How Adults learn, Fast Eddie, and the Doctor

It’s funny- the interactions that stick out when you teach 50,000 people a month. When you expect to see magic, you start seeing it everywhere

Fast Eddie and the Doctor were two examples who showed up yesterday.

First, what it looks like teaching 50k students a month:

10k email readers
50k YouTube lesson video views
200 community members meeting on Zoom
10 private coaching clients
School visits, extra Zoom classes, IG/FB lesson videos, in-person workshops, etc.
(Teachers needn’t have 50k students to save time using some of these approaches.)

As you can see, much of my teaching happens in one direction: I send it out to the Internet.

But I receive comments, emails, DMs, texts, Zoom chat messages, phone calls, and even snail mail:

Administrative: “Where’s the Zoom link?”
Suggestions: “Please show your bowing hand (or sheet music) in the video next time!”
Compliments: “Thanks for another helpful lesson!”
Trolling: “Why are you wearing two hats?”
Some tell me their life story. I dig those.

Yesterday, two interactions stuck out.

The first was a Youtube comment from someone with the handle “Fast Eddie,” who wrote:

“Since I found your channel, I am going to learn the fiddle a lot better. thank you sir.. this is what I f**** need. someone to keep showing me over and over and over, and I can watch and watch, and it seems so simple.”

Love it. Thanks Fast Eddie.

The other was an exploratory private Zoom call.

The caller sent ahead notes sharing his background, struggles, goals, and desired outcome:

He has a PHD in music education.
professional singer.
avocational violinist with an interest in learning Jazz.
wanted to know if I might be available to teach him, privately.

I got on our call from a coffee shop near Blue Lake Suzuki Family Camp in Michigan.

He was in Tel Aviv. He appeared to be fit, in his 50s.

He told me he’s been taking jazz classes at a college program. The teachers have him exclusively playing transcriptions, and it’s driving him crazy. He feels like he hasn’t progressed.

I explained briefly some differences in my method, and that I could understand his frustration with the “Jazz Academic” paradigm.

The “Jazz Studies” model teaches harmony and improvisation, but often requires students to apply these skills exclusively to Jazz tunes. It forces you to learn many new and unfamiliar things at once, including swing rhythm, Blues, bebop scales, complex chord progressions, and decades of melodic vocabulary…It’s too much for most people to take, if you’re older than 16.

My method teaches harmony and improvisation without requiring students to learn any of that other stuff.

I asked if he had read Daniel Kahneman’s book, “Fast Thinking, Slow Thinking?”

He said he had, which was great because he understands the difference between the learning (slow) mind and creative (fast) thinking.

In a nutshell: It takes time to learn new things.

People get frustrated learning jazz when they try to improvise with musical materials that they have yet to learn.

In my method, students can begin improvising over material they already understand. It applies to many other styles, and is a bridge to learn Jazz faster if that’s what you want IMHO.

I confessed to him somewhat sheepishly that I am not a PHD. My bachelors degree in Philosophy taught me enough to know that I’m not a very good writer.

That being said, I gave him links to “nerdy” articles I’ve written that might resonate with a scholarly type: