevant home scale (even if just C) over those chords, including some that are going to sound a little widgy to them (for example, F over the C chord, or B over the F chord), which their ear is going to tell them sounds off, even if they don't know why.

 

Within the first couple of weeks (depending on the student) I will have students write a melody at home over a single chord, or else a simple progression (I-IV-V, or ii-V-I, or I-vi-ii-V-I, or I-V-vi-IV, and so on, depending what's come up at their initial lessons). Just a couple of measures is fine. In order to do this, they have to sit and home and "improvise" until they hit on a melody they are willing to bring in to their piano teacher. Then we do a bunch of different things with that little melody, depending on the student and goal--transpose, or vary note-value, or add color tones, or revoice the LH, and so on.

 

These are "achievable" steps very early in the process, and they let students know pretty quick that the "magic" is at least partially made of a couple essential building blocks, and that they can learn those building blocks.

 

If I had to guess, I would say that those first few weeks after which your cold-call "jazz piano" students quit, may be a result of aiming too high in the level of "jazz" being conveyed. These students--as adult learners--may already think this ability is out of reach or comprehension for them, and aiming above their heads is confirming for them that they are not up to it. Keep the targets small and achievable at the beginning, and remember that for most learners, playing a single non-composed note is a massive leap out of their comfort-zone. That phone call they make when they call, was likely pretty hard to make. I always find it's best to "bring them in" first, before bringing out any "Whiplash" moves.

 

 

[I-missRichardTee]

Probably half my studio is adult students, maybe a little more. Enough that I can make a few generalizations that might be relevant. The biggest one is that adult learners are almost always addressing some unfinished business, consciously or not. Whatever that business is, is the "third" person in the room in all my adult-learners' lessons.

 

This manifests in a couple of ways. Sometimes, an adult student will come in claiming they barely play, and it turns out they could probably go take some gigs in relatively short order.

 

Sometimes, they come in with no real experience, and yet are still completely unforgiving of any slight "mistake" or gradualness in their learning.

 

And sometimes they just have a sense that music might be "the thing" to address whatever crossroads or newly found free time they might have now. Those are tough ones, because every note has the weight of personal "validation" in some way.

 

Anyway. My sense is that when adults call you for "jazz piano" lessons, all they mostly mean is that they want to be able to improvise a bit over changes, because for them, that's what they envision as their coolest musical self. It's not so much that they heard an Oscar Peterson record and wanted some entre into his style and harmonic sense. For most people, improvisation of any kind is witchcraft. They want the smallest bit of that magic--and have had many years to become convinced that it's beyond them in some way.

 

This is especially true for people who burned out playing classical music as kids (which is actually how you describe the people calling you). But it's also true for those folks who sort of always wanted to be able to improvise, but thought they weren't up to it, so stayed away from lessons.

 

So what they're coming to us for in those cases isn't Oscar Peterson boot camp, it's some "way in" to a concept that is completely mysterious to them. For these students, the idea is to set them up for small successes very early: get some root-position chords under their hands, and put two or three or four notes that they choose from the relevant home scale (even if just C) over those chords, including some that are going to sound a little widgy to them (for example, F over the C chord, or B over the F chord), which their ear is going to tell them sounds off, even if they don't know why.

 

Within the first couple of weeks (depending on the student) I will have students write a melody at home over a single chord, or else a simple progression (I-IV-V, or ii-V-I, or I-vi-ii-V-I, or I-V-vi-IV, and so on, depending what's come up at their initial lessons). Just a couple of measures is fine. In order to do this, they have to sit and home and "improvise" until they hit on a melody they are willing to bring in to their piano teacher. Then we do a bunch of different things with that little melody, depending on the student and goal--transpose, or vary note-value, or add color tones, or revoice the LH, and so on.

 

These are "achievable" steps very early in the process, and they let students know pretty quick that the "magic" is at least partially made of a couple essential building blocks, and that they can learn those building blocks.

