CPTP075: THE 5 MYTHS OF IMPROVISATION

WITH BRADLEY SOWASH

EPISODE 75 TRANSCRIPT

Tim Topham: Welcome back to another edition of the Creative Piano Teaching Podcast and thanks
so much for listening. Wherever you are in the world and whatever you’re doing at
the moment, I really appreciate that you’re spending your time with me.

My name is Tim Topham. I’m the teacher behind The Creative Piano Teaching
Podcast, the blog at timtopham.com and the Inner Circle Piano Teaching Community.
This is the podcast to listen to if you’re interested in teaching in a more
contemporary and creative way. Each week, we explore fresh ideas for your teaching
and business, interview the most interesting and innovative music educators from
the around the world and give you a regular dose of creative inspiration for your
studio. Today’s show notes and a full transcript are available at
timtopham.com/episode75.

In today’s session we’re going to be talking about the five myths of improvisation.
We’re also going to take the opportunity to have a bit of a chat about another
important subset of improvisation of complement patterns and how you can
improvise a complement of your students, why you want to do that and a discussion
around how will that interlinks into both improvisation and things like chord chats
and lead sheets.

I’ve invited a very special guest to join us today. He’s one hell of a cool cat at the
keyboard and one of the best improvisers and teachers that I’ve met. He’s a
composer, creative pianist, multi-intrumentalist, recording artist, author and
educator specializing in improvisation. If you’ve ever heard of the Toebourine, well
he’s the inventor of that. He’s also a country boy at heart. He loves his cows, riding
horses along the beach at sunset and drinking coffee through a straw.

I’m proudly working alongside him and another fantastically creative teacher Leila
Viss at the 88 Creative Keys Workshops in Denver in July. We’ll hear more about that

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 in a moment but please welcome the one and only Bradley Sowash. How you going
Bradley?

Bradley Sowash: Happy to be here Tim.

Tim Topham: Great to have you.

Bradley Sowash: Great introduction.

Tim Topham: Great to have you on the show. With the last time you were on was episode five. You
were one of those pioneering teachers who put up their hand when I said, “Guys I’m
starting a podcast. You want to be one of my guest?” Having no idea what you’re in
for, you and Leila both gladly put your hand up and said yes. I think back then we
talked about improvisation and getting started with creativity. I’m also interested to
know, what’s been the biggest change in your teaching since you were on that
episode which is now 18 months or more ago?

Bradley Sowash: I no longer teach any students on a regular basis one to one. I’ve switched to in
person group lessons. I’m teaching four at a time. More importantly and I think I
maybe the pioneer in this, I’m teaching online group pop jazz improvisation lessons.
It’s a group lesson online. I have about three adult amateur pianists and right now
about 17 or so piano teachers actually. We’re all studying piano pop jazz styles but
through a platform that allows me to see them and play and we interact. It’s just
delightful. It’s my favorite part of the week.

Tim Topham: It’s great. I remember you talking about moving across to this new way of teaching
for a whole lot of different reasons. You found it to be a successful way for people to
learn as well as you to be able to scale your teaching.

Bradley Sowash: Yes. The interesting about scaling teaching, if you want to look at just from a financial
end, it makes for a pretty high pay rate for that one hour except it involves a lot
more planning than the usual rolled in and teach the individual. The students really
appreciate the extensive lesson plans, extensive assignments. There’s tons of
handouts and we all interact together on a Facebook private group where I
encourage them highly and they follow through.

I’m posting videos of their progress. Throughout the week, I’m also providing
commentary and critics on their playing and their progress. The neat thing is so do
the peers. There’s this whole nice group energy going on. It’s really in many ways
almost more satisfactory than an in person lesson but with cameras all over … you

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 can see the overhead of my fingers and my face and I can see them and make them
bigger or smaller as they play.

The only thing I regret is that there’s a huge part of my normal teaching where I
accompany the student either with small hand percussion or on the piano. Even
that’s [lag 00:05:20] I can’t do that and that’s a shame. It’s so important in an in
person lesson to transfer the musicality directly without so much teacher talk. I’m
very big on accompaniment but so far the technology is not there for that to happen.
I forgot your question. I think I …

Tim Topham: I’d love to talk more about the technology and what you use but this isn’t the topic
for today. Brad, I’m just going to check something out. I just want to make sure we’ve
recorded all right. Let me just shut down. Give me a sec. I got a warning from my
recorder because I changed windows or something. Let me just …

At the end of the call, I’ll just check that the introduction recorded all okay. It should
be fine but I’ve now got everything sorted so we’re all good. Let’s continue.

Bradley Sowash: Makes me want to see it all [inaudible 00:06:29] or you got it?

