hi this is Brennan Lowe founder of jazz piano school and you are listening to
the musicality podcast ever wondered why some people seem to have a gift for
music have you ever wished that you could play by ear sing in tune improvise
and jam you're in the right place time to turn those wishes into reality
welcome to the musicality podcast with your host Christopher Sutton hi this is
Christopher founder of Musical U and welcome to the musicality podcast today
as part of improv month I'm speaking with Brendon Lowe the man behind
jazzpianoschool.com and the jazz piano school podcast jazz and piano can both
be intimidating things for aspiring musicians and they put front and center
their belief that anyone can learn as well as encouraging self-expression from
the outset so they're clearly a good match for our philosophy here at Musical U
jazz piano school has a unique approach to teaching and I was keen to
hear more about how it works and how improvisation factors in in this
conversation we talked about the astonishing number of jazz tunes
brendlin you could play after $12,000 of traditional jazz piano lessons and why
he was completely unsure how to improvise or be creative we talked about
the Lego bricks approach to improvising that makes it easy to learn step by step
and we talk about the unique four-step system they use at jazz piano school to
connect theory technique improv and repertoire at every stage of learning
this was a really fun conversation and Brendon has a great way of explaining
things that cut straight through any intimidation factor whether you have any
interest in jazz or in piano I think you're gonna dig this
my name is Christopher Sutton and this is the musicality podcast from Musical U
welcome to the show Brendan thank you for joining us today thanks for having
me so I'd love to start at the very beginning
and understand where you came from as a musician why did you first start
learning music and and what was that like for you yeah so my my family's been
into music my dad's a musician so we always had a piano around and I would
just go and sit down at the piano and start playing and so they thought well
why don't we just give him piano lessons so I started taking piano lessons when I
was a kid and I took classical lessons obviously just daily does it or doesn't
add a name that exercises but just beginner piano and so then it was about
I think I was like 10 or so I took classical lessons all the way up until
then I kept taking classical lessons but when I was 10
you know I was always trying to change my chains of music like change my Bach
change the Bach I was playing change the Mozart my teachers would always yell at
me you know I'll be like oh that sounds better when I put like this though but
it's like like I thought I could change Bach you know and so eventually I heard
my first jazz album that was a album with Oscar Peterson and Itzhak Perlman a
classical violinists like not the best jazz album to start off with but I mean
you know here in classical people make transitions as funny but I just
something changed me you know it was like it clicked when I heard that jazz
album and I was like this is what I need right I just needed to learn how to get
that feeling to recreate the feeling that I felt and I wanted to self express
myself you know through the music of improvisation like Oscar Peterson was
doing so at that point I continued to study classical music but then I started
taking jazz and so that's really where my kind of jazz and improv journey
started at that point and I eventually just kind of made the leap I stopped
taking classical music I've taken about 15 years of classic oh man I just slowly
dedicated myself to taking jazz very cool and roughly how old were you when
you heard that album do you think I think it was about 10 so just have been
like fifth fifth or sixth grade mm-hmm because I've been something yeah I've
been looking for something this fostro like I liked gospel but it was
just like I said I I was always sitting it down the piano playing my own stuff
like I wanted to do my own thing so I would put new notes in like the
Bach minuets and things like that finally I heard that album I was like
this is what I need interesting because I think to the
average 10 year old jazz tinkly jazz harmony is not the most accessible sound
you know I think a lot of people find they need to get a lot more experienced
in music before jazz really becomes accessible to them that's definitely
true yeah I don't think so because we had it playing a lot like my parents
would play jazz so my ear I think a lot a lot of people subconsciously as you're
growing up you know music is in your ear and you are taking it in whether you
understand it or not you're still listening to it you know some people
when they're in the womb they put the headphones on the you know their wife's
belly and stuff like that to play music which i think is definitely gonna do
that with my first child but yeah so I think I was taking it in and then when I
got to that point where I heard the album everything was just like clicked
you know so I think Oscars sound was what I had been looking for and he ended
up being my first like really true inspiration to jazz piano so that's
that's super interesting we talk about that sometimes at musical you as passive
