A Review Of The Players School of Music, Part 3; the final installment

[funkle]

Hi all. This is my 3rd thread on the Players School.

I have two previous (long) posts on the subject in this forum. One from when I attended Oct - Nov '07 ( [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=7438"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=7438[/url] ), and one from when I attended Jan - Mar '09 ( [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44548"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44548[/url] ). I have also posted this review a little while ago on Talkbass.

I'm keeping a similar format to the previous reviews, although I'm chopping it up for readability purposes.

Edited April 11, 2010 by funkle

[funkle]

In the 9 months since I last attended, I spent the time:

- practicing through 6 complete keys from the Chord Studies for Electric Bass book, practicing every exercise in all 12 keys

- practicing various pieces of Charlie Banacos material obtained from a bassist passing through my town (ii-V7-I's, triad pairs, etc)

- practicing through material from the PSOM Chord Studies book (primary subordinate substitutes in all 12 keys, etc)

- continuing the PSOM Ear Training course, bought from an ex-student, finishing off books 6 + 7 (there are 8 books in total). Book 7 moved into chromatic solfege and 16th note syncopated rhythm studies, which took me a lot longer to get through.

- playing in 3 different jazz bands, 2 amateur and the third semi-pro - lots of reading needed. Cut a jazz demo with the semi-pro band, planning to look for gigs after I get back from school. Practicing the music associated with all of these.

- working a busy day job.

[funkle]

So, when I went back to school, my schedule was this:

Ear Training 8 (combined class with Harmony) - 2x week
Ear Training Analysis - 1x week
Ensembles - 4x week
Chart Reading - 1x week
Private Lesson with Jeff Berlin - 2x week
Introduction to Arranging - 1x week
Introduction to Recording - 1x week

Each class is an hour, or up to an hour. This schedule was extremely busy, and resulted in a lot of work. So, I dropped the Recording class after the 4th week, because it was eating up valuable time, and was not essentially what I had come to the school for.

[funkle]

So going through each class in turn:

[b]Ear Training 8 (combined class with Harmony):[/b] We moved into continuing the sight-singing of chromatic solfege, sight-singing syncopated 16th and 32nd note lines in a variety of time signatures, and writing out chord progressions from listening to them. This was hard work and required constant practice between lessons. However it definitely got easier with time.

In terms of the Harmony, I had in fact completed the school's harmony course from my own private study of their materials, so Matt Bokulic had me composing a new song (or two) each week. Which was pretty hard work; composition takes me a while. We worked around major/minor/etc Blues, Rhythm Changes (major + minor), Blues based on sus chords, pentatonic melodies, melodies and ways to invert/change them, etc. This was incredibly useful to me overall, helped me to understand melody better, and got me thinking about writing a lot more. Matt composes fairly constantly, and having someone who is experienced to read over and make suggestions on your compositions is invaluable.

[b]Ear Training Analysis:[/b] This was a class I'd never heard of before, but essentially involved detailed analysis of the form of a variety of different songs and styles. It required a lot of listening to music and noting of many features - time sig, key, form and function of each of different sections of a song, instrumentation, dynamics, etc. An apparently simple class which turned out to be deceptively difficult (especially when trying to pick apart songs with many different meters). Kind of hard to explain in some ways, but it really has helped me to listen to songs very closely and pick apart how they work. I'd call this class the flip-side to arranging.

[b]Ensembles: [/b]This was pretty much the same format as previously, with an hour daily of playing and improvising on a jazz tune with the superivision and commentary from a teacher (Matt Bokulic, Jeff Berlin, Joe Porter, or Jeremy Powell). The crux of the school, really. This year, the ensemble I was in made it through Jordu, Days of Wine and Roses, Seven Steps to Heaven, How My Heart Sings, and Tune Up over the 10 weeks.
[b]
Chart Reading:[/b] At the stage I am at, this was essentially a reading class focused on written out jazz/funk/latin charts with 16th-note syncopations. Many of these were originals, some were big-band charts. Also expected to improvise/solo over these. Done with Matt Bokulic.

[b]Private Lessons with Jeff Berlin: [/b]These were really good. Jeff can listen to you and give you exactly what you need to deal with a problem. The material we worked through was pretty wide-ranging this semester. I transcribed some solos he played for me (simple ones, given my level), worked on some Pat Martino lines Jeff had previously transcribed, and worked on a ton of Charlie Banacos material, which is uniformly excellent. I can't really go into all the details, but we covered a whole heap of material in a range of different tonalities, which is really starting to open things up for me. Also, a great lesson on phrasing, which I need to work on.

