Taking a time out?

[Steve Horgan]

Hi Johnny,

I’ve really enjoyed downloading songs to learn from those on your website.

I’ve reached the point however where I can’t keep up and have quite a few not in reserve. I’d therefore like to suspend or perhaps cancel my monthly membership until such time as I’m able to be ready to learn some more. How do I go about doing this?

Many thanks

Steve

[sxpoet]

i spent 10 years practicing learning to play the Alto sax, even had weekly one to one sax lessons for the first 7 years with a Pro, over the years i got bogged down in working through various learner books of increasing difficulty, i bought lots of music/cd books from music shops and practiced various songs in them.

What i didn’t realise was all these tracks included in these music books were designed to make it easier for players with poor rhythmic training to keep in time while playing. The equivalent of a child learning to ride a bicycle using stabilisers to prevent the cycle from falling over.

Even after a few days or a couple of weeks i could play most of the stuff in them to a reasonable standard with the usual wrong note here or there – but the main thing was i could play all the way through a tune, regardless of the standard of my tone, pitch, articulation, loudness etc..

However playing in the real world with a live band requires a different type of training which doesn’t exist. As a learner it would be very difficult (not impossible) to just fit in a band and play perfectly straight away regardless of whether you play from a music sheet or from memory. It would possibly take weeks or months to get used to band style of playing.

The nearest process to achieve this is to have one to one training with a Pro and work your way through by attending proper music classes provided by educational institutions.

However if none of these options are available or you just can’t fit them in due to different circumstances, then the next best thing is to use Johnny’s tracks and music sheets, this is really the nearest thing to playing in a live band. You have to focus more and get in the groove, there are no props to help you play, it’s straight in the deep end.

His range of tracks cover different levels of playing experience, however there are a lot of tracks for inexperienced players to get started. After 10 years i’ve just started on simple tracks – i should have done this years ago. What i now feel is the beat, the chord changes, what parts of a song where i should be on time with, realising i’m ahead or behind the beat. Proof of this is when you can randomly start a track at any point and jump straight in, without having to start at the beginning every time.

A lot of the tracks are difficult only by level of experience, but this is exactly what you get if you want to play in a band. So keep at it, and be more selective of what tracks you start out on, don’t just pick a track because it’s your favourite song, some favourites can more advanced. Just work your way up to more difficult standards, eventually you will be able to play harder stuff.

[Steve Horgan]

Hi,

Thanks very much for taking the time to reply and share your experience. That chimes closely with mine.

Playing in time is something I have struggled with, having followed a similar development to you with one on one lessons with very basic tunes and then trying to play against backing tracks etc.

Gradually, slowly I am hearing chord changes and other clues in the backing track to know where I am, and slowly slowly things are getting better.

My wife, who reached quite a high standard at piano and can play by ear, has now got a yamaha tyros4 keyboard and we play together which is helping my development. The key thing here is the tyros 4 will transpose as she plays, so she can use the chord symbols in Johnny’s sheet music to play an accompaniment for me.

Johnny’s tracks have helped immensely and I will continue to use them – they are also a blast to play. I’ve found I can’t keep up with the 4 tracks per month deal and have developed a backlog, but fully expect to be back to get some more.

Thanks again for sharing your experience.

Steve

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