ear training where you are developing your musical ear but you're not you know
doing exercises you're not consciously trying to do it but it sounds like you
were really immersed in that jazz tradition even before you ever thought
to play it yourself yeah yeah absolutely definitely listening to a lot of the
stuff and did you find it came easy to you you clearly had the instinct to
create and to experiment in music but at the same time you know jazz isn't the
most the simplest genre to dive into did you find that was an easy transition for
you did it all come all come directly to everyone listening out there this is my
story and absolutely not it did not come easy so it was one of the hot jazz piano
is freaking hard and this is what I tell this is how I tell my story on my
website piano school and to all my followers out
there but it's yeah it's one of the hardest things that I've ever done and
so just to give you guys a little teaser but when I started taking jazz piano I
took three years of jazz piano lessons because I want to learn jazz piano after
I'd heard that Oscar album I took a lesson a week for three years at 50 or
excuse me 70 bucks I think there's about 70 to 75 bucks a week so if you guys do
the math on that it's about eleven to twelve thousand dollars I'd spent on
jazz piano lessons for three years and if I asked you how many Tunes I learned
how how many Tunes would you guess I learned I guess hundreds right I learned
three Tunes so I had spent twelve thousand dollars on jazz piano lessons
and I learned three Tunes so it was at that point that obviously I felt very
disappointed frustrated you know embarrassed because I spent my parents
money like I have barely learned any tunes in the three turns I did learn
they were all I could play like I could play any other jazz tunes besides those
three tunes because I had copied what my teacher had showed me so my first
experience with jazz piano improvisation was I went into the lesson this is like
this would happen a lot but obviously the first time it was shocking to me so
I sat down at the piano I was I was trying to learn he would play he was
showing me the tune if I rebelled so I learned three tunes I mean this is burnt
into my memory if our belly yesterdays and beautiful loved those are the three
tunes I could play so he was showing me if I rebelled he was playing he was
playing all these cool licks and things like that and I was just like amazed
blown away like we all are when we're taking trying to learn improv and and
then finally he stops and it's about like half an hour and he's talking and
playing just for forever and I'm just like yeah yeah awesome I wouldn't learn
how to do this you know I'm so pumped I'm excited like so he stops and then
I'm like alright so when I go home what should I practice to to learn how
to do this like how do I learn this he's like weren't you just watching what I
showed you and I was like yeah but and he's like yeah I just showed you how to
do it and it was at that point I was just like
this is a mess you know so I had the only way I learned those three tunes I
could only play those three tunes because I had copied his arrangements of
what he had played so I could play those three tunes basically based off of what
he had played I didn't know how to flip to any other tunes to create what I
wanted to self express in jazz or how I wanted to recreate the sounds I felt
when I heard Oscar I could only play those three Tunes in nowhere was I even
close to jazz piano freedom or improvisational freedom and I just felt
spent $12,000 so was at that point that I was like man something something is
wrong here well and so for the kid who went into
jazz because he you know found himself experimenting with Bach that that sounds
incredibly painful yes it was it was very painful and so that's yeah that's
the pain point I try I mean I'm sure that I found I found to be true with
almost 99% of all jazz learners jazz people are trying to learn jazz and
that's why I started jazz piano school so preach that gap for us then you had
this terrible experience with a traditional approach to jazz education
and now you have a jazz piano school where you teach in a very different way
in a much more free and creative way what were the milestones or epiphanies
along the way that led to you understanding a better way to do this
yeah yeah that's a great question so basically I was determined a lot of
people will quit as I've seen you know in students and I this was like the only
thing I wanted in life so I just kept going you know I quit actually after
those first three years started studying again with a new teacher took another
two lessons spent a lot of money quit again started with a new teacher it's
just like a recycle you know and so I actually ended up growing a music school
just because I loved it I got my jazz performance degree but even after I
graduated from college it was still the same thing like I didn't feel that I
could I was content about my playing and I could sit down and truly self express
what I was trying to say through the music I didn't feel
like I had a plan of action I didn't feel like I had structure or
organization to continually get better and make progress at Jes you know
succeed so I started you know it was actually one day like I've spoken to you
