So to start…I want to admit something that’s kind of difficult…
I graduated from the New School University in New York city with my Jazz Piano Performance Degree.
It was an amazing experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
But…here’s the kicker.
After graduating, believe it or not…I STILL did not feel as if I had the pieces connected.
…and here’s the kicker…
I spent $240,000 on that education.
Yea…a little crazy.
Now, if someone told me I was going to spend that much money on jazz piano…
I would expect to leave at least having some sort of road map or plan to follow to continue my progress.
I can honestly say…I did not have any of that.
Did I learn a ton?
Absolutely!
I definitely got a taste for the “Science” (as I like to call it), behind jazz piano.
But it wasn’t enough.
Before college, it was like a box of about 10 random keys that fit into random locks…
…and I’d have to try them all to see which one was right.
After college, it was like I had 100 keys now and a 100 locks!
You can imagine the inner turmoil this creates.
Going to the University still fell into Mistake #1 I talked about yesterday.
Learning lots of tid bits of information from lots of resources.
The University was simply mistake #1 on steroids.
Now…I did connect the dots about 7 years after graduating.
And I know you’re probably wondering how so here we go…
One day I was sitting in my French class. (I studied French for fun.)
As I sat in class I began to realize there was a specific order and process to teaching people how to express themselves in a different language.
Our teacher wasn’t speaking large paragraphs and having us recite back what she had said.
She also wasn’t teaching us random parts of the language.
There was a system…
A process…
She was teaching us the structure of the sentence.
Where and how we use verbs with nouns and pronouns.
This allowed us to freely speak sentences ourselves, while giving us the ability to adapt them as we learned more nouns.
Essentially giving us true freedom and self-expression with the language.
I got a tingle in my skin. Why can’t we learn jazz this way?
Jazz is a language?
We should be able to learn jazz just like we learn a foreign language.
With a process.
With a plan.
With structure.
With direction.
I actually ended up leaving class early that day to race home and put my theories to the test.
If I could organize the structure of a jazz sentence into the specific building blocks or theory tools…
…then I could systematically form jazz “sentences” to freely express myself!
Jazz was always taught to me in the form of copying sentences.
It would be as if my french teacher taught me by speaking a sentence like…
“I went to the store.”
I would then recite this back and only know how to say…
“I went to the store.”
I wouldn’t understand the verb “went”…why it was used, and how to use it in a sentence.
Where as, she was teaching us verbs and sentence strucutres.
So after learning the verb “to go”, I could say lots of sentences and simply learn new nouns.
“I went to the store.”
“I went to the bank.”
“I went to the zoo.”
“I went to the park.”
I had freedom…because I understood how the sentence structure worked.
BOOM!
So in relation to jazz, all I needed to do was organize all of the Theory tools I had learned…
…otherwise known as “verbs” in a sentence…
…move these Theory tools down a funnel that properly introduces Technique & Repertoire…
…otherwise known as sentence structure and combination.
…add in some improvisation and bingo.
I had everything I needed to freely form jazz sentences and finally structure all the random material I was taught.
Now I could go into much more detail but I know you’re probably getting bored by now.
Long story short…I spent the next 4 years of my life structuring, organizing and building a massive jazz piano education system…
…that allowed me to sit down at any piano, with or without charts, and freely express MYSELF through the amazing sound of jazz.
As well as removing frustration, learning without holes, without doubt, without fear, and without embaressement.
Intially it taught myself and thousands of my private students.
But due to the success and ease my private students were having…
…they begged me to put it online because they truly believed others around the world needed to be apart of this as well.
So that’s exactly what I did.
This is how Jazz Piano School was born and has now gone on to help 11,465 people all around the world to play jazz piano.
Am I going to tell you following the system is easy work…
No way…practice is still involved…but…
It sure beats looking for hundreds of random keys in a haystack to random doors you don’t know how to find.
At least you know for certain, you’re following a correct plan and systematic order of learning to ensure success.
And you finally have structure, direction and focus for the jazz language.
Get the idea?
The great news is that I built this Jazz Piano System for the world.
So people like yourself and others can have learning access and join the NEW jazz piano force of education.
Jazz Piano School Members Portal