I first heard David Sudnow’s voice, in person, in 1984 – I still remember, and miss, his distinctive timbre (what other word could there be) and outsized enthusiasm. His message: anyone could learn to play something they’d enjoy listening to – was beguiling if not completely believable, but his siren song was irresistible. I signed up on the spot. Thus began a long and often convoluted relationship with David the man, and a more straightforward one with Sudnow the Method.
When David got sick he asked me if I would ‘take over’ his Method. That seemed impossibly presumptuous on my part but I agreed to ‘look after’ his creation, partly for selfish reasons (I still had much to learn from him – and still do) but also because I just felt that David’s Method was an important contribution to musical self-expression. A particular sort of joy that too many people miss out on unnecessarily.
I hope you enjoy listening to David in the ‘weekend seminar’ and the many other audios available in the Advanced area – I still learn new things after decades of using his Method. This reorganizing of his material and presentation of his ideas has been a long time in the works. I think he would approve. This web site is, respectfully, my small homage to the part of his life he dedicated to helping others create music and learn how to express themselves with a piano.
Every day I get to enjoy the changes he brought to my life. I wish the same for you.
(Feel free to add your own David Sudnow stories on the forum.)
I was pleased and honored to meet with Suds when he was living in New York State in early 2000. I enjoyed taking a private lesson with him. Not only did his method help me become a better pianist but in the hour on more that I spent with him, he showed me some amazing concepts about my playing. He had the unique ability to immediately zero in on the important issues His simplified approach and method in teaching the piano has certainly aided many individuals in learning to play good piano music. I am very indebted to Suds and blessed that I found him.
Gene
This all started when I picked up a strange paperback in a book store in the early 80’s, and tried several times to read it. I found it to be a dense, frustrating, poorly written book. Eventually I got through it, reading it like Shakespeare — just going for the gist. I couldn’t get it. I couldn’t forget it. Eventually, somehow, I lost it.
Twenty years later wandering the stacks in a library, I found it again. Once again I picked it up. Once again, I thought Suds was on to something, or else just on something. Now, I found it to be a fascinating study, with words popping off the page as if in a Charlie Parker solo. It’s a jazz study masquerading as beat poetry masquerading as sociology masquerading as a jazz study. It’s a book not meant to be read, but heard. And preferably in Suds own voice.
Well, that led me to google his name and find his piano method.
Later on, I purchased the second re-written edition — where he often substitutes clarity for poetry. He described “Ways of the Hand” as a book on how NOT to learn jazz — focusing on particular scales and tone collections, breaking the discourse into particular jazz phonemes, into which one can build words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books.
His frustration with this led him to create his method, in which he takes a top down approach, breaking a sophisticated sound into something the “rest of us” can get our hands on.
In one of his forum posts, I believe he said that if he had to do it all over again, he would have just take a solo, a piece, an improvisation, and take each step phrase by phrase, until he got it into his hands.
What I loved about Suds was his rebellious spirit: Iconoclast, academic, humanist, populist, comedian. He was all of that. He even rebelled against his own rules, breaking them with the first chord of Misty. And he encouraged the same in his students. After defining his voicing rules, he provided 18 pages of material (at least) on how to violate them.
As for myself, I had little use for the dot diagrams in his method. But his fractional notation really spoke to my condition. I felt like an old tin pan alley arranger, experimenting with different ways to get out the sound. (Steven Sondheim uses similar notation; so did Bach) It’s a great deal of fun. And it will always be with me.
He never believed in playing by ear. He felt it to be a misnomer. He played by hand. Enormous hands. He spoke of developing piano player hands. And he titled his book “Ways of the Hand.” not “Ways of the Ear.” He just regarded the ear as the final arbiter, the judge of what stays and what goes.
It’s amazing. He denied that his method was a jazz course. I showed his voicing rules to my teacher, a jazz pro. He stated simply, “It’s Jazz.”
I enjoyed that, I too picked up the original book and although not quite getting it,perhaps more than quite lol,I never forgot it, the cover picture somehow logged in my brain so was pleased when first finding David’s method which I am now returning to,distracted earlier by life and my guitar which has always been the instrument I pick up but as I write to Markham I’m more determined to go further than Misty again .
12/30/2023
I too have come back to David’s method after a long hiatus from playing. I became a Sudnow fan years ago when I purchased the course on cassette tapes which came with a spiral bound book (Misty, As Time Goes By and Danny Boy). I play guitar and keys but fell short of getting jazz voicing into my hands at a level where I could flip to a page in a fake book and start playing reasonably well (after a little practice). My “semi-professional” playing experience was in a bar band years ago covering early 80’s top 40 music with some more musically adventurous stuff for us. I was the utility man switching between guitar and keyboards (and occasionally forced to sing).
So why am I back? I was talking with my father in law on Christmas Day (evening actually) about hobbies and what might fire him up. He mentioned his piano and his frustrated desire to play and I instantly recalled the Sudnow Method. He’s the classic “failed” piano student that David talks about in the video. I showed him my old Dotbook, explained David’s method and gifted him the basic course that night. So far so good …
I’ve had a few email exchanges with Marham and he’s helped more than he probably knows. I signed up for the advanced method a couple of days ago and mentioned how much I’ve enjoyed the old Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas record over the years. He emailed a photo of a chord chart (lead sheet) for the signature song “Christmas Time is Here”. I’m working on the song and now finally understand the #11 chord notation and how beautiful it sounds.This one song is like a mini course on it’s own. Thank’s Markham!
Whoever is out there reading, my best wishes to you all for a healthy and happy new year.
Dan
I still don’t know how to continue from where I left off.