Tim Topham: I’ll check it right at the very end. I’ll just do a quick check before you sign off.

Bradley Sowash: I understand.

Tim Topham: All right, here we go. Before we get into it, we probably got to define improvisation
because we’re going to be using it today and I know there’s some different ways to
look at it. What’s improvisation to you in the context of what we’re talking about
today?

Bradley Sowash: Tim, that’s not a question I can answer shortly. I tend to think about that about half
my day most days. Let me get at it from a couple of angles. Of course, improvisation
can be so many things. … I don’t know if you can hear the piano. It can be free
playing. Here’s a G chord. I’m just playing some chords. That’s one form of
improvisation. Another is tiny little ornaments and embellishments that you add to a
tune not unlike what Baroque musicians are doing by putting little unwritten trills
and things in, little changes to the melody. In the context that I teach it in, I teach it
through a jazz lens. Instead of improvisation, I’m going to define jazz. It’s a very big
word to try to define.

Tim Topham: Good luck!

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Bradley Sowash: It’s a huge bunch of styles. Almost it’s like saying classical which of course
encompasses a huge bunch of styles from 12th century Gregorian chant to
yesterday’s minimalism. That’s when you get into trouble when you think about it as
a style. For me, jazz is not a style of music and improvisation is not a style of music.
They are approaches to making music. There’s a big difference there because it’s a
way of music making. Here’s what my definition of jazz is. I’ll read it here. I’ve got it.

Jazz is an approach to making music not a style. It involves reading and improvising
over specific rhythmic feels within a given harmonic context. That’s very academic.
Let me break it down. Jazz involves reading and improving so that might already raise
some eyebrows. There’s this weird myth out there that jazz players and improvisers
do everything by ear. I don’t know of any professional improvising musicians who
aren’t excellent readers. It’s reading and improvising over a specific rhythmic feel. All
that means is, are we talking about a swing feel? Are we talking about … somebody
was talking about a tango the other day on a blues podcast I heard.

Tim Topham: [inaudible 00:09:07]

Bradley Sowash: These are rhythmic context jazz waltz. They’re stock feelings. They’re things a
drummer and a rhythm section relates to. Those are givens, the rhythmic feels given
and the last given is the harmonic context which is to say the chords are already
there. Most of the time improvisers had a lot that’s already a nice foundation that
they’re bringing a little bit of personality and personalization to and it’s not so wide
open it’s just play whatever you want. It makes a lot less scary. I define it as an
approach to making music.

Tim Topham: Let’s face it, jazz [uses 00:09:45] ... while they’re learning the standards and the main
tunes, they’ll be using some kind of lead sheets generally. Eventually they’ll
memorize a lot of it I would imagine. To get started, they have to be able to read
even if it is more of a lead sheet approach than a two handed ballad that’s all written
out.

Bradley Sowash: Right. Let me say one more thing about this because I’m a jazz guy. I’m going to
definitely pop some bubbles here with this. Last night we saw La La Land which is
about a jazz pianist. I related a lot to some of his misery felt by not being able to play
the music he loves. I was not drawn to jazz. Even though I’ve been a professional jazz
musician for more than 30 years, I was not drawn to it by its sound or its history. That
all came later. The thing that brought me to that music was it was the only place I

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 could find a home for creativity. After a while, I adapted it and learned it and studied
the greats and all that.

I was desperate as a student to try to find a way to do my own thing. Rock and roll
wasn’t cutting it for me playing block chords on an organ in bowling alleys. I did that
for a while. It wasn’t interesting. I was a guy with chops and deep musical interest. It
was just the freest style I could find. Then over time I adopted it. I’m happy to
improvise in any style that I can today. It’s the improvisation not the style that grabs
me.

Tim Topham: That opened up a whole lot can of worms I wasn’t expecting. That’s good. It just
shows that it is hard to closely define sometimes what we mean in piano teaching.
Even the word lead sheet, even that people might not know what that is or have a
different idea about what that is. There’s a number of terminology, things that I think
we could define better as musicians but anyway, that’s not the topic today.

Bradley Sowash: For example, quick one, chord chart and lead sheets sometimes people use
interchangeably. Two different animals.

Tim Topham: My understanding a chord chart would be what you get from Ultimate Guitar or
something like that which has got lyrics and just chords written above it, no musical
notation. A lead sheet has got a notated melody with chords above it. Is that your
understanding?

Bradley Sowash: Correct. Yes. To confuse the issue more, if you go to a big band rehearsal and they
hand you the lead sheets, they say, “Here are your charts.” It mixes it all up.