 

If I had to guess, I would say that those first few weeks after which your cold-call "jazz piano" students quit, may be a result of aiming too high in the level of "jazz" being conveyed. These students--as adult learners--may already think this ability is out of reach or comprehension for them, and aiming above their heads is confirming for them that they are not up to it. Keep the targets small and achievable at the beginning, and remember that for most learners, playing a single non-composed note is a massive leap out of their comfort-zone. That phone call they make when they call, was likely pretty hard to make. I always find it's best to "bring them in" first, before bringing out any "Whiplash" moves.

 

 

Pain in my behind as you often are, for me anyway... I must congratulate you on this surpassingly excellent advice/post. Well done. I nominate this post as best of the year.

[o0Ampy0o]

I would consider that many do not even know what "jazz" is.

 

Today words are misused or hijacked and acquire entirely different meanings and contexts. A misused word may be better known for the more commonly misused definition by many young people.

 

In the guitar world you see this with "clown burst" being applied to every cherry burst finish instead of only the garish disasters.

[I-missRichardTee]

I would consider that many do not even know what "jazz" is.

 

Today words are misused or hijacked and acquire entirely different meanings and contexts. A misused word may be better known for the more commonly misused definition by many young people.

 

In the guitar world you see this with "clown burst" being applied to every cherry burst finish instead of only the garish disasters.

 

True, both points, more than untrue.

[Strays Dave]

 

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, the advent of Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube playlists that run on an endless loop without announcements has led to a glut of passive, instead of active, listening. I had one student in particular cite the tenth minute of a two-hour YouTube "jazz piano to study to" playlist that was generic, uncredited instrumental music that Shazam couldn't even recognize. I had to tell him to try again but at least it gave me a (tiny, tiny) window of where he wanted to go.

 

 

I agree strongly with this point regarding passive vs. active listening. I discovered the value of repeated listenings, and have never been a fan of the whole Pandora streaming formula. Repeated active (focused) listening can help with digesting the content of what one is listening to.

 

My jazz piano heroes in my late teenage years were Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk, discovered in used record bins at a local flea market. Rather than genericizing "jazz", people should discover musicians they relate to.

 

The good news in these times is that virtually anything can be found on YouTube. But aspiring musicians should be engaged in the search for what appeals to them. A musician without this curiosity is missing an important part of the creative process.

 

 

[3rdAct]

It seems like, today, "jazz" has come to mean any mostly-instrumental music. For example, under the category "JAZZ/STANDARDS", SirusXM includes -- in addition to "Classic Jazz" -- "Smooth/Contemporary Jazz", "New Age", "Easy Listening", and "Show Tunes".

[Joe Muscara]

My view from 10,000 feet on what I'm seeing in this thread, based on my own experiences and knowing the kinds of keyboard players that hang around here.

 

I think what you might be seeing is the difference between us OCD types who dive deep into something that interests us and the rest of the world. Many of us obsess over gear, others here into players. For many, one hot track by a new-to-us player leads to another by her/him and another, and another. That's great, and it can lead to great in-depth knowledge about that artist, what she/he played, and more as I'm sure you know. But what of those who don't obsess in that way? I don't know. But surely, they are out there and can be great musicians too, probably even great jazz players. I'm not a teacher, so I can't say since I haven't seen that path myself. Most of the stories I've seen/heard/read about great musicians that I remember did involve some obsession that inspired them, but I can't imagine that's been the case every time.

 

There is another idea in this thread that's worth pointing out and that is "what is jazz?" I've often heard people describe their own music as "jazz" or "jazzy" along with other genres or descriptors and then thought to myself, "jazz? I don't hear it." Maybe it was because they used a chord bigger than a triad or seventh.

 

Then the question becomes, can you teach this person something they want to learn? Does their definition of jazz line up with yours? Can your teaching method or style work with someone who doesn't dig deep into jazz like you do?

 

But don't mind me. The few times I've tried to "teach" someone something musical it's been a failure. Maybe I should try someone that will listen, and not my wife!

[tfort]

I think MoI is right on. Sounds like your students want to express themselves a bit at the piano and were slowly turned off by the rigidity of traditional classical music instructional methods. To give them the ability to play songs they want to learn, they need to learn chords and be given some direction in how to begin to improvise. They need to develop familiarity with root position chords, inversions, some seventh chords, and how chord progressions and song structure fit together underneath a melody. For improvising, maybe start with 12 bar blues and the blues scale in a couple of keys.