about about language learning blocks because I I was in the French class and
I was taking French and basically I was thinking about learning languages and so
when you're learning a language in order if you are going to France and you want
to speak French you want to be able to speak freely
right you want to be able to just go there and be able to speak and express
yourself like have a conversation so if I was thinking about how my teacher was
teaching me these different sentences and so she was teaching us in a very
structured way she obviously when you learned in place you and your learning
verbs you're letting nouns pronouns your learning sentence structure but you're
learning those components so that you can speak freely in a conversation right
you're not really copying what she's saying so if she said for example I want
you to copy this sentence how do I find the nearest corner store right if you
copied that set and it's you're not going to understand that all the verbs
the nouns and pronouns that fit into the sentence if you go to France the only
sentence are gonna be able to say is how do you get to the nearest corner store
if you want to say how do you get to you wouldn't really understand how to add
anything onto the back end because you've only copied that one sentence
whereas if she's teaching us the word how to get to then we can start to
replace any nouns on the end of that to make multiple types of sentences
sentences leading to freedom in the language so you know long story short it
was from that that I started to create these what I call theory sequences where
we're taking a core theory tool and moving it through these building blocks
and fitting it into a jazz sentence that basically leads someone to learn a core
jazz theory tool like improvisation and things like that to start to create jazz
piano freedom and I vowed to teach all my students with this method because it
started to help me so much to actually make more progress with my own
developments and like the next three to six months after my epiphany then I had
the past 10 years I just skyrocketed my improvement and I got to the point where
I was freely expressing myself due to the work I'd put in through the
structure and development of these proven language learning blocks so I to
teach all my students with structure organization and direction
not with generalities not with the traditional methods of I'm gonna show
you you copy me just listen go listen to more jazz and you'll figure it out like
these are all the things I would hear when I was a kid you know just use your
ear and you'll get it like no that's no and that's so I just to say yeah just to
say some things a lot of the traditional methods like you brought up before too
is that those things do obviously come in and play I'm not saying that copying
links and things like that isn't good for a person's improvement but when
you're first starting I truly believe nailing down in a structured manner
these proven learning language blocks that fit into jazz it's going to build
your foundation and then lead you to the point we were able to use different
types of textures and structures that people have in order to fit that into
your playing at a later point of your progression mm-hmm well I think your
your four-step framework for teaching jazz piano it's definitely one of the
most distinctive things about jazz piano school and I'd love to just unpack that
a little bit you mentioned it in passing there yeah can you explain what those
four steps are because I think it's it's really elegant the way you link up
theory and improv and repertoire and you know that's not something that a lot of
people experience in their music learning it tends to all be a bit
disjointed or scattered right yeah so basically the best way to describe this
is if you are building a house right or you want to build something so a lot of
jazz classical is a different kind of beats because we have the music in front
of us right and jazz our goal is to sit down and freely express ourselves
through the music with no music that makes sense right we want to express
ourselves freely through the music with no music but in classical you put the
music in front of you you read it you study it everything's right there so
with jazz right when we're building our house our blueprint is our final product
that we want to get to so if that's the house
the blueprints in jazz are jazz fake books right the charts jazz charts are
basically our blueprints they're the structure they're telling us what we
need to go or we need to play you know what we can do here's the melody most
people start with the blueprint but they have no tools to build the house so you
can have a blueprint of a million dollar mansion but if you go to build that
million dollar mansion without tools it's absolutely impossible right so the
tools that I teach in jazz piano school gets you to look at any blueprint any
jazz chart and you will freely be able to build any jazz chart you want or play
right you can play any gesture you want because you have the tools to do that so
if I break down the theory the theory sequence I call them in jazz piano
school we take a theory tool so that can be anything and for if some examples