Tim Topham: I’m really keen to find out about your five myths of improvisation. Let’s take it
through. Start with number one.

Bradley Sowash: Number one, let me talk about these myths and just what they are. These are things
that inhibit people from exploring improvisation. Myths by definition are kind of
things that are assumed or kind of in our bones that when we bring them out into
the open air sometimes, they maybe don’t hold up as well. I hope to expose here a
couple of things that are keeping people in a fixed mindset rather than a growth
mindset. People thinking, “I can’t do this and because I have unconsciously taken on
these myths.” Here’s the first one.

Myth number one is that you have to be born with a good ear. You either got it or
you ain’t. There is in my experience as a 30 plus years of improvisation there is a bell

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 curve of musicianship talent on the ear scale. That bell curve has a maybe a 1% or 2%
who are extremely gifted by playing with their ear and relying heavily on that which
means often absolute pitch but not just that but incredible memory, to be able to
copy the licks they hear and that is somebody like Louis Armstrong is an extremely
rare skill.

On the other end is the 2% who are absolutely tin ears, who can’t count and I do
believe there are just certain very, very small percentage of people who can’t seem
to access their musicality. Outside of that, there’s all the rest of us in this massive bell
curve who can beat that myth down by study and practice. The myth buster is just
like traditional music skills playing by ear, personalizing melodies and improvising.
Those skills are developed through study and practice hello? When you’re good
something, it’s because you work at it.

Tim Topham: The issue is of course that so many of us teachers weren’t taught to practice our ears
if that make sense unless we were going up for an audition or an exam or something
like that, we would be run through the oral test a couple of weeks before. The rest of
the time, we didn’t often do that and there wasn’t that suggestion from our teachers
to, “Go and see if you can pick this tune out by ear.” I have a feeling that’s what has
caused one of these myths is people that are just not being aware of it and
experiencing it as a child.

Bradley Sowash: Let me just say that improvising and playing by ear are different skills. I consider
myself a very comfortable improviser and just an average play by ear guy. I go often
to fiddle jam sessions. I love to play fiddle and mandolin. I sit in a room with people
who play these instruments entirely by ear who cannot read a not. It’s astonishing.
They say, “Let’s learn a new tune today.” They slow it down and play it two or three
times on the recording with everybody’s eyes closed. Then the leader says, “Okay,
you got it? Let’s play.” I managed to get the downbeats on most measures.

Then they’re saying, “Well you’re the jazz guy. You’re great at this.” Not so much
actually. Picking out a tune by ear is absolutely something that is separate and it’s
absolutely something that gets better by doing it which is one of the reasons I’d go to
these jam sessions. Going to hear the next myth?

Tim Topham: Yeah, let’s do it.

Bradley Sowash: Myth number two is that improvisation is too difficult or it’s too difficult for my
students. This myth arise from comparing ourselves to the masters. Maybe your
favorite pianist is Oscar Peterson a brilliant virtuoso regardless of style. Just a

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 technical monster and you hear that and think, “That’s so difficult or I just don’t have
those chops.” Of course someone like Oscar Peterson is one of the greatest
musicians of all time. That’s no comparisons.

Musicians improvise at all levels all the time. In fact, my myth buster is that anyone
can improvise. If you accept that myth buster, then there’s a logical extension of that
which says by starting your students early, improvisation becomes a natural way to
make music. In other words, it’s just another lens in on a way to make music.
Reading is half the deal and improving and paying by ear, those kinds of skills is half
the deal. It doesn’t need to be difficult.

Tim Topham: 100% agree. Yeah. The earlier you start creating things with your students, the
better. It becomes [natural 00:17:04]. I’m planning my notebook beginner’s course
and a webinar due to come out soon which is all about that approach to just stay
away from reading for a while. Get the ears turned on and exploring sounds. I know
you don’t teach many child beginners these days but you would probably feel that
that’s a good team to teach too, right?

Bradley Sowash: Right. I’ve written beginner books. My creative chord series follows this exact
premise where from the first page of the book they are reading and improvising. Just
as one quick example, they learn this the little silly tune Hot Cross Buns and boom, as
soon as they can play that here’s some ideas to customize it. What would you like to
do differently on measure three so that they’re just alongside? There isn’t even a
sense that they’re two different activities.

Teachers sometimes day they don’t have time to teach improvisation. “When would I
do it? Would I do it every other lesson? How do I make time last five minutes?” To
me there is not a separation. You come at the same music through both reading it
and improvising with it. They go back and forth very handily.

