Would you spend $2000 to learn to play jazz online?

[RhinoBass]

My apologies if this has been posted, I skipped in the end. I do a master class every other week with a guy named Jeff Antoniuk and he is a fantastic teacher. He also has an-online teaching resource called Jazz Wire. This is not a bass-specific website, but it is, in my opinion, a great resource to learn jazz on many different levels. I encourage you to check it out and see if it is for you.

JazzWire : Learn, Play, Share

 

[Auer]

When I see a pro bass player wearing a $10k Panerai watch as Scott was in his latest video, I am happy for him or her.

SBL, The Liberace of Bass Players.

 

[N4860]

Where did you see "one on one" lessons? There was a bullet point about you recording your playing and sending in a video so a "vetted SBL instructor" could review it and within a couple of days they would send a video back with their feedback. There was another bullet point about a group lesson.

I read as much of the marketing hyperbole as I could stomach, but I could come up with a lot of reasons why private lessons would be better. I can't think of a single reason why this would be. I suspect that there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers who are out $2,000.

Ah, I may have misread the OP's message. I saw the line about the 1 to 1 feedback and thought it was a lesson. I didn't go reading any of the SBL marketing stuff about this though.

 

[mikenyc]

I didn't read all the reactions in this thread, but I get it. I will say, I've been a yearly SBL member for a while, and I have gotten a lot out of it. For example, there's a course called Harmonic Layering or something like that, and that did transform my ability to play. Even now I'm still not all the way through it, but the parts I absorbed made me able to go out to jam sessions and engage in a functional way, and continue to progress. In the last few months, I've been playing with a jazz singer that wanted to do her songs more in a soul/R&B kind of way (which is more my style). I started playing with them, and for now it's more straight-ahead jazz. With the theory foundation I have from that SBL course, I've been able to hang after like 8 weeks of playing jazz, and even held it down as part of the house band at a small jazz open mic this week.

With that said, I saw the $2K offering and did not give it any thought. There is loads of material available on SBL, and I find all of it to be high quality. Don't know the need for their higher-$$ offerings unless you've really worked through their fundamentals and applied it live, playing with others (jam sessions, band, etc.), and then wanted more video instruction.

 

[tb-player]

I didn't read all the reactions in this thread, but I get it. I will say, I've been a yearly SBL member for a while, and I have gotten a lot out of it. For example, there's a course called Harmonic Layering or something like that, and that did transform my ability to play. Even now I'm still not all the way through it, but the parts I absorbed made me able to go out to jam sessions and engage in a functional way, and continue to progress. In the last few months, I've been playing with a jazz singer that wanted to do her songs more in a soul/R&B kind of way (which is more my style). I started playing with them, and for now it's more straight-ahead jazz. With the theory foundation I have from that SBL course, I've been able to hang after like 8 weeks of playing jazz, and even held it down as part of the house band at a small jazz open mic this week.

With that said, I saw the $2K offering and did not give it any thought. There is loads of material available on SBL, and I find all of it to be high quality. Don't know the need for their higher-$$ offerings unless you've really worked through their fundamentals and applied it live, playing with others (jam sessions, band, etc.), and then wanted more video instruction.

Harmonic Layering and Technique Deep Dive had massive impacts on my playing. Definitely worth the price of admission.

On another note, my lifetime membership has been completely paid by the SBL Partner Discounts I've received on a couple of custom bass orders. Can't beat that.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

The 1:1 feedback is recorded after you send your video in for feedback. Kind of like communicating via a video telegram instead of a conversation. Feedback will be from a staff member, not an instructor. So, that part of the program seems like getting instruction from a Guitar Center instructor. I don't see where everything adds up to $2k.

I'll presume you're correct on that @MultiScaleMale. I started to read about it, scrolled down the page to see the price, and stopped reading about it. Way too much $$ for a retired person living on social security.

 

[pb9717]

I had a SBL subscription and could not find a cohesive path to follow. I'd played jazz for years in wedding bands in NYC but never had to solo extensively, but could comp, walk, bossa, waltz the standards easily. The SBL curriculum was so dispersed and either below my skill level, or I simply couldn't find the stuff that suited me. I got an in person teacher with a masters in Music, bass player here in Cincy, John Toedtman. great teacher. Saw my weak spots and immediately focused on addressing them. it'd take me 18 months to spend 2 grand with him. best $$$ I've ever spent.

 

[logdrum]

My job at companies like 3Com, Intel and AMD will probably be replaced by AI very soon.

Not really

 

[brianrost]

Not really

OT: although I did actual design in the early years out of school, I switched over to design verification which means testing software models of chips to find bugs before any prototypes are fabricated because every respin at a fab today is millions of dollars.

For years I was involved heavily in developing tools to speed testing by using specific coding techniques in the design itself, including coding for reuse (design a block today, use it forever in all future designs). I worked with other engineers on tools that could develop test plans by parsing specifications. AI would simply be the next step…parse the spec, code the models, create the tests and run the tests. Engineers would still be needed for debug, at least for a while.

 

[12BitSlab]

I had a SBL subscription and could not find a cohesive path to follow. I'd played jazz for years in wedding bands in NYC but never had to solo extensively, but could comp, walk, bossa, waltz the standards easily. The SBL curriculum was so dispersed and either below my skill level, or I simply couldn't find the stuff that suited me. I got an in person teacher with a masters in Music, bass player here in Cincy, John Toedtman. great teacher. Saw my weak spots and immediately focused on addressing them. it'd take me 18 months to spend 2 grand with him. best $$$ I've ever spent.