could be seven chords it could be triads major triads minor triads it could be
any sort of scale any sort of theory tool that has like a purpose right in
music so and again relating this value I use this analogy a lot just the
construction analogy if we have a hymn or write if you have a tool that is a
hammer like a 7th chord or something like that just because I have a hammer
doesn't mean like I know how to use it doesn't mean I know how to freely use it
doesn't mean I know what its purpose is for like a lot of people there's two
sides to a hammer so you know you hit stuff on the one end of the hammer it
doesn't necessarily know what someone knows or doesn't it doesn't mean that
someone does knows what the back end of the hammer is for right so the first
thing in the theory sequence is that you need to understand the total
functionality of a theory tool so like what is its purpose so a 7th chord right
you need to understand what the purpose of a 7th chord is or a major seventh
chord or triad right once we understand that that we know the functionality of
that tool then we progress to our second step in the theory sequence which I call
technique so once I have a hammer and I know what I can do with a ham
I need to practice using my hammer like hitting nails like actually hitting it
because I could be terrible at doing that right I could miss I can hit my
finger we don't want to do that right so I take my theory tool it's playing major
triads and I can practice that in a number of different ways now just to let
you know there's no materials out there for these exercises right I've I've
created all the exercises that link in the theory sequence you know so there
are materials out there but they're just all jumbled up it's not sequence like
I'm teaching you so if we take a major triad I might outline the major triad
I might outline it going to the circle force I might play it in a block style
and I play with my left hand I might play hands together so these are all
different ways I can use and practice the technique portion of my theory tool
so I'm actually learning how to use my tool I'm actually swinging the hammer
I'm learning how to not hit my finger as I'm nailing something in right the third
step we have is improv now the improv portion of this theory sequence is meant
to freely use your tool so if I have a hammer and I've I've learned how to hit
the hammer you know hit a nail into the wall that may be the only thing I know
how to do with this tool but I want to be able to use this tool to build a
house so I need to be able to use a hammer to do many different things not
just hit one nail in one location if that makes sense like I want to be able
to use a hammer to hit a baseboard in I want to use it be able to use a hammer
to you know pull screws out I want to freely be able to use this hammer
however I want not just for one purpose right so four major triads in improv
right I want to freely be able to use these
major triads however I want and so by practicing specific building blocks or
specific improv exercises that relate to the major triad I can start to improvise
over the major triads I can use the notes within the major triad to solo
with so this improv exercises is teaching us freedom within the theory
tool to give us freedom over that tool over that one specific tool that way I
can use it however I want and then finally the last step is repertoire
where we all the previous work we've just done
which isn't much I mean you know it's a couple exercises within each step and we
integrate that into repertoire so we start to integrate that Institutes aka
we start to build our house with the hammer right however we want we hadn't
now have this tool at our disposal we can use it however we want because we
practice the use of it we practice the freedom use of it I know how to do
everything I can with this tool I can now use it in any tune I want rather
than being handcuffed by just copying someone using a hammer which would only
allow me to use that hammer in the exact situation that I had just watched them
use it in and so that's a full theory sequence very cool and it's so
strikingly different from the traditional approach which you know is
typically here's the piece we're going to work on let's learn the technique
required to play the notes on the page and then maybe next week or if you're a
bit more advanced we can take a little bit of this piece and give you the
opportunity to improvise completely separately relative with just romantic I
love how you build an improv into you know really into the core of that so
that everything that's taught is taught with the opportunity to use it in a
creative way so in in practical terms what does this look like for the student
how many tools are there to go through at a Learning one a day one a week two
you do all four steps for one tool before moving on what's that like that's
a good question yes well so obviously there's lots of jazz information right
so and there's lots of musical information out there and I think
structuring a way for the students progress to make to get them to their
goal the fastest is the most is the best thing to do so if someone's interested
in playing you know someone might come to me and say I don't play jazz piano
okay that's great there's lots of jazz piano out there you can play a group you
