Blues à la Django

“What I have always liked about Yaakov's courses and teaching is that what is taught is practical and can be used in a number of contexts. What I like about his approach is the emphasis on there being no shortcuts, and that personal effort and discipline - trusting the process - are essential to make real progress. What I gained from this course, in particular, is the ability to combine use the skills I learned from other courses - gypsy picking, triads, and arpeggios - to analyse and understand the form and structure of tunes, and to make fresh sounding, improvised music with a jazz manouche feel, yet with a sound and character that are my own rather than trying to duplicate or mimic the sound of others. If you already have some skills, and a working knowledge of triads and arpeggios, I highly recommend this course to move your playing to another level. Thank you Yaakov.”

“Hi, my name Herman. I just completed this online course, which is excellent to leading me to a direction of thinking how to play a music and to be an improviser. Yaakov is a very good teacher and he making this course is very systemic to leading the students how to improve their music growth step by step. Be honours before this course I am just to follow the music sheet note-by-note to remember the songs, but no idea how to improvisation, so after this 4 weeks course. I exactly know how's it work and how to train myself to play improvisation of a song musically. Thanks Yaakov, Herman”

“This is marvellous. You ask for evaluation on a scale of 1—10, but how can I grade something that has changed the way I think about improvisation? Working with bare triads— it’s like a painter restricting him/herself to the three primary colours. The discipline needed to omit all passing notes and neighbour notes is considerable, but I’m convinced that it will transform my playing. Hopefully! Once we get over the pandemic :-) Thanks Yaakov”

“This is by far the best guitar class I have ever taken! It far exceeded my expectations and I made a lot of progress in just four weeks. I've been unsuccessfully struggling to learn guitar for decades and yet I've been stuck at a low intermediate level. I was beginning to worry that I might never really learn. Now, after Yaakov's course, I can see a clear way forward to learning to really PLAY the guitar and have fun. Here's what I like about the course: -- Yaakov stresses that music and practice should above all be fun. I love this attitude! The more fun it is, the more I want to practice. -- The basic premise of the course is that you can play really nice improvisations with the tools you already have. Learning to improvise is not about learning even more scales and even more chords. It's about taking what you have and using it to make music. Right now. This is so liberating! This is the "secret" to improvisation that I've been looking for. -- Yaakov gives a step-by-step process for learning to improvise. Each step is simple and clear. So despite the large amount of information, I don't feel overwhelmed. At each step, I feel comfortable and confident and this enables me to have fun and enjoy the playing. Yaakov always says "Trust the process". -- Yaakov has a wonderful, warm personality and genuinely cares about the students and is quick to give encouragement. Michael is also a pleasure to work with and gives thoughtful and helpful feedback and suggestions. -- The course teaches fundamental principles of improvisation. These can be used by any guitarist, from beginner to professional. And indeed, there are guitarists of many levels taking the course. -- The course is very well organized. There's a huge amount of material, presented very clearly and broken down into small easy-to-understand sections. -- Yaakov and Michael give wonderful support. You can post videos to the Facebook page and quickly get super helpful feedback. (This is the first time I've used Facebook and it was pretty easy.) -- Weekly exercises. Each week there are various exercises to do. These exercises are very helpful as well as really enjoyable. You make a video of yourself playing them, then post them to the Facebook page. You get great feedback for Yaakov and Michael, and also from your fellow students. -- Interesting Facebook community. It is very interesting and helpful to see other students' videos and comments. I've learned a lot from them. -- The concepts and lessons taught here are applicable to all styles (rock, blues, etc.) and all instruments. I'm also learning piano, at a very low level, and this course is already helping me improvise better. -- Each lesson lasts 3-5 hours. What's really great is that Yaakov records the entire lesson, and breaks it down into small (1-5 minutes) sections, labelled by topic. So it's easy to go back to any particular topic and review it as many times as you like. -- The supporting PDFs are well written, clear and extremely helpful. I find this course very intense and demanding. For me, I need 2-4 hours a day to study and understand the concepts and to keep on top of the assignments. However, I imagine for more advanced students it would be much easier, since they will already know chord sequences, intervals, how to play songs at full speed, and so on. In conclusion, I would highly recommend this course for anyone looking to improve their improvisation.”

“When joining this course I had a decent knowing of triad shapes and improvising with them. What was totally unbelievable in this course is that all shapes and complete process how to go from beginner level to advanced is shown explained so it looks like is simple that anyone can do. At the end you’ll see how you can improvise beautifull melodies to look like true composition. Now working on this I see that the system is there and if you are like me and you are enjoying learning new proven stuff this is it. I am sure that you can’t find better course that can take you to the level of improvisation with your on style but again to be in GJ manner. So good just trust the process:) ”

