Derek Sivers recounts an inspiring story of how he got a multi-year music education in a few days from Kimo Williams, and makes a larger point about the excitement of learning at a fast pace with a good teacher:
After a one-minute welcome, we were sitting at the piano, analyzing the sheet music for a jazz standard. He was quickly explaining the chords based on the diatonic scale. How the dissonance of the tri-tone in the 5-chord with the flat-7 is what makes it want to resolve to the 1. Within a minute, I was already being quizzed, “If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tritone, then so does another flat-7 chord. Which one?”
“Uh… the flat-2 chord?”
“Right! So that’s a substitute chord. Any flat-7 chord can always be substituted with the other flat-7 that shares the same tritone. So reharmonize all the chords you can in this chart. Go.”
The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was challenging me – keeping me in over my head – encouraging and expecting me to pull myself up, quickly. I was learning so fast, it had the adrenaline of sports or a video game. A two-way game of catch, he tossed every fact back at me and made me prove I got it.
In our three-hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berklee’s harmony courses. In our next four lessons, he taught me the next four semesters of harmony and arranging requirements.
There’s no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.) (via Super Punch)