|
Here’s a letter to Duane from a student who
took the first 4 lessons of the year-long Crash Course. Please read
it carefully as it explains why some piano
lessons really work and why most don't: (click
here
to see his actual letter, just in case you wonder if we're
making this up!
Saturday 4-8-2006
Dear Duane:
I loved the first month – thank you. It
seems so simple to play this way. After
only 4 weeks of lessons, I am playing songs by ear without even
looking at music. (I’m the fellow who wrote you in an
email saying I’d had a year of lessons as a kid, and that I wanted
to play jazz piano, and asking about which “path” thru your courses
I should take. You recommended that I should start at the beginning,
even though the material would seem repetitious at first, since it
was good to be sure we’d cover all the bases.)
Well, as exciting and fun and
encouraging as my childhood teacher was *, she
never put things together this way – theory and chord knowledge
fused together with technique and playing songs. I just
memorized things like a player piano – and later forgot them. You
really have me enjoying piano when I come home each day, knowing I
already know C, G7, F, and D7. I know I could sit down anywhere and
(in the key of C, at least), play any simple song. Oddly enough, I
knew these 3 chords (not D7) all my life, and yet I somehow still
couldn’t really put a technique together for somehow approaching any
2 or 3 (or 4) chorded song in C. But your approach, starting with a
“pointer” chord, and then later moving up to a better sounding
inversion, then adding what you call a “pointer bass” – I am taking
this and running and applying it to all the previous songs and
playing them this way, too, as you say.
And I can’t believe it, but
in 4 weeks – after 28 years of exasperation –
I am seeing slow, steady, -- and what appears to well be
permanent – improvement in my piano playing. You have
clearly: 1. thought about how to break
piano-playing down into its essential components (most excellent
pianists still have not done this), and:
2. Figured out/engineered a “path” through those components which is
linear, step-by-step, and can be communicated simply.
What a gift this
is.
So thank you for this approach, and I’d
like to get the rest of the year. I’m really looking forward to
learning more and more from you, and enjoying a lifetime of piano
playing.
Yours,
Jeffrey A. Stern,
PhD
Anaheim, CA
*And I tried another in-person lesson
recently, but they did not have your organized, linear approach,
either, so I gave up with them too.
******
And another letter to Bev later
(April 17th, 2006) after ordering the rest of the Crash
Course:
Hey, Bev!
Thanks much for both the tracking
number and marking the box sig-required/alt-other units. I do
appreciate your attention to these details.
Also, let me tell you have
I’ve missed the lessons! (Between the
time he took his first month of lessons and the time he ordered and
received the balance of the course). I love
Duane’s methodology and his thoughts in breaking out the components
of a “complex knowledge space” (piano playing) and then figuring out
how to teach/relay these components in a linear, ordered way.
Many people have said that many songs
resolve to a few simple chords and a way to play the left and right
hands, but none had shown how (much
less SEVERAL how’s). Duane has, and for that I am eternally
grateful.
After four lessons, I can see now how
his approach is going to lead step-by-step into more and more
complicated (and fun-sounding) techniques – but they are all
related. I am even seeing music differently,
already in 4 short weeks I am playing so much better than before
– even going to the piano and just using the “pointer bass” and ¾
chords on so many songs, even neighbors are
stopping by saying keep going. They love it. Well, so do I!
Thanks to Duane for simplifying piano, and for all you do on the web
site, mailings, and everything to get Duane’s teaching to us. I am
looking forward to lesson #5!
Once again, thank you both.
Jeff Stern, PhD
|