“Bill Ward’s review of 4 day “Creative Improvisation Breakthrough Masterclass,” Yaakov, your 4 day Master Improvisation class was fantastic! I learned so much about improvisation that I did not know prior to the course. This course has provided me with a solid foundation to make huge improvements in my ability to improvise. Your emphasis to teach on a step by step process starting with simple shapes and elements of improvisation and adding more complex elements and shapes along the learning process was very helpful. I would recommend this course for anyone interested in Jazz improvisation with some basic chord shape knowledge. On a scale of 1 to 10 this course would rate a 10+! Right off the top here are some of my biggest gains. 1. The HTA and full tone (or Scale note) from below really helped open up the good notes that can be used on major and minor chord types. How to use enclosures was very helpful for how to create additional new melodies. 2. I finally understand the diminished 7 chord 7 and a diminished chord are the same. I learned how to use the diminished chord in two ways as a substitute for the dominant chord. This was a huge gain for me! I love the sound of the diminished chord as a substitute for the dominant 3. The multiple great new shapes I learned about and how to use them, especially including the G6, and the diminished Shape. The "one magic shape" will take some time to fully understand how to use and I love having your course material to be able to go back to and do that. 4. The importance of sentences and space in our melodies. Understanding Motifs, how beautiful they sound. Also the importance of being able to play before and after the beat, something I had never done and plan to work hard on doing this. 5. Our goal in improvisation is to develop our own melodies using the basic harmony and structure of the song. This was a big takeaway for me as well. Your teaching in this live course as with all your live courses was inspiring and encouraging. Your emphasis on the importance of having fun along the way was and always is important. I had lots of fun in this course! Besides your amazing gypsy jazz knowledge and skills your enthusiasm, passion and patience were great positives in teaching this class. Thank you Yaakov! ”

“I really enjoyed this course. I have struggled for many years transcribing Django solos and not quite mastering them. When you do not know what someone is doing, it is difficult to remember notes and phrases solely by memory. This course helped to fill in some of the gaps in understanding that I had experienced in trying to memorize entire solos without any context. I would highly recommend this course if you are interested in playing gypsy jazz and/or simply want to improve your ability to improvise on the guitar. Yaakov is a very clear and patient teacher, and the course will provide information that should keep an interested player busy for a long time after the course ends.”

“Creative Improvisation: The Toolbox of Django And Hot Club Swing: A Step-by-Step Masterclass in Improvisation Yakov will give you a peek into his improvising toolbox, Django’s toolbox, and the same toolbox all creative improvisers use and have at their disposal. Yakov will take you step-by-step beginning with the three notes of the simple triad (a chord) as your starting point. From this point on you will be filling your toolbox with all the different tools improvisers use: Arpeggios, patterns, magic shapes, playing around the beat, motifs, sentences, building up to you using a unified structure, by employing the tools you’ve learned to use, for complete, creative improvisation. It is a lot of work, but at least you will have the tools you need.”

“If there’s one word I’d use to describe Yaakov’s Creative Improvisation Breakthrough Masterclass, it’s “demystify.” Whatever your skill level on the guitar, if you can hear a good improvised solo in your head and have wondered how to do it yourself, the whole topic of improvisation may seem mysterious. Yaakov’s class will demystify the process and show you how hear, understand, practice, and execute your own guitar soloing. He will show you how the forms and shapes of chords and passages you may already know can be the building blocks to understanding improvisation. Even before you can produce solos yourself, you will begin to understand improvisations on guitar and other instruments. But anyone call tell you why an improvisation sounds good and works. To learn how to do it yourself requires an instructor who knows how to organize material that you can digest and practice at your own pace. Yaakov is that instructor. I have enjoyed a number of Yaakov’s courses and I participated in the Creative Improvisation Breakthrough Masterclass, and can tell you that the amount of information he reveals can seem overwhelming. What makes his courses and classes so valuable, however, is the presentation and organization of the material. You will be able to go back and review all the presented material and study at your own pace. Additionally, Yaakov makes himself available for questions even after the course is over. Furthermore, he provides a space for students to share questions, experiences, and breakthroughs in learning. Yaakov’s Creative Improvisation Breakthrough Masterclass demystified improvisation for me and fellow participants. It is a resource to which I will continually refer as long as I play guitar. ”

“before this workshop, improvisation was a hit-or-miss endeavor. in fact, I often avoided it altogether, because my attempts felt so frustrating and disappointing. While taking this masterclass, I received the tools and habits that enable me to create my own improvisations while respecting the forms, phrasing, and idioms of this musical style. I now look forward enthusiastically to applying these tools daily, growing as a musician, and am forever grateful to Yaakov and my fellow students for their knowledge and support. ”

“How musicians succeed in creating beautiful melodic solos on the spot always seemed like some mysterious kind of magic to me,. And on the other hand, I wondered why the solos of talented musicians could often be so boring. Yaakov seems to have cracked the mystery and developed very effective ways of improvising and learning how to do it well, by breaking down the learning process and creating a step-by-step process that we all learned, so we can replicate it on any song and throughout our lives, regardless of our current knowledge and skill or however much we progress. Every step of the way, Yaakov reveals ways of looking at and understanding music to help us develop a mindset, attitude and approach that leads to more melodic, interesting and satisfying solos. The great advantage of the Masterclass over recorded online courses is the opportunity to get individual feedback and to see and learn from what other students are doing and the feedback they get. Plus, you still get the continued use of the recorded and written materials. My feeling at the end of the course was that I had the tools I needed to learn to improvise well and a wealth of material to learn at my fingertips. ”