Thoughts on MyHarmonicaStudio (Yvonnick Prene's site)?

[Mullet]

Been thinking about taking the plunge and going for the 4 year plan. $300 for 4 years of access seems reasonable. Anyone have experience with Yvonnick's site and what are your results?

I've been wanting to learn how to play jazz harmonica for years, but never got serious about it until now. I need more of a regimented practice regime that will help me get there. I feel like something like this site is the ticket I need. Thoughts?

[Aluvsupreme]

I don't know about his site. I can tell you that I  enjoy all his CDs.  Really good jazz player.

[beads]

Never had a harmonica lesson but will offer this general observation.  For years I attempted to teach myself golf using books and time on the range. I  was a horrible golfer. I  finally paid for lessons with a pro two years in a row. Big difference.  I'm not a great golfer but I keep pace on the course and rarely loose a ball. The pro had me practicing things I wouldn't have on my own. Since I was spending money I put in the effort to get my money's worth.  Not wasting my money was a big incentive. Having a guided program with objectives made a big difference.  I  say go for it if you are serious about learning that style.

[vid wes]

I did it for one month.  It is like a lot of online music learning platforms.  Sort of cookie cutter.  He does not organize the lessons into any coherent system.  Kind of like going to a buffet.  If you are a beginner at jazz it would be hard to figure out where to start, and even harder to figure out in what order to do the lessons.  The jazz specific info is available, scales, chords, rhythm, etc, is available in any good jazz book or website. 

Another negative is some parts of his website doesn't work very well.  For example he gives you a drill and a play along track.  Some of the play along tracks are clumsy and don't easily allow you to start or stop at a specific spot.  Sometimes some of the notation doesn't fully appear. 

On the other hand the jazz harmonica specific material is excellent.  He is a great player and has transcriptions of many of his solos.

As I said, I tried it for a month and did not find anything I could not do on my own, without paying the monthly fee.

[Mullet]

Yeah, I'm thinking straight up lessons would be great too. I know Yvonnick offers them as an extra. I'm not sure I can swing the money for private lessons and thought having a good resource was my best bet. However, it's good to know the site isn't perfect by any means.

[harp_unstrung]

Yvonnick's site is great - lots of detail and a good approach to scales and studying harmony in context of songs - not perfect, but a good place to start if you are starting to get serious - you get a 3 day window where you can evaluate which is handy - you can also sign up month-to-month.

[Doug]

I think there are two issues. 1) playing the harmonica. 2) playing Jazz.

From what Vid Wes said, you’re not getting personal lessons with Yvonnick with that program, so he won’t listen to your playing and help you improve on the harmonica. In that case, I don’t see the advantage of going to a harmonica player to study Jazz. I’d rather go to a sax or trumpet player because these guys are part of a long history in the Jazz tradition.   

You might take a look at what Jeff Antoniuk has to offer. His YouTube channel is called Digging Deeper Jazz. Jeff also has an online Jazz program called Jazz Wire. I’m not a member, but I’m thinking about it. As I understand it, he evaluates your playing, and creates lessons for you based on your Jazz knowledge and skill. Everyone who joins becomes part of an online community so you can get questions answered from other players and from Jeff. You might check it out and see if it’s a good fit for you.

[Mullet]

@Doug - I'll check out Jeff. You might be right. It might be better to go with something that has more critiquing. However, I did speak with Yvonnick via email and I think you get one video critique per month. So you post a video and get a critique. At least that's how I understand it. I think the idea is as you get more serious, you'd want to have a teacher anyway, which he can provide separately. I'm still not convinced either way... to join or not to join. Like others said you can sign up for a month and then if you don't like it, move on to something else.

[Laina]

At the first lockdown I decided to try this for a few months. It's excellent site covering a wealth of information, exercises, improvisation ideas and more.  I don't know of other online courses dedicated to chromatic harmonica with as much information but maybe others can chip in?  That in itself requires a certain discipline as to which sections to choose and dedicate time before moving on. I found it helpful and made some progress but it also highlighted specific gaps in my learning and my need to focus on these. I may well return at a later date.
Private lessons with the right teacher, not exclusively harmonica, imv are worthwhile too.
 

[harp_unstrung]

Of course, many great postings here:

https://forums.SlideMeister.com/index.php?board=116.0

Here is a sample lesson posted by Yvonnick:



enjoy, and best of luck!

[deepsouth]

That's an excellent point, harp unstrung.
SlideMeister is now a lesson library,
with a substantial collection of video harmonica information
from Yvonnick and other well known, capable players.

[Mullet]

I (my wife) decided that I'd go for the 4 year plan. I know materials can be had elsewhere if you're diligent, but I liked that you can find all the material in one place. There's tons of lessons and I figure with uploading video/audio for critique it should be worthwhile. I did find that the community aspect doesn't get as much action. Forums are used, but not as heavily trafficked as I'd like. The good thing is we have SlideMeister for general chromatic banter, etc.

I looked at JazzWire and while it looks like it might have a larger community (more instruments = more musicians), it's a bit more expensive. I wish the site would do a demo kind of thing just to see the benefits of joining. To join you have to audition, so it looks like its a pretty serious site.

[vid wes]

Sounds like your wife is a smart lady.  Hope you enjoy the 4 year ride and please let us know how it is going.