Tim Topham: I’m very much in the same wavelength as you there. The more we pigeonhole all the
activities of a piano lesson, the more we’ll run out of time. You have to find the
interconnectedness between these things. That’s why I love Paul Harrison his
simultaneous learning approach from the UK. Everything is an issue via network.
Theory connects with oral, connects with improvising, connects with reading.
Everything is interlinked. If we consider our music like that, we can do anything in a
lesson.

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Bradley Sowash: Right. When it’s done right, the student understands the reasons for things then
rather than running off and doing a theory notebook as a sort of unrelated side
activity which doesn’t relate to anything else.

Tim Topham: Yeah.

Bradley Sowash: Onto myth three.

Tim Topham: Yeah let’s do it.

Bradley Sowash: The previous myth was about it being too difficult and I’m referring to technical
difficulty. This myth has to do with the music theory. The myth is you have to be a
music theory genius to teach creativity or to play improvisation or to be personalizing
artist. Personalizing meaning bring your own notes not just dynamics and phrasing
but you bring your own notes to other people’s music. The reason that this myth
exist is because many people especially classically trained pianist have a pretty
substantial library of improvisation books because they’re naturally curious about
this.

Typically those books are just too darn hard. They start on page one and say, “Here
are eight jazz kills including the Bebop dominant and the [Locrian 00:19:58] and they
say, “Try using these kills on the next tune.” Immediately you’re like, “What is this?
It’s so deep and heavy.” A lot of that has to do with the history of how jazz was first
turned into an educational subject. A lot of it went on in north Texas State University
and Indiana University by a guy named David Baker and Jerry Coker and some of
these legends of the beginning of jazz education. They were teaching at the college
level.

It didn’t start in the home studio. They were coming in with students who already
knew a whole lot and that’s where their chapter one was based on that. Fortunately
over this past several years there’s been more authors who are realizing that there’s
ways to teach this a lot earlier.

My myth buster that it’s too much music theory is this. If you can teach a major scale
in a few chords, you have the skills you need to begin teaching improvisation. Let me
just make a comment on that. There are some ways into improvisation which allow
the student to experience improvisation. One of the people who is so good at that is
Forrest Kinney with his pattern play books where the teacher can play a prewritten
part and then the student can experience improvisation by sticking to certain keys

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 such as the black keys and so on. That’s a great door opener. Everybody should
explore that.

What I’m talking about improvisation and music theory, I’m talking about the next
step where there’s understanding of what you’re playing or the student says, “This is
an E flat minor chord and these are the notes in it and these are the notes that will fit
with it.” That’s a little bit further down the road when we’ve experienced it but now
we’re ready to do our own music making. I think those are complementary
approaches.

Tim Topham: When students start making that connection between the theory of chord
progressions, chords and scales, when they start making that move, they really take
big leaps in their playing I feel and improvising. As you say, to start with what works
and the Pattern Play series is great for that. I was going to ask something else. I can’t
remember what it was at the moment but it’ll come back to me.

Bradley Sowash: I can plow ahead to myth number four if you like.

Tim Topham: Let’s do it.

Bradley Sowash: Myth number four and this is hard to explain but here it is. Like reading music, the
myth is that improvisers always know exactly what they will be playing next. In other
words, if you’re classically trained, you like the feeling of feeling prepared. You’re
used to knowing where your pitfalls are, have ironed them out. You know what’s
going to happen. You even practice your page turns. There’s a lot of givens. When
doing counter improvisation then it feels like a [inaudible 00:22:57]. There’s no
preparedness whereas improvisers relish the lack of preparedness in the sense they
relish being in the moment not knowing what’s going to come next is part of the
thrill of it.

When a classical musician begin to improvise it feels like they’re walking on Jell-O
because they don’t know what’s happening and what’s coming next. They don’t
know what they’re going to play next and that’s disconcerting. They think, “Gee a
real improviser must know exactly what they’re going to play.” That’s not right. The
actual myth is that even for skilled improvisers, it can still feel like stumbling around
in the dark.

When I play at my concerts and I’m looking up passionately with my eyes closed in an
apparent moment of ecstasy, I may just as well be praying for an idea. I think on a
great night, if I’m playing to the top of my game about 75% of my notes are what I’d

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 hope to play, what I’m trying to hear and get out. The other 25% are relying on
knowledge and guess work and hopes and dreams to just hopefully that it comes out
musically.

Tim Topham: Hearing that come from someone who I’ve heard perform and been blown away by it
is really heartening I think for us who are just starting our improvisation journeys. To
hear you say that 75% is what you wanted and that’s when you’re on the top of your
game so I imagine there’s plenty that you might be a 50-50 to know that someone
like you feels that way I think is really, really good for us.

