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I'm one year into Sudnow Method, and Boy! Are my fingers tired. I'm lovin' it, yet I'm wondering how Pianomagic serves as post-graduate study.

4 dot songs, one and half voicings later, I'm feeling like a Tin Pan Alley arranger. Only a little jazzier, with all those 9th, 11th, 13th chords to play with.

After reading all these posts about SM and PM, they seem to complementary, non-overlapping, non-redundant methods with different goals and philosophies. SM would regard PM as too piecemeal, PM would regard SM as too narrow. At least that's my impression, not having done PM yet.

But after a year of SM, I find:

1. I like the complex voicings, they keep my interest up, and have helped me develop an ear for jazz harmonies and chords. It's one thing to listen to them. Another to have them coming out of your hands.

2. I like the memorization. Yes, dot-songs are crutches. And the best thing about the method for me was tossing them aside and walking on my own two feet. Yes, the process was slow. At times I felt dementia creep in. But my memory seems way better for my own voicings than Sudnow's, however inferior mine are. And less than a year away from age fifty, it feels like my memory is improving. Perhaps due to mere use.

3. I like his insistence on learning standards with lots of chord changes. The more chords per song, the more chords my hands learn. And I realize these standards are just a means by which to learn the keyboard, the scale degrees, the hand positions, and the open voicings. The folk songs I play on guitar have precious few chords. There's less to learn. The jazz standards, by constrast, are jammed with complex concentrated changes and chords. I've learned volumes from voicing one song. And I suspect that it might be easier to move from the complex to the simple, than vice versa.

4. I like the open-voicings. Of course. I'm right handed. Left hand stays relatively simple, and the right hand does all the fun stuff. It's just a means to learn chords, with (at least for me) the more dexterous hand.

5. I like the voicing rules. Maybe they're tools, not rules. Anyway, they provide structure without a straightjacket. They are flexible enough for experimentation. Yet stable enough to feel secure in doing so.

I've eight and a half more voicings to go in order to meet the Sudnow Challenge of ten songs voiced. After that, I'm up for grabs.

It seems like the next step for alot of people is PM. How have Sudnow students fared there? I'm not able to jump into PM's message boards without membership. So I'm curious about people's experience in moving from one method to the other.

IMHO, I don't think so, both course show you how to play the piano but they use two different road.

It will give you more tools to become a better piano player.

Serge

I havent taken Sudnow and Im at Piano Magic for only few weeks now so I may not be the best one to give you answers, but heres my opinion:

1. In Piano Magic your focus wont be on voicings. You will learn different left and right hand decorations but your main goal will be to actually learn to play by ear (As far as I know Sudnow doesnt teach you to play by ear, but from his diagrams and fake books)

2. In Piano Magic you dont memorize much, but I take this as a good thing. Instead od memorizing someone else's arrangements you will make up your own.

3. When you are playing fe. from a fake book you can take an arrangement with lots of chords to start with, but when learning to play by ear you cannot. You start playing simple songs with 2 or 3 chords (C, F and G in the Key of C) so that you train your ears to recognize these basic chord changes. You cant just jump directly into songs with all sorts of augmented, dimnished ... chords without familiarizing yourself with those basic chord changes.

4. In Piano Magic you first start playing simple songs with just left hand block chords and one finger melody in right hand. Later you add decorations to both hands.

5. As I said: In Piano Magic you dont get such voicing rules, but of course you get different decorating technicques.

I also agree with Serge88: Piano Magic isnt an upgrade to Sudnow, it is a completely different way of playing.

Hope that helps!

Yes it's very helpful. It seems that they may be upgrades (or sidegrades) to each other. That is, flip sides of an infinitely sided coin:

Right hand vs Left hand.
Memorization vs Improvisation.
Fake book vs No book.
(Complex to simple) vs (Simple to complex)
Autonomy vs Intimacy???

And all this is interlude as I wait for Harkness and Dembska to come out with Volume Two of "Piano, Body & SouL"

Hey Norman,

I agree with 006 and Serge, but I too know nothing about Sudnow except what other PMers comment about at PM, and there are several doing both methods.

I brought nothing to the table except a fairly good set of ears, tho not much in between them, but I'm pretty good using my hands and fairly right sided.

It's like I fell down a staircase in January, came to in an hour, stood up and announced "I think I'll go buy a piano" : ).

I found PM in Feb., and brother, I have picked up a bunch, as I think most would do if..... they do what Mike recommends without skipping ahead. I don't have a lot of time between business, family and grandkids. Just make time daily without fail, would be my suggestion. Also, strike a balance between time on the bench and time on the PM forum.

Mike heaps a lot on your plate in the way of actually watching him play (video), with different rhythms, bass runs, right hand/left hand, melody, chording, etc., in an effort to get us to think like the music thinks. I translate that as: anticipating what's gonna happen next, and moving into it while maintaining rhythm.

As I recall when I started out, if you're mainly interested in the classics, PM is probably not going to fit well, but if you can carry a tune, and sing, whistle, or hum a tune with correct rhythm, you can do this.

Mike builds this around playing first what is familier and simple, whether it is "Silent Night", Happy Birthday", etc. and eventually moving on into the "Misty", "Georgia on my mind" type of music. But, as to memorization or improvisation, there is no sheet music that I know of, or no demand that you learn this piece or that in this particular way. It's up to you because you know what's in your head and your head will probably combine memory and improv.

Let me add that there are students at PM who are far, far more advanced than I am, who discuss advanced chording, etc.. I don't venture into those threads yet because I'm not ready for it. And it may be people who only joined in April but have a strong music/piano background.

Finally, I'll add that Mike also plays publicly.....a lot. But, there is a ton of stuff to work on while he's gigging, plus there are a lot of pretty savvy folks/students who will jump in and help you with a question when he's tied up.

Anyway, those are my impressions. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Hope this helps my friend.....