[harp_unstrung]

Yes - best of luck - enjoy and keep us posted!

[Caraiy]

Decided to start learning a bit more seriously, rather than just dabbling.  Have signed up to Yvonnick's site and find it very helpful - good for beginners at any rate.  There are lots and lots of scales to learn though, and I seem to spend half my practice time doing scales.  But to put it in context I had only heard of major and minor scales previously, and am still working my way through the major scales. I wanted something methodical that builds up as was finding the book I was using was good, but then got much harder very quickly and I struggled to stay interested/keep pace.  So far on Yvonnick's site there is something interesting every day that I come across, and I am working through the basic courses, plus dip into some more advanced lessons.  For the money, I think it is worth it (I have signed up for a year).  I did take some Zoom lessons with a different tutor, and also some in-person lessons - for a beginner the Zoom/in-person was expensive and in my view not worth it.  But I will go back to the tutors in due course once I get over the initial learning hump, and can use the time with them more effectively. 

[Rich35]

Hi All
 Any new thoughts on                                                                                                                                                         
  Yvonicks Chromatic harmonica site ?
  After dabbling with the Chromatic ,s and listening to some Great players live on
 The Slidemiester zoom sessions and long Island Harmonica zoom sessions,I am thinking of   
   Concentrating to go up a couple steps ,and some direction .
  I tend to practice in six directions at one time  and stand still ?
 Any info or recommendations welcome .
  Rich

[Age]

I work on mine all the time. So far,I got it to look pretty good. One outta two ain't bad, I guess.

[Nico.Nico]

I signed up for a few months in Yvonnick Prene's site. And actually find it to be really well organized, problem I had was that it felt that my days of practice, at least for a very long time were gonna be scales, and more scales. But I felt lacked the connection with playing the music I wanted to play at least in the beginner's path that I choose there.

Advanced lessons looked really nice and included going really deep with some tunes. Thing was for me that I wanted to do as told and follow the path proposed, but that path wasn't as fun as intended in the early stages.

Now days I'm following the courses at learnjazzstandards.com (LJS), that go from the basics of jazz theory to more advanced concepts, but try to use tunes as way of practicing these concepts as often as possible, and are clearly focused in you polishing a method for learn tunes by yourself applying the given concepts.
Besides that, there's a monthly jazz standard course added to the site, going in great detail on how to tackle the learning process of a given standard. The community includes folks playing all sort of instruments, which is a great value for someone like me, without many musicians around to practice or chat with. I recently went and try the free month trial at Jazz Wire, and is a very similar concept, but a new tune each 3 weeks. It felt somewhat aimed at people with some improvisation skills already, so I'll come back hopefully later on.

While the  LJS site has a few harmonica players, it tries to be instrument agnostic, though it has a few courses on the most common jazz instruments (not harmonica) and how to gain chops in those.

All in all, I think at least for me, aiming more at the music that I care to play more than what I can find available "for harmonica" has been a really positive change and lead me to find more people to share my efforts and a clearer path to follow.

[Age]

I think you may find that many folks here (like myself) are more of a "fly by the seat of your pants" crowd than not. I can't remember us ever getting into heavy discussions on jazz theory (or any theory for that matter) but there are more than a few here on SlideMeister that are just "scary" good.

[John Broecker]

There are many excellent slide chromatic players
here at SlideMeister, that are "Scary good".

I'm just "Scary".

Best Regards, Stay Healthy

JB

[Gnarly He Man]

Tritone substitution is a nice way to “Jazz” things up on dominant 7 chords.
So when you get to the G7, try playing button in blow.

[Age]

Tritone substitution is a nice way to “Jazz” things up on dominant 7 chords.
So when you get to the G7, try playing button in blow.

See there? ~I~ have no idea what those are.

[Gnarly He Man]

Tritone substitution is a nice way to “Jazz” things up on dominant 7 chords.
So when you get to the G7, try playing button in blow.

See there? ~I~ have no idea what those are.

The draw chord on a chrom is D F A B.
Those notes fit a G7 chord.
The blow button notes are C# E# (which is F) G# (which is Ab).
The first and third notes are the flat five and flat 9 of the G chord.
The F is the flat seven.
So the button in blow chord functions as a 7#11.

[Nico.Nico]

I must say I didn't get it either.
I bumped into tritone substitutions in the first standard I analyzed in the LJS website. Is the first month recommended crash course, but I'm clearly in need of a more basic course right now (so I went with the most basic course they had as my next step).
Can't say I really got what tritone subs were about and even less I have them as tools for improvising after the first explanation I got from there, but shouldn't the tritone substitution of G7 be Db7? which is a tritone away and share the 3rd and 7th.

[Gnarly He Man]

I must say I didn't get it either.
I bumped into tritone substitutions in the first standard I analyzed in the LJS website. Is the first month recommended crash course, but I'm clearly in need of a more basic course right now (so I went with the most basic course they had as my next step).
Can't say I really got what tritone subs were about and even less I have them as tools for improvising after the first explanation I got from there, but shouldn't the tritone substitution of G7 be Db7? which is a tritone away and share the 3rd and 7th.

C# is Db.
Oh, and the diminished arpeggio is minor thirds, so there’s your tritones.

[Nico.Nico]

Thanks! I get it now.