Bradley Sowash: Good. Another piece of that is sometimes skilled improvisers get just run on playing. I
know what notes will work so when I’m not at the top of my game, I’m just wandering
around. One of the things that I’m constantly saying to myself when I’m improvising
especially in front of listeners is, “Bradley, are you meaning what you play? Are you
saying something? Are you making a statement? Are you clear about your intent or
are you just wiggling your

fingers on notes that you know will work?” it’s the same thing. It’s a little bit related
but in this podcast, I’m trying to not just stammer around and talk about anything
that comes to mind but try to keep the point. It’s just like that when you’re
improvising.

Tim Topham: I find the most improvising that I do day to day although it’s not going to happen for
the time being was when I was in my head of keyboard role over the last three years
in my previous school. I would have to improvise at services for my school and just
make stuff up when time needed to be filled. That was my chance to improvise and
that wasn’t jazz obviously. That wouldn’t be stylistically correct in that location. I
would just doodle around on the keys. I knew what would work so I could always
have the safe place to go.

I think the other thing I wanted to say is that sometimes when you improvise it
doesn’t always work and you’re not going to necessarily be happy with what the
outcome is. You might even have a bit of a fail but that’s okay. You’re trying. You’re
pushing your boundaries. As you say, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Have
you had any times when you’ve played and it’s actually been a bit of a failure?

Bradley Sowash: Sure. Yeah or just flat. This is where knowing your theory in it. By that I don’t mean
the deep theory but just knowing, “Look, I’m in G major and most of these chords in
the song are in G major. I can sit down here and use the pentatonic scale and survive.

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 That’s where you can get through a lack of inspiration by knowing what will at least
work. The other little piece of that and this is a big deal. I don’t want to get into this
too much right now. Any note can be fixed. Any note can be made to sound good.
You get better and better at sliding from an unintended note to a better note or
turning it into an ornament. As that skill grows, you feel more and more in control
like you’re able to survive those moments.

Tim Topham: I think it’s great too if a student has the skill to work their way around the chords in a
key then it is so much better if they have memory slips and they’re playing
something on a concert state and its happened to me many times. I’m not the best
memorizer but if my memory fails, I can keep making sounds that are in the right key
while I go “Oh what am I going to do?” then I’m back into it.

Bradley Sowash: I was playing the Bach three part fugue … Is it three part? The one that goes …
That’s the prelude and then …

Tim Topham: C minor, yeah.

Bradley Sowash: Yeah C minor. I was doing that in the jury in music school. This will be in the movie. I
had one of those memory slips and in the middle of the fugue playing it without
music. For those of you who haven’t been in music school, a jury is where you have
your back to four superior pianist who are your professors all with notebooks with
pencils. Every time you had a little slip you hear the pencils scratching away.

Tim Topham: How awful!

Bradley Sowash: Yeah it’s awful. Exactly. I got lost. I decided to (piano playing) to sort of play in a
Bach-ish way until I could recover and I remember where I was and then finished it
out. when I turned around the head of the piano department who’s since passed on
put her glasses down on her nose and said, “How dare you do that to Bach!” My
teacher said, I won’t mention her name, “But Miss that is useful. Everybody has
memory slips now and then to be able to recover is a nice skill.” She said, “I’m giving
him lowest marks.” He said, “Then I’m giving him highest marks.” The other two
looked down and I don’t know what my final marks were but I passed. I don’t know
who was right. it would have been great not to have the memory slip but it
happened.

Tim Topham: I would have loved to have heard it to be honest but that’s me.

Bradley Sowash: Yeah.

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Tim Topham: Let’s go to myth number five. I think we’re up to.

Bradley Sowash: Myth number five. Only jazz musicians can improvise and only on certain
instruments. Big, big myth. We think of improvisation, right away we think of jazz
because that’s one of the few styles that embraces it so openly. We think maybe
trumpets, saxophone, piano, bass drums, things like that. Let’s think about some of
the great improvisers throughout history. Maybe you’ve heard some of these guys.
Beethoven, Brahms, :Liszt, Mozart, Chopin, Bach. Chopin was such an improviser that
he had a terrible time putting his music down in print, because in concluding at least
one story of running down to the publisher to change it because he could always
think of 10 more ways to play it.

This is evident in the flourishes you see in his writing where they have 14 notes in
one beat and then 12 in the next one. He was constantly messing with it and it was
not comfortable for him to freeze it into ink because there’s so many other ways to
play it.

Another really important improviser and Tim you just mentioned it is everyone. Let’s
not kid ourselves. If you’re a pianist and the fan blows the music off your stand,
you’re noodling around or if you’re halfway through the wedding march and the
bride hasn’t quite made it to the alter yet and you can’t play … sorry, you played it
twice now and she’s not there yet or the actress is off stage and having little costume
malfunction and can’t get the zipper up on her dress and you’re doing (piano
playing). We improvise all the time because things go wrong. We have to cover it.
Let’s not kid ourselves and say we don’t improvise.