can play by yourself you can play modern Tunes swing tune slow Tunes fast tunes
so what exactly is your ear right then they might say okay well I won't play
solo piano because I'm at home most of the time I have a nine-to-five right and
I love you know they may have had an album trigger their love for music just
like I did so maybe they heard Bud Powell maybe they heard
Carol garner play for the first time in shit bats or even a classical musician
know whoever that may be they so they say I want to look I don't want to play
like arrow garner I say okay great so we we start to take these different
paths for their goal because the different tools are gonna lead you to
build different houses right if I want to build a little shed I don't need a
hundred tools right I just need a couple ply you know some some two-by-fours I
can build it pretty easily I'm not gonna give a hundred tools to someone who
wants to build a little shed so if you just want to play like Eric garner
that's one specific style right he's got a couple techniques that can make him
sound like Erroll garner he has a certain texture and if you're playing
solo piano that's gonna be different than playing with a group so we try and
give these theory sequences or these theory tools to people to get them to
their goal the fastest possible so that they can see results but in a structured
and directional manner so you know we just kind of lead them down that path
because once you figure out your goal and your objective you really don't need
that many tools besides your foundational learning process obviously
if you don't know to seventh chord is you're gonna need to know that you know
so there's a bit of a foundation to build there but then after that you can
really go in the direction you want with these theory sequences and get exactly
what you're looking for in a much much quicker time not fifteen plus years like
I had to go through spending college tuition money you know and that's
something we're believers in ourselves that musically you that you know you
can't do a one-size-fits-all course for music in general you know it tends to
end up fitting nobody and you're much better off figuring out the combination
of topics and approaches that actually suits their background and their goals
and what it is they want to accomplish certain right absolutely and we've
talked a bit about chairs and a bit about piano but I'm curious to know a
lot of what you've described I think is relevant beyond both of those two things
how much do you think this approach would be valuable to someone who wants
to learn say Rock improv on guitar mm-hmm
yeah it's it's it's really all the same - in my teaching style right so jazz is
an amazing thing because it really encompasses and holds all types of music
the theory and tools you learned in jazz can be used in all types of music so
rock pop funk and it's amazing because so many people are like Brendan I just
want to play funk or I just want to play rock you know or just want to play pop
but when you learn these things and you take you walk through the system that
created it basically it allows you to do that with freedom so you by achieving
you know going through the theory sequences you're actually creating
freedom in all these different styles now obviously a rock style is much
different than a jazz style but when we start to look at it closer you know why
is it different and I would I don't want to take away anything from other styles
but you know rock and pop only usually contain just you know pure fat a couple
of chords you're not gonna see many chords or harmonic or a big theory types
of tools in rock and pop you know you may have four triads a lot of the pop
stars that we know this day and age have gotten rich off four chords right just
huge huge hit singles so jazz is is a very very in-depth process right so if
you're learning your jazz tools you're gonna be able to play any other style
that you want so if you want to learn rock I'm not necessarily saying you
should learn jazz first but the Jazz tools the jazz theory components will
give you access to everything so why not start there and have access to rock have
access to pop have access to funk have access to everything else you know Rd
gospel like it's gonna give you everything you need to play all the
styles rather than just saying okay I want to play Rock then that's all you
learn like you're not gonna peel to play jazz you won't really necessarily plio a
play in any other style so I guess I would recommend going towards more of
the jazz theory to start with and then learning that and then that way you can
express yourself however you want in any other style because a lot of them are
great as well so it seems like you struck a really nice balance in the way
you teach at jazz piano school in that you are providing very clear and
step-by-step teaching but as we just touched on it's also quite flexible so
that you know students can pick and choose or adapt the path to best suit
what they're into yeah and this was something that jumped out at me from a
great blog post you wrote called my jazz piano freedom what's helped and hurt
will put a link to this in the show notes because I think it's a really
great post but something you mentioned in there was the interplay between
