During the latest lockdown I’ve started experimenting with making some jazz piano tutorials. It’s quite a learning curve trying to make the visual and recorded elements as good as I can get them. I’ve been researching how to use video editing and other software and trialling different ways of working. It can be quite a slow process if I focus on lots of details and I still haven’t quite figured out what works best for me but it’s interesting trying to improve at a new process like this.
Challenges of Jazz Piano Tutorials
I think the hardest thing so far is recording the spoken parts as it’s very easy to ruin a recording with gaps, hesitations or outright mistakes. So trying to clean these up can take plenty of time and be pretty challenging. It can be easy to obsess over little details like sibilants or even pitch and intonation or speed or amount of energy in the sound of the voice. There’s definitely plenty to learn with this but it’s a positive challenge.
Another challenge is trying to make sure that different video recordings match up. For example there is a camera above my keyboard which easily gets knocked out of place. In the latest video on introductory jazz counterpoint, I had to just accept it and blend a few slightly different shots together. Again, it might just something that’s easy to obsess over.
In terms of software, I’m using Audacity, OBS, the Chordie App, and Premiere Pro. The gear I’m using is a Roland FP4F keyboard, a Shure Beta 58A mic and a Focusrite Audio Interface.
I still have plenty more to learn about how to get more YouTube visitors too and I also need to build up a large library of more jazz piano tutorials.
These are my latest attempts at jazz piano tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56qDWalcNc&list=PLN33V0N6uZdrMLkFGXmCi4wKxyjkrRDox&index=1&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n8u976Fq_w&list=PLN33V0N6uZdrMLkFGXmCi4wKxyjkrRDox&index=2
Check out more info about my teaching here. https://timmyfunnell.com/piano-lessons-bristol-jazz-pop-classical