I’ll even go so far as to say that piano players improvise when they sight read. Give
me a break, of course you’re not getting all those notes the first time through. We’ve
figured out ways to call it scuffling if you will. That’s a form of improvisation. The
point is that everybody improvises in a lot of styles, in a lot of setting and we may as
well embrace it and make a bigger deal out of it.

Let me just name a few other styles that involve improvisation real quick. Bluegrass
music is not set. Everybody steps forward and plays that solo. Let’s think about
Native American flute music where they improvising a certain scale of a love song to
woo someone that’s being courted or the Indian classical music where there’s a raga
which is a detailed quartertone scale. A raga for different times of the year and
different religious holidays but the music is not set. The sitar player works on what is
only a set scale. African music with kalimbas and thumb pianos, improvising around

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 some set notes and set rhythms. It’s just everywhere. We hide our head in the sand
when we think it’s just jazz and rock guitar solos. It’s just everywhere.

Tim Topham: While teachers may not think they do it very often, I think sight reading is quite …
you brought that up because my sight reading is more improvising than just about
anything. That’s been the only way I’ve been able to get through. A massive part of
my job over the last six years as a teacher at a college has been accompanying other
instruments. You don’t have time to practice all that stuff. You’ve got to be a good
sight reader and to be a good sight reader, you look at the chord structure. You fluff
your way through it. I’ve been told …

Bradley Sowash: The first thing I do is just … as soon as I get handed that music I start writing chord
symbols in it as a safety net.

Tim Topham: I do the same. I’ve been told, “Wow that was just amazing what you did.” I might
have been playing half what was written. It’s great because it simplifies things and it
makes it doable. I really like that connection between improvisation and sight
reading. You’re absolutely right. I wanted to just before we start wrapping up make a
connection between improvising … I think it’s easier to think about improvising a lot
with the right hand. The right hand is moving all over the keys. [inaudible 00:33:30]
doing those massive runs. It all tends to be right hand. What about the styles that are
formed by left hand patterns? You do the demo at the start. That’s a form of
improving too, right?

Bradley Sowash: Yes. There’s two things here. You can fill with your left hand. Let’s see. Say we’re
playing Summertime which I know is now what you’re talking about. Sometimes I try
to think that if my left hand were a bassist and my right hand was a trumpet player I
want to make sure that you both get to have some fun. What you’re talking about is
stock patterns. This is a thing I love to teach and I’m big on. If somebody says … I
don’t know. Let’s say I play Mary had a little lamb here. Then someone says, “Oh
wow you’re so creative. How do you think like that?” 100% what I just played 100%
of it was stock pattern stuff. Knowing patterns makes it possible to accompany your
students. It makes it possible to dress up a lead sheet or a little song. I’m not sure
how you want me to get into this. I can show all kinds of patterns.

Tim Topham: Just play the pattern without the melody that you just did then.

Bradley Sowash: That was a swing pattern. Maybe I’ll just go through a few. A swing typically has a
walking bass. Bass players are very inventive in the way they will manipulate the
chord in their walking. As a piano player, we can simply all that and bring it down to a

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 simple pattern. A real go to pattern among about five or six that will get you through
99% of the places you need to walk. A go to pattern that almost always works is root,
second, third, fifth. On a C chord C, D, E, G. Say I’m playing … so Mary had a little
lamb is a C chord without any dressing up the right hand just … What was the right
hand doing? Just parallel structures.

I’m grabbing a shape here. My shape has the E note on top and that is the melody
note and then I have C, A, G underneath. I have this six chord. I put those and move
that around. Just move around like my hand is in a cast. Just move that shape
around. In a careful listen there’s some wrong notes in there. in flight, it sounds
terrific.

Tim Topham: Yeah.

Bradley Sowash: There’s one.

Tim Topham: That would be great go to jazz walk swing pattern. You do the little tango before.
What about like a rock? What if you wanted to rock out Mary had a little lamb?
What’s your [crosstalk 00:36:41]?

Bradley Sowash: A lot of times especially teenage boys figure this out about do it what I call rock
octaves where they just C, C, C, C.

Tim Topham: Alternating thumb and five, yeah.

Bradley Sowash: Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom with the pinky and the thumb. That will give
you by sort of a medium happy sounds. I could show you two more. One that’s really
cool is to put in flat seven. I’m going to play C to C but on the way I’m going to put a
B flat in there. Now I just play chord notes my right hand on a C chord and then [on
00:37:31] F. Okay?

