I received an email yesterday from a well-known jazz musician who after watching someone on Youtube “teaching jazz’ on the piano using root position chords on ii-V-I’s asked me…
“Is it true that the more stupid and simplistic the delivery is, the more popular it is?” This video had over a quarter-million views, by the way.
As Dr. Brim and I wrote in our ebook, The Brain-Friendly Method for Musical Excellence, our brains are hardwired for efficiency. After all, if we had to originate solutions to every daily need instead of relying subconsciously on what we’ve habitually automatized, we’d grind ourselves to a life-ending halt. Could you imagine trying to discover each and every time how to tie your shoes?
But that doesn’t mean that by being simple, teaching should be just plain wrong.
The musician who wrote me was concerned over the fact that while online jazz teaching is becoming more and more mainstream, so much of its quality is less than ideal (to put it mildly).
Between people claiming that mastery can come without effort and others offering grossly oversimplified or confusing methods, where does one go online to find some truth about learning to play jazz?
So I thought that this was the perfect time to share a clip from the second video Richie Bierach and I produced last week on improvisation. I shared his clip from our first video a couple of weeks ago on developing good time, and I got a ton of positive comments.
So with no dumbed-down delivery or promise of quick and easy magical results, here’s a short clip from our most recent video lesson by Richie on improvisation.