 

I think this is actually the biggest problem with piano instruction today without chords students cant learn to play versions of the songs they want to play, and cant improvise at all, so get stuck at the mistakes they make when trying to play a piece perfectly. People want to be musicians, even at a rudimentary level, rather than just have some pieces memorized by rote.

 

Rather than videos/albums of jazz greats playing different styles, I think what would most help your students articulate what they want to learn would be links to various people playing somewhat jazz-like music, such as cocktail jazz, straight versions of the great American songbook, show tunes, jazzy new age, Dixieland, big band, etc. Or have them bring in various examples of some pieces they like the sound of or that theyd like to learn. I think jazz piano or jazzy piano mean very different things than what we think of compared to people who cant identify any jazz pianists or dont actually listen to jazz.

 

 

[re Pete]

Way back I was told by a teacher you must have a listening program.

Some suggestions were mentioned and that was it. Went to library and discovered 'new music'. Great advice.

 

I tell students the same especially with easy internet. But most young students I have are banned by parents. So I tell the parents what they should check out and leave it at that. They should listen with the kids at least.

 

In reality I think lot of kids are spoiled and too lazy.

[ElmerJFudd]

Perhaps spoiled and lazy - but as has been suggested, I think priorities have changed. In my experience the arts, music especially, are severely discouraged by parents for study in higher academia. This has been going on since 2008 - the events of which we all remember very well I am sure. They want to kids to play. But its a hobby, an enrichment, a give the kids something productive to do, get them off the iPad or Xbox, YouTube. They want them all to study engineering, coding, finance/business, doctors, lawyers, nurses all acceptable. Even the trades are discouraged where dad is a successful tradesman.

 

And honestly, there are tons of potential students who are completely satisfied learning one song at a time watching colored boxes fall from the sky and land on the keys you need to press.

[MathOfInsects]

I am going to be a gadfly and suggest that teachers who don't want to work with students at the student's level and point of entry, whatever it may be, might more properly be described as the spoiled and lazy ones. Yes, there is the conservatory model of mentorship seared into our consciousness because we are professional musicians. But statistically speaking, no one taking lessons is going to go on and become a professional musician. For virtually everyone we will teach, music is simply an activity just like Tai Kwan Do or photography. If it brings value to their lives, who are we to determine they are going about it all wrong? Our job is to get them in, one way or another. Imagine if your (say) yoga instructor spent the whole time chiding you for not approaching your stretches with professional rigor, and then decided you were lazy and spoiled as a result.

 

We are gatekeepers. Whether our job is to bring people in or keep them out, is up to each of us individually. But I am of the belief there is room in the club for all types...

[bfields]

MoI describes me as a teen/young adult pretty well. Improvisation was a mysterious superpower, so "jazz piano lessons" pretty much sounded like "superhero lessons", it sounded impossible but hey maybe knowing some Chopin already would give me a leg up?

 

The ideas he suggest would have worked pretty well for me. I also needed to learn to listen. Something a teacher had me do that helped was charting out arrangements: not transcribing changes yet, just counting bars and choruses and such and listening for where the head is, the solos, other variations of textures. Jazz is a good place to start since so much is just blues or aaba repeated N times.

 

And then I needed to learn how to pick out the melody, the baseline, then guess chord qualities, etc.

 

And fundamentally I needed to get the idea that I could learn to play (almost) anything if I wanted to badly enough, I didn't need someone to teach it to me, I just needed to break it down into pieces and listen really hard.

 

For jazz specifically, I wasn't ready. I had a vague idea what jazz was but wasn't a real fan yet. You should be able to hum your favorite solos. Some listening suggestions would have helped, but mainly my ears just needed a few years to soak it all in....

[ElmerJFudd]

I am going to be a gadfly and suggest that teachers who don't want to work with students at the student's level and point of entry, whatever it may be, might more properly be described as the spoiled and lazy ones. Yes, there is the conservatory model of mentorship seared into our consciousness because we are professional musicians. But statistically speaking, no one taking lessons is going to go on and become a professional musician. For virtually everyone we will teach, music is simply an activity just like Tai Kwan Do or photography. If it brings value to their lives, who are we to determine they are going about it all wrong? Our job is to get them in, one way or another. Imagine if your (say) yoga instructor spent the whole time chiding you for not approaching your stretches with professional rigor, and then decided your were lazy and spoiled as a result.

