Category: Jam Session
Jam session or Book Nook, which is the right board?
Anyway this guy is outstanding. I'm using his guitar books transposed for the guitalele, and I did use his ukulele book as well.
A friend of mine asked me what I thought, as a once-was-keyboardit, of his piano book. Outstanding. He really covers a lot of principles in a short period of time that usually students study for years before they get to. Yes, I know the hidebound types out there that say you can only learn by reading music. I grew up with such a bunch. And while reading music has its benefits, let's face it, we cannot sight read if we're blind. That was always a huge drawback for me in another life. I'm sure some classical ruler-wielding dogmatic will try and say differently, but tell me as a blind person you can sight read the Moonlight Sonata, just to play it through and see if you want to learn it. You can't.
There's a lot of things Bill Brown teaches right out of the gate that I did not know after years of reading music on the piano. Some things that you just don't get with your traditional method books.
I know people make it sound like learning by ear is some lesser form, or that you don't learn the principles behind what's going on. But on the contrary, in order to memorize what Bill Brown teaches, you get a lot of really good theory right out of the gate. Something you miss a lot of the time by spending all your time learning to read the music, playing it over and over, measure by measure and looking up to find your place on the Braille page. Let's face it, doing it that way is very stilted and hard to put all the parts together. Of course it has merit, that would go without saying, but Bill Brown has shown the insecure dogmatic hidebound traditionalists it can be very different.
I'm personally working my way through the Guitar Licks series, though as I said, I checked out his piano book for the Visually Impaired, for a friend of mine. It's fantastic.
I've used his books here and there and I've found them to be somewhat useful. My only problem with them is that I feel they don't teach enough theory. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. But a general issue would be, for instance, that I don't remember any of them covering any part of the circle of fifths or key signatures. I already know this myself, so for the most part I just use his books to get some idea of technique when I'm learning a new instrument. But I think some information on what I mentioned would be useful for someone who doesn't know it. Maybe that's just the curious musician side of me? I think that if I was starting as a total beginner I would be curious about why those notes go with that chord or why these chords always seem to be played together. Maybe an audio course on basic theory in the future would be nice.
I'm not an educator and so I don't know how that would be done. I learned all of that from reading music. Of course, remember most people learning to read music don't learn the circle of fifths or all the key signatures for a few years, until their performance is ready to use it.
So for instance, in Year 1 you learn one sharp, one flat, maybe two sharps.
You never learn chords, not by name, from reading music. You don't need it to do classical music because you just read off the page, and you use intervals when you use Braille music. But that is not the same as learning chord anatomy.
As an aside, I find reading Braille music rather difficult on a small Braille display. I'm used to reading it with both hands at the same time so I get the whole picture. And now learning ukulele / guitalele you see chord patters, string positions, and strumming patterns all on separate lines. No big deal if I had an actual page of music. But very big deal when trying to manage it using an 18-cell RefreshaBraille and the NLS Bard app. Not complaining about either. But reading music is a lot different from reading just straight text.
The problem with lots of these types of books I see out now, is they make it sound like you can become fantastic in a very short time. You can't. But you can learn what you need to learn to get started. And, you can pick up any method book on theory you want and learn the rest.
I'm the wrong person to ask, because I already have the theory, although learning some of the terms for stringed instruments I have had to do, but none of this is difficult.
And, I was not spectacular as a keyboardist, and barely made it beyond the rudimentary classics in the official piano instruction books. Sure, I played keys in the 80s and 90s and played clubs. But damn near everybody did in those days, and we had such artists as John Lord, Richard Wright, Rick Wakeman, Ray Manzerk of the Doors, Chip Davis of Manheim Steamroller, The Tubes, and many others to cut our teeth on with electronic music. It was just another era, when everybody was playing stacks of keys in bands.
That being said, I'm pretty average. So anybody can do those books I think.
As one who has a fair bit of musical talent and no skill, who knows no theory or how to read either braille or print music, would this be worth my time? I'd love to get better at the piano/keyboard.
I think anyone could take away at least something from these books. How much depends on what you already know. And I think it also takes a fair bit of patience. Another problem I have with these is that they're too slow for me. So what I usually do is skip through the tracks to find where each individual measure is played broken down and I can learn it pretty quickly by ear. If I have trouble I just listen through the segment where he explains how to play it. And to anyone who doesn't already know, most of the books are also now available digitally through Bard.