Beginner training plan
Your first lessonBasic introductions, just to get to know what we'll cover over all the lessons. Most importantly to get to know how I work and how you/your child work because at the end of the day we are two musicians that are working together.
After that, let the student throw down. Have them play me something, doesn't have to be jazz related, it could very well just be a cover from a Disney movie. Just something to give a foundation that we can build from.
After the student plays I may give comments on things I liked, things that might need improvement, as well as asking questions about what they played (i.e. "why does this piece stick out to you?") just to see into their mind and how they might want to convey the music they're playing.
After that, we'll probably wrap up with just a short conversation about music in general, because jazz is the foundation behind modern music. Let them ask any questions about anything that we covered/will cover.
Lesson 2-3From here we'll stay in that introduction phase as we transition into a jazz mindset. I'll ask a question unrelated to music. (i.e. "Which restaurant has the best French fries?" "What's your favorite TV show/movie?" "Tennis shoes or high tops?")
After a brief introduction/recap of the previous lesson, we'll hit the ground running. I'll touch on the theory behind jazz, the most common techniques behind jazz (swing, chords, improvisation) and then we'll translate it to piano.
Hopefully by the end of the 3rd lesson we'll have a solid understanding of jazz, as well as some warmups that we'll use in later lessons
Lesson 4-10By this point we'll end up going straight into warmups (scales, chords, rhythms) as well as a listening exercise.
This exercise will consist of the two of us listening to a chart off of an album (the same album will be used until we listen through all the tracks) and dissecting the parts of the chart, with a focus on the instrument they are playing (piano)
We'll touch base with short theory, and we'll start making our first "charts" using a basic 12-bar blues
We'll continue with a basic 12-bar blues until the student has the chord shapes in their hands. From there we can look into using extended chords (Cmaj7/C7/Cm7) as well as improvising over the blues
We'll end the lesson with a short recap on what we covered (notes are not required, but I wouldn't stop you if you took notes)