Tim Topham: I’ve used that before. I like it.

Bradley Sowash: Another one you can do is what I call torch song where the right hand plays just
simple chord note chords. Think something like Let it Be. Right?

Tim Topham: Yup.

Bradley Sowash: The left hand is going to play long notes with quick little notes connecting to the next
root if that makes sense. Say I’m going to go from a C to a G. Here’s an F. It’s just

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 oozing bass there. That provides a nice background underneath the student playing a
melody or whatever.

Tim Topham: This is a massive area that we could touch on and we don’t have time today. That’s
not really the topic. I wanted to just mention it because I think this is one of those
fundamental ways that teachers can get more creative with their students is to
explore these left hand patterns and the effect that they have on the sound that a
student is creating at the keyboard.

Bradley Sowash: Right. Let me just say I have some style glossaries and things that I pass out of my
workshops that list some of these. Sometimes people treat them like they’re silver,
plate of gold or something. You need to find stock patterns. “What are these stock
patterns? I need to know what they are.” You’re playing them all the time. If you’re
playing non classical music, instead of just play it, if one looks at it with a [thief’s
00:39:16] mind and says, “What is going on in here? What is …” However it is, Dan
Coates or some arranger, [Phil Kevin 00:39:24] there’s so many good arrangers out
there of movie tunes and pop songs and things.

When you get those piano folios, if you just go beyond just playing and say, “What’s
happening here? What kind of bar on my own? What is this pattern? Why do I like
that?” That’s what I’ve spend a lifetime doing both by listening to recordings and
looking at music and think, “Oh I like that. I’m going to use that.” You don’t have to
make them all up. “What’s that boogie pattern?” Look in any boogie, there it is. I
think that they look like … almost look at a piece of music as a grocery store where
you can bring home some goodies and use them in your other pieces.

Tim Topham: My plan in the next couple of weeks around this podcast is to create a bit of a stock
pattern shaped like you’ve done because I think while you can grab them out of
music, it’s also good to have a bit of a quick reference and I like teaching my
students, I mean one of the first patterns that every student should know is an
Alberti bass that they can use because that’s going to come up and instantly you’ve
got something that sounds classical.

Bradley Sowash: Exactly.

Tim Topham: Then you’ve got the pop root five octave. The standard thing that Dan Coates would
do with every ballad and film piece. I think there’s definitely ways we can approach
this with students. I guess that leads into how you can use lead sheets as well. You’ve
got just the melody, chords above it. While you could play a triad in the left hand, it’ll
sound much more interesting if you give it a style with one of those stock patterns. I

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 think that’s going to have to be the subject of a future discussion Bradley. We’re
running out of time.

Bradley Sowash: I’ll look forward to that. There’s always more to chat about with creativity.

Tim Topham: It’s great. It’s so great to chat with you about this. I do enjoy it. Let’s have a quick
chat about 88 Creative Keys because I am really excited that you guys have invited
me to join you as one of your faculty for the workshops in Denver, Colorado.

Bradley Sowash: We only get the best Tim.

Tim Topham: Firstly, we’ve got a title for it called trending is our title. Why is it called that this
year?

Bradley Sowash: My business partner, Leila Viss, or teaching partner as well and good friend is a
cofounder of this workshop. She often has the broad stroke of how things should go.
She’s great at sensing what piano teachers are hungry for. This year we are doing just
piano teachers. In the past, we’ve had adult students as well who I suppose are
welcome but we’re really focusing on pedagogy. She noticed because she goes to so
many conferences and blogs and reads magazines for our trade and all that there
really were some trending topics which boil down to creativity, the things we talked
about today.

That group teaching is getting hotter and hotter which we touched on in the
beginning. Technology and business skills running your studio. These are things that
teacher seem constantly interested in. since those are the trending topics, we put
together the curriculum and which you are a huge part of to just make sure that
those topics are woven through what is essentially a workshop about teaching
creatively and teaching creativity which is slightly different. That’s the heart of it but
these other strands are woven through each hour rather than independent topics
like now we will now talk about technology. Instead we’re going to show how
technology enhances the topic of the moment.

Tim Topham: I like your difference in the definition between teaching creatively and teaching
creativity. Let me tell you my theory on that. Teaching creatively is about breaking
out of the molds of the tradition of piano teaching from the last 200 years and doing
different things with your students. Teaching creativity is about giving your students
the skills and experiences they need to create things at the piano. Would that be
your idea of that as well?

