I sensed that something was amiss after a wave of students, teachers, and players came to me over the course of a few years wanting to learn to improvise. Many of them had taken jazz improvisation classes or gone to clinics/camps only to come away uninspired or confused. Several of them had worked out of … Read more
One of my favorite things about teaching is getting students ready for performances. Deep down, every kid loves to perform. We just have to find it in them. And if we put a lot of work into practicing, why not share it with an audience and help them feel good? Plasticity and Muscle Memory There … Read more
The first few years I taught piano lessons, I remember nearly every student learned popular songs from sheet music. I grudgingly went along because I saw that the music meant a lot to them. If I was asking them to do traditional music most of the time, I thought it was a fair trade off to … Read more
