RE: [Harp-L] Michael Polesky - is giving lessons

[robert mcgraw <harpbob@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Again, I strongly endorse these email lessons...I have learned a lot, and become able to actually get thru a few tunes that i literally couldn't before. What Michael has done for me, like with "Days of Wine and Roses," is provide a sort of road map, if you will. It's still up to me to navigate the map with grace, and on a good day sometimes I can :-)
 
Michael takes the tune you are working on and provides [at times bar by bar] scale choices  for each of the chords, plus he explains why he is suggesting a particular scale choice...and before someone pipes in with how mechanical that is, well, so be it :-) Actually we are to think of each scale not as a collection of notes to be played as a scale, but as a palate to be chosen from for that chord/those chords...and anyway I'm at the place as a player where I really would be quite contented to be able to get thru a harmonically complex jazz tune mechanically. I know when i was first learning to play blues, i learned solos note for note, or as close as my ear and technique would allow me to learn 'em, and then sort of just played those solos or pieces of them in blues tunes. As the years passed, of course, I moved past that into a more [hopefully] fluid, personal way of playing. I know that will happen for me in jazz, too, if i keep working and listening and playing.  If you have the talent to be able to do this by your ear alone, God bless you! [and He has...]
But as Kenny Werner says in "Effortless Mastery," greatness is not the sole province of the gifted; I believe that...not to suggest that I will be great, but I know I can get better, and Michael Polesky's email lessons are helping me do just that.    
 
So if you're like me, one of the legions of less-than-brilliant players who nonetheless wants to learn to play jazz, and you live far away from places where there are actual jazz harmonica players to take lessons from, I urge you to take advantage of Michael's email lessons. 
WVa Bob
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