 

We are gatekeepers. Whether our job is to bring people in or keep them out, is up to each of us individually, but I am of the belief there is room in the club for all types...

 

Quite true. Quite true. As much as anything our job is to create fans of music, concert goers, and recreational music makers.

[jjo]

I'm a adult, classically trained as a kid, who called a teacher 10 years or so ago to learn jazz. I'm can't directly answer the OP's question because I knew what jazz was, having listened for 30 years or more. But I can attest to the tremendous need for flexibility when teaching adults. Just a few examples from my teacher:

1. Many, many weeks I would come in with little or no practice. She never flinches, and just figures some skill we can work on.

2. Some lessons we don't work on a skill so much as listen to solos or something else and she explains what she really likes about it. I love those sessions.

3. Sometimes I bring in a piece I've heard or something else that intrigues me, and she will immediately start diving into that with me.

 

As you can see, finding out what I want, and being flexible, have been the key to our 10 year relationship, which has been extremely successful.

[Docbop]

Jazz is more than other music has to me learned but listening and listen and listening. Swing can't be notated because the real feel is in the minutia of that Afro-Cuban clave that it came from. School try to codify teaching Jazz teach rules and music isn't about rules or labels it about individual sound. The legend Charlie Parker didn't know theory even Dizzy Gillespie who knew Parker better than anyone else said that. Those like Dizzy who were close to or heard Parker a lot said Parker just had this incredible intuition about things that worked. So as Jerry Bergonzi Jazz sax player says the ten most important thing to learning to improvise the first nine are listening.

 

Now having a good teacher will help a student get started, but they need to know what Jazz artists the student as been listening to and wants to emulate. You learn Jazz they way your learned to speak as a child by immersion you listen and listen to the sounds and you start to imitate them. Like learning to talk you start learn words and sentences to build vocabulary. A teacher can help you with learning common labels the sounds you are internalizing so you can communicate with others. Also best way to learn Jazz is by learning tunes and studying the tunes and listening to how different musicians played them. Boredom is a good teacher in Jazz some of the player would work on one tune for a year or more in their early learning. They talk about playing a melody till so bored with it they would start looking for ways to make it more interesting. They'd do the same with the harmony. Then they'd start playing the tune in different meters, different harmony, play it with a pedaled bass. Really turn a tune inside and out. If you do this to a tune that has a lot of the common chord movements you've now learned how to play a whole lot of other tunes by learning one in detail.

 

Now this is all about learning real Jazz which is an approach to playing. A lot of people who say they play Jazz are just playing the Great American songbook tunes and rolling their eighth notes and adding color tones to the chords, that's Jazz the style, that's not playing real Jazz.

 

So I'm with the OP someone wanting Jazz lessons when they call to arrange their first lesson should be able to say who've they been listening too and who they are developing a taste for.

[El Lobo]

Sounds like you need to find out what they mean by jazz, what they listen to, and what they want to be able to play. My guess is what others have said here about what these adult learners are looking for: how to play some changes, how to improvise over changes, and how to play and improvise over some music that they're familiar with. I'd ask them what music they listen to, not what jazz they listen to. Then as others have said, start with the very simplest building blocks and see how much the learner knows already and how much of next steps they can absorb.

[Al Quinn]

Ask them more specially what theyd like to learn and what they hope to get out the lessons. Then give them what they want. If you decide listening is required in order to achieve their goals then give them a listening assignment. If they want to learn jazz but dont listen Id get them started on the blues first.

[Ross Ward]

For better or worse, my primary gig since I've been playing keys has been church music, which anyone will attest is not that difficult, musically speaking. For the styles of music that I like to listen to (country, R&B, soul, etc), I have been told by numerous people that a lot of it is based on jazz theory (country music itself, maybe not so much, but there's lots of jazz-influenced gospel-style playing in country that you could say is built on that). So, while I've never been particularly interested in jazz, I do see how attempting to learn some of it would be beneficial to what I want to play.

 

Not sure if this is the perspective of any of your students, but it's one I haven't seen mentioned here.

