It has been a goal of mine for a few years now to personally learn how to improvise better. I have been taking some online courses in improvisation recently, but most of them emphasize playing chord progressions from the very beginning. After a while of playing chords, it seemed like I was getting a bit stuck. Of course playing chord progressions and understanding underlying harmonies is important, but the enthusiastic and engaging Brian Chung took a bit of a different approach in his presentation. In his book and at the conference, Brian starts improvising using one note in the Right Hand (RH) with the clever name of "Ode to Mr. Morse", while the left hand keeps a steady beat of one note. He then adds notes gradually to his improvisations using upper and lower neighbors, the three note waltz, the six note sojourn, etc. It was a wonderfully different way to approach improvisation and I wound up buying his book (after the conference because it was sold out by the time I got to the Alfred booth) and have started using some of his ideas immediately. I am using his idea of playing the tonic in the Left Hand (LH) with a steady beat of quarter notes in 4/4 or 3/4 and then have the (RH) improvise using the scale while keeping the scale fingering pattern intact. Of course, then you need to reverse the hands so the RH is playing the quarter notes and the LH is improvising on the scale using the correct fingering pattern. It is a wonderfully different way to practice scales, improvise, and have a lot of fun, you could even put a backing track on for a metronome.
This particular presentation was absolutely jam packed with people. Dr. Henry had not been given a large enough presentation room at the conference, so the audience was sitting in the chairs, sitting on the floor, standing at the back, and maybe into the hall. I'm not sure that his presentation was overly full because Randall Faber's presentation (scheduled for the same time slot) got cancelled, but I was glad I got there early and had a good seat. I think the reason I liked his presentation so much was not because it had earth-shattering new ways to practice, but more because it was such a logical, informative presentation on how to practice well. He had a lot of good advice along with well-constructed graphical presentations on how time should be spent while practicing. Some of my favorite bits from his presentation include:
* You must have a strong work ethic and commitment
* There is no room for self-indulgence or impulsiveness. You grow with resistance and doing what is hard or what you hate.
* You need a positive belief in yourself and an ability to learn quickly.
* Identify your own BS
* Repetition is the mother of all learning. We are what we practice.
* You need to break your piece into manageable practice chunks that don't last longer than 10 minutes and then do spaced repetition. (He had great graphics and a very complete explanation about how we learn)
* Dumb the piece down until you can play it well at speed from the beginning
* Knowing your key, harmony, and chords can help you learn a piece more quickly
* Practice in a way that flows like oil. (paraphrasing Mozart)
* Practice from memory starting from day one when learning a piece
* Focus on the process not the result
* Write stuff down, especially what made your practicing work
Choosing a favorite presentation for Monday was a very close call. I attended a session by one of my favorite Aussie music teachers of all time, Samantha Coates. She had a fabulous and very funny presentation about the seven deadly performance sins. However, I think I learned a bit more from Jeremy's presentation because I'm not so knowledgeable about jazz playing and traditions. I especially liked that he uploaded his presentation to his website. Here's the link. He told us that when he adjudicates students at festivals and competitions, he often wishes that classically trained piano teachers knew a bit more about jazz and he hoped his presentation would help teachers understand jazz traditions more. I really liked his "jazz syllables" that he used to help sing typical jazz rhythms like "doo -dit" and "doo -vah" because as he pointed out, jazz is an aural art form. I also liked that he talked about chord voicings in jazz, because I have always found it a bit confusing. I'm going to have a closer look at his presentation and try the chord voicings at home to better my understanding. It was also very impressive that when none of his audio examples in his presentation worked - he just demonstrated his point ad hoc at the piano - that was fun and impressive to hear. Anyway, the five main points from his presentation were as follows:
1) Swing is really about articulation, not rhythm.
2) Chord Symbols give information, not instructions.
3) You can’t learn jazz like you learn classical music.
4) “Comping” isn’t random…it just sounds that way.
5) Learning to Improvise ≠ Learning Scales
You always hear that Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Clementi, etc. were great improvisors, but its always been a bit of a mystery to me whether they discovered improvisation on their own or had some sort of method to their approach. John Mortensen (who also has a lot of YouTube videos available on different piano pedagogy topics) has an upcoming book from Oxford Press entitled, "The Pianist’s Guide to Classical Improvisation". His presentation was very well attended and he was mobbed afterward by college age students attending the conference eager to ask him questions about his classical improvisations. John opened his presentation with an impressive classical improvisation which made you wonder what the great composers would have made of his performance. John backed up his performance with some great explanations of how musicians of baroque and classical eras would have learned to improvise. According to John, its not a matter of genius, but merely a matter of pedagogy. He proceeded to explain the rule of the octave, which is a system for harmonizing a moving, stepwise bass line. In its simplest form, the rule is a set of inversions that work over a scale in the bass. He also explained that most musicians of the time were working musicians, not academics, so a lot of this method was not written down, but merely taught through rote learning and practice. It was a fascinating session and I look forward to his book being published. His website has a lot of online resources and is definitely worth checking out.
I've been slowly moving away from method books as the foundation of my teaching and this presentation provided additional insight into gradually moving students away from method books. Dr. Sherman talked about a four stage transition process:
1. Baby Milk Stage - Method book only
2. Supplemental Stage - Method book + L1 Repertoire
3. Complementary Stage - Method book + L2 Repertoire
4. Elemental Stage - Method book + L3 Repertoire
Dr. Sherman used a lot of Gurlitt in her examples of beginning repertoire because there are many short pieces available that contain good pedagogical topics. I have played some Gurlitt repertoire previously and knew he wrote a lot of teaching pieces, but I was unaware that he had so many short beginner level pieces that could be used as supplemental repertoire. I also thought it interesting that Dr. Sherman taught that you first depress a key using a foundational gesture, that is a "rocking" motion - down and in. This is interesting to me because it means that from the very beginning you are teaching horizontal movement into the keyboard as well as a forward wrist motion. This leads naturally to a two note slur and other keyboard motions.