structure and freedoms when learning could you talk a little bit about that
yes absolutely so right a lot of people so jazz a lot of people who will say
jazz is just freedom right so basically people are improv improvising and
they're just playing spontaneously whatever comes to mind and I don't know
this is what I hear out there sometimes people will see this but it all starts
with freedom it starts with no structure but I believe it's actually the complete
opposite I think the more structured you start the more freedom you're gonna have
in the long run so starting with the structure and discipline to learn your
tools like I've talked about on the podcast today is the best way to get to
that freedom point whereas if you're starting with complete freedom you have
note tools and basically you're again seeing you're searching through a
haystack to find the needle right you're kind of just wandering you're lost you
don't have a direction too much freedom can lead to being nowhere right so
basically that was my journey that was my path that I took and so I I didn't
have any structure I didn't have any direction or organization people were
just throwing me things that I had to take the tools and try and connect them
myself whereas in jazz piano school starting
with a structured approach to go through these core tools will give you the
freedom you need to self express yourself right and however you want so
you could self express through jazz through rock through pop and by learning
those core tools you're going to achieve that freedom much much faster then
starting with freedom in wandering around trying to explore
right just being out there in the abyss of information on the internet these
days about music because there's so much out there and to assume that you're
gonna be II see the thing is it's it's like I see people go out there and there
have access to all this information but what happens is and you'll see this with
a you know I love all jazz piano sites and I support education in all manners
but people always say like we have the biggest library we have the biggest
library of jazz you know videos we have the biggest library of rock guitar in
the word the key word there you have to watch out for is library because when
you enter in the library if I were to tell you to go learn history for example
or you know like London's background okay if you walked into the George
Washington library or big library in London and you were asked to do that
would you be able to learn everything you needed to know if you're just
walking to a library with thousands of thousands of books probably not right
because you are putting yourself essentially you're not the student
anymore you're trying to teach yourself you're becoming the teacher to inform
yourself about how to learn so when there's these libraries essentially
you're trying to navigate all the information instead of someone saying
okay go to floor to pick out you know book two on shelf three read pages 50
through 60 of that book then go to floor five go to shelf three pick up book two
and then read that whole book with the direction and structure that you're
creating from the beginning you're actually moving down the specific path
to learn exactly what you want in order to achieve freedom otherwise again
you're just wandering you're sifting through this information completely lost
and for you to expect yourself to expect that you're gonna learn something
because you're the one in charge of all information to put it all together is
almost madness you know it's like there's there's no way that that's going
to happen because you're not the teacher you're the student you need someone to
give you a plan to get to freedom or achieve whatever your goals are
absolutely I think we're in a really interesting age for education and in
particular music education because there is
there's a trade-off to be made right like like we've touched on a single
strict path that the teacher forces you down is not gonna work out well as you
experienced in your first three years of learning if it's not the right path or
it's not suiting the student it's a disaster but at the same time I think
there's far too many people kind of wandering lost in the wilderness of the
internet and feeling like they're learning something but then actually
discovering far too late that it's all a jumble and they've wasted months or
years just kind of dabbling and scattered in their learning I remember
on a previous episode of the podcast I was talking with Matthew Scott Phillips
and Jeremy burns from the music student 101 podcast and we were talking about
about this how it's a challenge for us as online music educators to find that
balance to give students the freedom to pick their own path while providing
enough support and guidance and structure that they're actually making
good progress and learning rather than just either wandering around the biggest
library in the world so I really applaud the urge to doing a jazz piano school I
think you're finding a good balance there and in particular in this world of
jazz and improvisation where I think we inherit a lot of romantic notions about
the gifted musician who just you know he just was shedded for a dozen years and
then he just picked up his trumpet he could play anything I love that you're