[SeaGtGruff]

I would consider that many do not even know what "jazz" is.

 

This is pretty much what I was going to suggest or more specifically, that they probably equate jazz with improvisation. They cant read music very well, or else doing so just dont appeal to them, so they dont want to know how to play written music. What they want is to be able to have someone hand them a sheet of music consisting of chords and not those funny alphanumeric chords, mind you, with mathematical things like 7 and 9 and 11 and 13 in their names, but decent law-abiding major and minor chords and for them to be able to make stuff up using the chord progressions, the beat, and jazz.

[marino]

Very interesting discussion! As a long-time jazz teacher, I find reading your experiences very instructive, and of course I can relate with many of them.

 

It's absolutely true that until 25 years ago or so, people used to come to you already motivated by a big love for the music, and wanted to learn the techniques because they wanted to experiment the freedom of improvisation.

But there were always exceptions: A typical one is the classical-trained pianist, who wants to see what's beyond the slavery of the written page, thinking something like, "I'm going to play a bit of jazz, playing those nice swing rhythms and having a lot of fun". Then, they'd be shocked when they discovered that they couldn't improvise a few bars with a steady tempo, or keep a steady structure. Jazz harmony also will make them frustrated; they usually study classical harmony without giving it much importance, and now they realize that they simply know little about musical structures. The worst cases also have a problem with making their own music; in their subconscious, they'd need written permission from Beethoven, their teacher(s), and their *parents*.

Another exception used to be the "pop" musician who has (usually) a good ear, but has a resistance to the use of written music, simply because he's not used to it. These cases are generally easier to treat.

 

But even within those exceptions, most aspiring jazz student were at least concert-goers, with some aural knowledge of the jazz world.

 

Today, the situation is totally different, as many of you have remarked; many students want to learn jazz because maybe somebody told them that jazz harmony gives a larger vocabulary to write your own music (which is of course true)... or simply, they want to explore some unknown musical territory. This does *not* imply a previous knowledge of the jazz sound, history, or genres. So many old-school teachers were taken by surprise; they didn't know how to approach those, let's say, less-motivated type of student.

 

I must say that after a period of adjustement, I'm not against this 'new' kind of teacher/pupil relationship; after all, the role of a teacher is to identify the students' needs, and build a learning path accordingly.

Of course, if the student is intelligent, he will realize very soon that to reach the higher levels of musicianship, he has to work really hard and with due energy/concentration; at that point, it will be up to *him* (not the teacher) to decide whether to try becoming "good", or to settle for less stellar goals.

 

I'd like to relate two stories, referred to two people who I had as students in recent years:

 

- A grown man, with a love for jazz which I could almost describe as desperate. He knows jazz history very well, all the important styles and musicians, and has some time to study at home. Also, over the years he has developed a decent technique. Only problem, he's incapable to concentrate, both during lessons and when practicing at home. I have tried every trick in my (quite large) book, but he just seem to lack the "performing" mentality. He seems to prefer *discussing* music rather than trying to practice it. Maybe I should have given up after a while, but he's also a lovable person and he got quite attached to my lessons, so I suffered for *four years* trying to make him improve at least a little bit, then I finally found the courage to stop. I consider him my only total failure as a teacher.

 

- A young man, with a few classical lessons as his background, an ear for pop songs, and an almost total ignorance about, well, just every genre of music. When I asked him what jazzers he liked, he couldn't come up with one name. Maybe Miles Davis? Louis Armstrong? Pat Metheny? Michel Bublè? Some Blues? Blank stares. Also, he works almost all day, so he has little time for piano practice.

I went, "ok, let's start from the beginning." I was swearing in all languages inside... but he listened very attentively. And to make a long story short, after a few months he had showed musicality, a great ear, a good sense of rhythm, a good technical attitude, an excellent melodic inventiveness, and a genuine love for jazz, which I'm most proud of, since I'm mostly responsible for that.

 

The moral? Every case is different. Every student has an history, a background, a character, different talents - and as long as he's a student, he should be treated accordingly.

 

 

 

[Markay]

Marino, you are a rare and gifted teacher to take the approach you do in tailoring learning to the identified skills, ability and knowledge of each student.