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Bradley Sowash: Correct. Yes. Teaching creatively is something that Leila Viss is particularly skilled at
and as are you because I see it in your blogs and see all the time in your work.
Teaching creativity is my particular corner. The huge part about teaching creatively
that we found over the last five years of running these workshops is that a lot of
what goes on is simply giving people permission to let teachers buy into this is your
studio. You can do what you want. It’s as if they feel there’s music police looking
around the corner, keeping notes and they have to do it just the way they were
taught. You can teach it any way you like and the more you teach the way you like,
the more you have a brand and students coming to you to get what it is that you do.
There seems to be just some tradition to break through on getting more creative in
our teaching.

Tim Topham: I agree. Permission to break all the rules is going to have the most … you’re going to
have the most fun. Your students are going to enjoy it. They’re going to be
motivated. More practice will happen and life is good in my opinion anyway. Quickly,
who do you think … what kind of teacher will get the most benefit out of the
workshops Bradley?

Bradley Sowash: I like that question. We had an inquiry today from a teacher who has been there
several years and she’s saying, “Should I come again?” We always try to have
something fresh and new for alumni because we do have returning teachers. As well,
we welcome teachers who are not skilled in improvising or teaching creativity or not
particularly having a strong jazz background but are wondering how to get started
with that or how to build on that. I’m careful that the curriculum starts simply in all
cases but also moves into a little bit more advanced for those people who want it.

Let’s say the somewhat experienced teacher who is feeling a little dry, a little stuck
and finding a little sense that they don’t want to perhaps admit to their parents or
even to themselves that it’s a drag yourself down to the seat and go through it again.
There’s that series, that feeling at least my teacher had. I could tell that when I got to
page seven she already knew that I was going to play the B flat wrong because she
taught it at the same method her whole life. If you’re feeling stuck like, “Here we are
again. How many more years can I teach [for Elise 00:46:08]?” That’s the teacher
who I think we can just shake it up and reinvigorate.

Tim Topham: Have a big impact on, yeah. It’s not all about jazz I think we should mention that too.
We’ve talked a bit about jazz today. We’ll be talking a whole lot on bench, off bench,
pop music, chord progressions. There will be some jazz I’m sure. Different styles, the
program we’ve been coming up with … I’m excited to be sitting in on your sessions

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 and Leila’s sessions. This is just going to be so good. To find out more teachers head
to 88creativekeys.com and you can click on trending. There’s an image right on the
front page or you can go to the workshop menu. Bradley, I think we’ve got an early
bird special for a little bit. Is that right?

Bradley Sowash: Yeah, it’s just about … we have to jump on it. This would seem to be marketing
blather but I can promise you it’s true. We have the first 10. Instead of going by date,
we said the first 10 who sign up will receive a discount. I believe we had our fifth
today. We just opened it. If you want to, there’s five slots left for a discount, but any
teacher that isn’t a professional trade association such here in the states Music
Teachers National Association, if you can produce a membership card and send us a
picture of that, then you qualify for an addition discount that can be combined with
your early bird. Really trying to do everything we can to make it possible for teachers
to get there.

Tim Topham: Great deal. No complaints from anyone who have to travel three hours or four hours
or even six hours. It’s going to take me 18 hours I think to get there. I’ll be completely
flipped in my time zone. It’s going to be an interesting first day. I’ll be on coffee that’s
for sure.

Bradley Sowash: The other cool thing is it’s in Denver. What a lot of people do is they go to the
workshop and then head off to the mountains and play for a few days before they go
home.

Tim Topham: That’s a great idea. I think someone is coming from Australia aren’t they other than
me? Teacher, is that right?

Bradley Sowash: It’s a surprise.

Tim Topham: Yeah.

Bradley Sowash: We’re going to have at least one surprise guest teacher. We probably should
mention that the last day of the workshop is all business focused. We have four
experts in building successful studios and small music schools who are running that
entirely the whole days on business. There’s two workshops. Three days on teaching
creatively and creativity and then one on studio business. They can be attended as a
package but they can also be attended independently.

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Tim Topham: All the information there again at 88creativekeys.com. If you want to find out more
about Bradley, you can head to bradleysowash.com. I think that’s a good wrap up
there. Bradley, anything we’ve missed or that you wanted to add before we sign off?

Bradley Sowash: Just so much. I have a [million 00:49:22] ideas. We’ll have to wait and do it again
sometime.

Tim Topham: It’ll be great. I always enjoy chatting with you. As I say, I can’t wait to be face to face
having a glass of wine or a coffee through a straw when I’m out there in July. All
right, Bradley I’ll speak to you again really soon. Thanks again for [crosstalk 00:49:39]

Bradley Sowash: Bye for now.

Tim Topham: See you.

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