helping people get away from that and understand the step by step it can be
involved so yeah I mean the balance too is uh it's just to say one quick thing
all that there's definitely a hard thing I've struggled with that for so much for
so long just due to my path because when you're an outside student the thing you
want to do the most isn't learn scales and learn triads and like learn theory
tools like I'm talking about like people's ears probably started to glaze
over when I was talking a little bit but you just want to play you just want to
play you know it's like you want to play and be happy that's all I want it like I
just wanted to feel that happiness sensation it's about feeling really not
like the theoretical terms like your ultimate goal is to play and be happy
that's honestly like what I believe what I try to help my students do because
whether you're playing to the level of Oscar Peterson or you're getting
musician or you're just playing a simple jazz tune at home by yourself
whatever equates to happiness for you that's where I want to help you get to
but at the same time you know it comes from something from within the student
that you as a student have to realize there needs to be some sort of
discipline involved because if you're just kind of wandering around trying to
try to just play then you're not a you're not really going to get to that
spot you want so it definitely is a push and pull between what the student wants
and what I know is best for you to get what you want right so it's definitely a
trusting trusting balance between the teacher and the students so so it's been
fantastic to hear more about your approach at jazz piano school I think
you've got such a great methodology there for teaching a very complex
subject in a flexible and step-by-step way for the listener who's maybe just
getting started in improvising or maybe is just considering getting started and
they're hopefully through this series of podcast episodes feeling a bit more
reassured that it's possible for them do you have any advice or guidance for them
as they get started absolutely so if anyone's seen the lego
movie out there I highly recommend you go see it there's like three of them now
the Batman movie the first one the second one anyway go see the lego movie
because you will learn to improvise from that movie so Bible improvisation
approach to is based off of Legos building blocks specific improv
exercises now as I was growing up I would hear a lot of things like just use
your ears just watch me and then you do it just transcribe just copy licks write
play licks and so I heard that a lot it never in my opinion and never in my case
in my journey it never helped me get to the point that I want to get to so I
think a lot of people follow that same path and I love getting my message out
there this to share with people that I spent 15 plus years doing that
transcribing copying licks playing solos it never really got me to the point I
wanted to so my teaching is based off of Legos in lego movie you have people
called master builders right so these master builders they can build whatever
they want with a pile bike like when they see a pile of Legos it's
like oh I can build this ship or I can build this the White House or something
like that so they don't see a pile of Legos they see the end result but did
they start there no not all Lego people in the world are master builders right
so when we start I'm sure like most ninety hours did you play with Legos the
show oh yeah have you ever used yeah I think everyone's played with Legos they
know what Legos are so when you start building Legos if you're not starting
with like the Death Star you're not building a desk Tarte Lego thing you
start with like a little tiny boat right and in the instruction manual it shows
you three Legos so you have three Legos you have three building blocks and
you're putting them together now later down the road when you see those three
building blocks are you gonna be able to use those to do whatever you want yes
absolutely because you use them before and step-by-step manner so you start
with small step-by-step manner so if you're learning how to improvise for
example you need to learn the building blocks of improvisation so if you want
to learn how to improvise like whoever like a guitar solo
you know like ac/dc van Halen it doesn't even have to be jazz like Norah Jones
top money you know like whatever there's building blocks is that building
blocks that relate to specific exercise as in improv so if we wanted to take a
major triad right the building block I would use for improv around the major
tribe would just to be to use those three notes for improv so I would use
like for a C major triad see eg we have three notes the building block for
improv around now it would be to improvise using three notes just see a
and G now once I've learned that I start to learn that building block through all
triads so I can I can improvise through an F major side using F a and C so
that's just one Lego like I have one Lego now in my collection right then I
will learn another Lego so if I get to any major triad I can improvise using
those three notes now if I if I put on a seventh on top right so I may be on a
