Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons, where we help guitarists to learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way.
My name is Marc, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe.
Speaking of teaching, because it's the today's topic, right is going to be a short podcast.
We are going to well, I am going to discuss how teaching and mentoring and showing stuff to other people is tremendously helpful to your jazz guitar progress.
In fact, it applies to any area of life.
But now, because we're talking about jazz guitar, of course that's what we're doing.
so speaking of the devil, I did dictated most of the year 2014 to jazz guitar lessons, and so it's kind of new to me.
You know, I've been doing this and that and doing gigs and playing professionally.
And believe it or not, I even went back to school to become a as a stats guys, the district's statistician.
even if it's very hard to pronounce.
And, I realized that doing the teaching thing full time because now I have tons of students, and I just.
That's all I do.
I realize that it's kind of, it's kind of a selfish and never in the way because everything I learned, and I, I had to show to other people scales, arpeggios, song and chords and this and that.
I had to learn it deeper myself.
So that's the first takeaway.
Whatever you do, whenever you teach stuff to other people, it makes you learn it deeper.
So mentoring is a powerful way to learn for yourself.
so while you are the teacher, you are still the pupil.
You are still the student.
So, the so once again, yes.
What's happening is on the website on jazz guitar lessons learned since 2009.
I just wanted to learn these things deeper.
So I just started to spread the word and say, hey guys, here's the scale position.
I don't know what I'm doing, but, you know, learn it.
And speaking of this, it reminds me of, there's a recent project on the Jazz Guitar Lessons outlet store, which is called Solo Excursion.
solo excursions.
Sorry, I'm not the author, but an and, the author is taking solos, recorded jazz guitar solos by masters, you know, Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, Ed Bechard, and she's doing that, taking a solo, transcribing it.
That's one hell of a job, you know, it's a big it's a big thing you got to do.
But then she's extracting lessons and exercises and assignments.
She's telling you not only do you learn a solo and check it out, look at the licks.
But here's how to go further.
And guess what?
Guess what's happening with her playing with her perspective on these solos?
She's learning a whole lot because she has to go further than just learning it for herself.
So same thing for me.
I looked at the magazine, the it's an E magazine, by the way.
It's incredible just to go check it out and whatever, I flick through it, I'm like, all right, what if I had to teach this to to somebody on Skype?
Now, this is the Jim Hall lick on Stella by Starlight.
He's doing this diminished thing.
But how do you approach that?
how do you you how do you show the building blocks to say, you know, this is how we build the licks, that that's really where the juices I find.
so you see, to to to come back to what I was saying earlier, I spent about two years in the past.
In the past a little while.
So say, between 2000 and 12, 2014, a little before that.
And I studied mathematics at the undergrad level.
in university, because I wanted to, to do statistics, right.
That I thought that this would be the cure all and all solution to all my life.
But guess what?
Still here.
Music chose me and not the other way around, right?
So in math, whenever I would take a course that would require a degree of reflection, there's a complexity within the mathematics that we're learning in school.
Right.
And university.
I would try to do like group study and be with people and try to explain things.
Even if I was just on the verge, not even completely master, like, masterfully explaining it like some of my virtuoso teachers would going through these indefinite integrals.
And when I applied probability, even if I would, I was not at that PhD level, I would take my fellow students and go, hey man, did you remember the last class we talked about this and that and that?
What about you just talk talk about it around a beer or sandwich and it will help me tremendously.
So it's an it's a habit that I started very early in my life personally.
And I strongly encourage you, encourage you to do the same.
my early teaching got started when I was around 15 years old.
You know, I went door to door with my little pamphlets.
I would put this in the mailbox, like walking, you know, my shoes just have these photocopies in my neighborhood and just go like, hey, man, you want guitar lessons?
I know how to strum chords, right?
Can I show you stuff and maybe give me 12 bucks an hour?
Right.
So how strumming.
that's where I discovered how strumming a C chord and quarter notes in your living room is much easier than strumming it in front of somebody else first.
Like performing.
And it's much more challenging to show it to another person.
because this person comes with his own background and difficulties with the guitar.
You know, it's a physical thing.
You have to teach posture.
so it was a very interesting experience.
Hey everyone, just a quick break here.
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Okay, now back to the episode.
When I moved to Montreal and and when I study jazz full time, I started to, you know, do my studies, do gigs and jam sessions.
I started to acquire students along the way.
I taught in a music school that was associated with a music store, you know, the usual deal.
It's your, the second floor on the on the floor that nobody goes to everybody's shops for guitars, and they never go there, except if you buy a guitar and they tell you, hey, you have five lessons for free now you can learn to play your G and CAF.
And so anyways, I was, sitting in a small cubicle in a small room for about 15 to 20 hours per week.
So seeing the same people over and over, having to teach them the things that they wanted and adjusting my strategy to fit their personalities, because there's more than one way to show the exact same material to different people.
And I think that's where as a musician, as a jazz guitarist, you get to see the different perspectives of the same things.
Sure, you might know this or that, like you might know you two, five, one in the key of C major.
But imagine if you sit down with ten different people each week and you have to show them the same stuff, but you have to adopt a different strategy.
You have to take it from a different angle every time.
So I would always start with my basic, which I still do.
I don't have many beginners, but like very, very beginner students, but I do sometimes, and I start with a warm up with, a book that looks too easy, but that's incredible.
It's called A dozen a day.
You do it for piano, but there's a guitar edition, so I call those my warm ups.
Then I use modern method.
Yes, the modern method, the virtually one.
And then I'd go through songs, a warm up, modern method, and songs.
What songs you want to play, kit?
and then we adjusted accordingly.
Right.
We adjusted to, this guy wants to play more guns N roses, and now the Beatles and this other lady needs to spend a fair amount of time just doing the warm ups, because the F chord hurts the tip of her fingers.
You know, that type of stuff was incredible for my learning, even at a level where I would be performing the Jazz Fest and stuff, just sitting down there and being with the people would help you.
Well, first it helps your patience and humility, but also it helps you ingrain musical topics much deeper.
and lastly, I have to tell you about this.
I had to teach kids also in a private school, private grade school.
So imagine from age 8 to 12, approximately.
So from a blank slate, these kids, they've never played anything except the xylophone or the recorder.
And then they walk to you and they're blank slate.
And, the teachers there went, you know, we want Suzuki method.
You play this physically classical method.
Twinkle, twinkle.
And you, you learn, you learn more about yourself than you teach.
Really, when you get in these kinds of situations.
Plus, pay was nice.
So when, you're, you know, you can support your art by having good teaching gigs, that's always a plus.
So highly recommended.
If you do this last word of advice, you do this teaching to kids.
One word posture.
Make sure the whole that they hold the guitar properly and that the angle of the neck is fine and that the wrist is not to, you know, anchor it somewhere and there's several problems.
Look at that and you'll see.
Then this few weeks later, you'll realize how bad your posture was and then you'll start correcting for this.
Good.
So that's it for a podcast.
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There's more on the way.
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That's "usefedora" as in a fedora hat and I will see you soon on the website.
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Thank care.