Jeff himself is a very easy to get along with, and he and I have a good friendship. Of course we've known each other for a few years now, and I always do the work he asks me to do...

[b]Introduction to Arranging:[/b] A great primer on arranging, covering all the main instruments, ranges, transpositions, pitfalls, etc. The final assignment here was to arrange a song of your choice for drums/bass/sax/trumpet/piano (+/- guitar). I chose Frevo, by Egberto Gismonti, which was considerably harder to arrange than I had anticipated. However, the teacher of this class is a well-known arranger (Brian O'Flaherty), and he was extremely helpful and patient with us. A great learning experience overall, and it was great to have the arrangement performed by the teachers at the ned of the semester. I would recommend Noteflight (www.noteflight.com) for getting basic musical ideas down (it's free), but I turned to Sibelius for the final engraving and layout.

[b]Introduction to Recording:[/b] Not too much for me to say here, except that I dropped it after a few weeks as my schedule was too hectic to accommodate it, and I felt that it was a bit too lecture-based for me (the school does not currently have a lot of hands-on recording PC's). I believe they are looking into developing this course further. Wait and see, I guess.


In addition to the classes and work required, I generally spent 3 hours a day practicing, varying a bit with workload. The school recommends a minimum of two hours a day of practice to keep up.

I also spent as much time as I could squeeze in playing charts with other students - generally flipping open the Real Book and going for it.

[funkle]

So, that's the potted review of what I spent my time on at PSOM, and what you can expect if you attend.

The last 2 and a bit years since I started coming have been a musical epiphany for me, and I have improved a lot. I have completed the harmony and ear training courses at the school and learned more about composition and arranging, and am playing well these days. I'd say the school pretty successfully achieves what it sets out to do, and if you're willing to put the legwork in, you will not fail to improve. It's plenty of work, though!

As a final comment, I would say that if you intend to make a living playing your instrument, I would regard everythng that Jeff tells you as gospel. Everything I have learned from him has turned out to be true, ranging from his views on metronomes to those on how to practice correctly/'out of time' (although not 'out of sync'). I'm going to say this simply - Jeff's methods have worked extremely well for me over the last couple years, and I expect them to continue doing so. I might not have been convinced of everything he said when I first 'got serious' 2 and a bit years ago, but it has all proven itself many times over since then.

If you want some further detail on the concepts Jeff espouses, have a look at his 'Jeff Berlin on Music Ed' threads on Talkbass, or my previous PSOM review thread (there's a post on it there).

[Uncle Balsamic]

Great posts. I would love to go out there.

[fretmeister]

Me too. It seems very much a school for understanding music and expressing it with the instrument of your choice, rather than being a shred guitar school type thing.

That would be a wonderful place to spend a few years. Not going to happen without a lottery win though!

[funkle]

Yep, it was a great experience. However, if you can't afford to go, you can always find someone who has been and get them to teach you. Phil Mann teaches at the ICMP in London and has also attended...

Edited April 11, 2010 by funkle

[RhysP]

Thanks for posting your comments about the Players School.
I was all set to go out & take one of their intensive courses this year but family illness meant I had to postpone for the foreseeable future.
I'd still love to do it if possible though.

[funkle]

[quote name='RhysP' post='802864' date='Apr 11 2010, 06:37 PM']Thanks for posting your comments about the Players School.
I was all set to go out & take one of their intensive courses this year but family illness meant I had to postpone for the foreseeable future.
I'd still love to do it if possible though.[/quote]

Good luck. Hope it works out for you eventually!

[Kiwi]

All that scares the bejesus out of me. I'd be climbing the walls like a caged animal after a few hours, let alone a few days.

Kudos to you for your hard work, committment and dedication.

[funkle]

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='803027' date='Apr 11 2010, 08:40 PM']All that scares the bejesus out of me. I'd be climbing the walls like a caged animal after a few hours, let alone a few days.

Kudos to you for your hard work, committment and dedication.[/quote]

Thanks. But you might do better at it than you think - the school meets you at your level, and then works you upwards from there. You are expected to work at it though - 2 hours of practice a day as a minimum, plus the classwork. But when practice becomes absorbing, it it's a lot easier to do. And when practice is done correctly, it is (for me, anyway) almost a form of meditation. I didn't know it, but before I went to the school, I wasn't really practicing correctly. Now, it's a whole different animal.

Haven't practiced yet today - too busy transcribing a whole bunch of soul/funk songs for a gig next week. But hey, the gig comes first....