dominant seventh on top of the chord C e G b-flat so now I have four notes so now
I have two Legos right and I can put those together so if I see a major triad
or I see a 7th chord I've learned those Lego improvisation
building blocks because I'm small all specific improv exercises
related to the theory tool I'm not just practicing a whole transcription I'm not
just copying a lick I'm learning improv exercises that are small building blocks
that relate to a theory tool that way it helps me achieve quick fast freedom
within my improvisation and I have Legos at my disposal to use and build like a
master builder in the lego movie welcome I think that's a terrific analogy for
people to keep in mind because as we've talked about improv can be a huge
subject and jazz can be an intimidating Lee complex genre but I think that idea
of you know assembling your tools assembling your Legos and then bringing
those to each improv is a great way to think about it and that's like thank you
so much again for joining us on the show today Brendon absolutely thank you so
much for having me as a pleasure hey Christopher here I hope you're enjoying
improv month a couple of things I wanted to let you know about the first is we're
running a free improvisation masterclass at the end of the month it's on Saturday
31st of March 2018 and you can sign up to watch it live online at musicality
podcast calm slash improv the second is that we're running a special promotion
at the end of the month to celebrate the launch of our new improv roadmap at
musical you you can get a great deal on musical you membership and we're giving
you as a podcast listener exclusive early access and a special bonus gift if
you've thought about joining musical you you won't want to miss this check out
the details at that same link we use the qaulity podcast comm slash improv
it's funny I tend not to go too heavy on analogy and metaphor when explaining
things myself but after talking with Brendan I found myself free thinking
that because I know that his descriptions in terms of tools and Lego
blocks and libraries are all gonna stick with you let's do a quick recap Brendan
grew up with jazzed in the house but it wasn't until after a few years of
classical piano that he heard an Oscar Peterson record and suddenly realized
that jazz was the music he earned to play
unfortunately what followed were a few very frustrating years of learning with
a jazz piano teacher and never really achieving any freedom or creativity due
to the rote learning method used and vague instructions to just copy what the
teacher did fortunately his burning desire to be a jazz pianist meant that
Brendan's stuck with it and after a series of teachers and a pivotal moment
realizing that learning jazz piano could and should be like learning a language
he developed his own unique approach to learning and teaching jazz at jazz piano
school Brendan uses a four-step theory sequencing methodology where students
are introduced to a single theory tool and then once they understand how it's
used they practice using it themselves improvising with it and connecting it
with repertoire like lead sheets for jazz standards I love how improvisation
is integrated throughout the learning process there and every concept in the
wide world of jazz is presented in a way that immediately empowers you not just
to understand it and play it but to use it creatively through improvisation from
the start we talked about the blessing and curse
of the modern music learning landscape that a self-guided learner today with
access to the Internet has incredible resources but how that's a bit like
walking into an enormous library it doesn't necessarily lead to fast
effective or enjoyable learning there's a balance of structure and freedom
required just like with improv itself and there's a value in having an
experienced teacher guide you through the best way to use the resources for
your own learning goals I asked Brendan for his best advice for a
beginning improviser and I loved his suggestion to approach it like building
with Lego blocks at first you use just a few blocks and you follow some
instructions and from there you can start to experiment and work your way up
to ever more complex creations I think taking that mindset to improvising
whether you're tackling jazz or any other genre can really help make it more
manageable you assemble your own toolkit of musical concepts and ideas that you
can put to use in your own creative ways when the opportunity arises so if you
are interested in learning jazz piano then I would definitely recommend
heading to jazz piano school where you can learn all about their courses and
get access to over a hundred free episodes of their podcast we'll have
links to both of those in the show notes thanks for listening to this episode
stay tuned for our next one where we'll be tackling that problem of wandering
lost in a library with an overview of musical youths new roadmap for learning
to improvise thank you for listening to the musicality podcast this episode has
ended but your musical journey continues head over to musicality podcast calm
where you will find the links and resources mentioned in this episode as
well as bonus content exclusive for podcast listeners that's musicality
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