Almost the same story for me including having John as my teacher. I've never tried on-line lessons.

Different people learn best in different ways. I am most comfortable with in-person instruction. Others, undoubtedly do better with on-line instruction. For them, the $2k might be the best way to go.

 

[mambo4]

7 pages of free marketing for SBL here, if all press is good press.

The frequency if SBL related threads here is quite shilling
May be we need a "SBL discussion" sub forum - or a megathread - and keep em all in one place

 

[Les Fret]

I had a SBL subscription and could not find a cohesive path to follow. I'd played jazz for years in wedding bands in NYC but never had to solo extensively, but could comp, walk, bossa, waltz the standards easily. The SBL curriculum was so dispersed and either below my skill level, or I simply couldn't find the stuff that suited me. I got an in person teacher with a masters in Music, bass player here in Cincy, John Toedtman. great teacher. Saw my weak spots and immediately focused on addressing them. it'd take me 18 months to spend 2 grand with him. best $$$ I've ever spent.

You sum up perfectly why one on one lessons from a good teacher are better for most people than online lessons. With online courses you always have stuff that is either way too easy or too difficult for you. An in person teacher can see immediately at which level you are at the moment and tailor-make things especially for you. And he/she can immediately correct mistakes and adjust your technique on the fly. And you have a big stick to practice because you have to face the teacher in person each week or every other week or so.

 

[Smooth_bass88]

My apologies if this has been posted, I skipped in the end. I do a master class every other week with a guy named Jeff Antoniuk and he is a fantastic teacher. He also has an-online teaching resource called Jazz Wire. This is not a bass-specific website, but it is, in my opinion, a great resource to learn jazz on many different levels. I encourage you to check it out and see if it is for you.

JazzWire : Learn, Play, Share

so that's $1900 annually, roughly the same price as SBL's course. I would think the Jazz Wire course is an excellent value- just as SBL's is.

 

[Keith peverley]

I've looked at this and tbh it just seems like an extended Jazz Accelerator course (it uses the same workbook and tunes) for about 10x the cost

 

[dreamadream99]

I didn't even spend $2000 learning to play jazz at university.

 

[turf3]

Has anyone mentioned the way to ACTUALLY learn how to play jazz and other forms of African-American improvised music is ON THE BANDSTAND?

 

[turf3]

I don't know if it got left out of the interview (my teacher studied with Lennie as well), but Step 1 starts with listening at HALF SPEED to internalize all nuances - vibrato, slurs, dynamics, etc. - then sing it at half speed and when that is in sync in all aspects, sing it at tempo.

The Tristano story brings to mind a Bill Evans quote "I study the minimum of material but very thoroughly". Obviously to be a working jazz musician (or any kind of popular music) you need at least a passing familiarity with a whole lot of tunes. But it's also true that you simply can't do a deep dive into every single tune in the canon of whatever you're playing, be it Dixieland, western swing, punk, or what have you. The human brain, however, if left alone and not constantly distracted with "ooh, new shiny!" is exceptionally good at drawing parallels from one thing studied thoroughly, to other related things. So if you do the deep deep deep dive into "scrapple from the apple", what you learn there will TRANSFER OVER to other tunes, far more than you might think.

I suppose it may be possible to do on-line learning for the deep deep dive stuff. But I don't think there's any way online can duplicate the actual rubber-meets-the-road environment of playing African American improvised music with other people for an audience. It's real time composition.

Or, to put it another way, you can ABSOLUTELY learn to play convincing, compelling jazz (or other varieties of AA improvised music), with minimal theoretical knowledge and formal instruction (whether in person or on line), and maximal personal experience on the actual bandstand. You CANNOT learn to play convincing, compelling jazz (or other varieties of AA improvised music), no matter how many theoretical lessons you learn, WITHOUT direct personal experience on the actual bandstand.

 

[cxcxcx]

The Tristano story brings to mind a Bill Evans quote "I study the minimum of material but very thoroughly". Obviously to be a working jazz musician (or any kind of popular music) you need at least a passing familiarity with a whole lot of tunes. But it's also true that you simply can't do a deep dive into every single tune in the canon of whatever you're playing, be it Dixieland, western swing, punk, or what have you. The human brain, however, if left alone and not constantly distracted with "ooh, new shiny!" is exceptionally good at drawing parallels from one thing studied thoroughly, to other related things. So if you do the deep deep deep dive into "scrapple from the apple", what you learn there will TRANSFER OVER to other tunes, far more than you might think.

I suppose it may be possible to do on-line learning for the deep deep dive stuff. But I don't think there's any way online can duplicate the actual rubber-meets-the-road environment of playing African American improvised music with other people for an audience. It's real time composition.

Or, to put it another way, you can ABSOLUTELY learn to play convincing, compelling jazz (or other varieties of AA improvised music), with minimal theoretical knowledge and formal instruction (whether in person or on line), and maximal personal experience on the actual bandstand. You CANNOT learn to play convincing, compelling jazz (or other varieties of AA improvised music), no matter how many theoretical lessons you learn, WITHOUT direct personal experience on the actual bandstand.

Thanks for the set-straight and the wisdom shared here. I don't know if you get thanked often enough. Literally everything I read from you actually works later for me on a bandstand or in practical application.

 

[Gopherbassist]

I wouldn't be paid $2,000 to learn jazz.

 

[buldog5151bass]

I wouldn't be paid $2,000 to learn jazz.

Then you are missing out on some great music, and learning. Some of the greatest rock musicians (Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, James Jameson) considered themselves jazz musicians first. Some great rock music (Cream Steely Dan) was rooted in jazz.