Buster Birch is one of the hardest-working jazz educators in the business. A former visiting jazz professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, for the past 19 years he’s been a director of the UK’s original and largest jazz summer school, in Barry, South Wales, and since 2016 he’s been running an award-winning jazz school for children at his local music hub, in Bromley. He’s delivered over 150 jazz workshops to adult learners, and he’s just published his 25th book (in the last six years), covering jazz improvisation and various musicianship skills.
He talked to UKJazz News about his new online jazz education resource, Learn to Play Jazz, which features approximately 70 hours of video lessons, workshops and courses. Aimed at players from beginner to intermediate level on any instrument, it includes many iconic recordings of classic jazz standards with transcriptions, full band parts and custom-made play-along tracks.
UKJazz News: How did Learn to Play Jazz come about?
Buster Birch: I’ve been teaching jazz workshops and improvisation classes for a long time but hadn’t done much online until lock-down. I had to figure out a whole new approach and learn a lot of technology. I started with my private one-to-one students. Then I set up a weekly live stream, interviewing different UK jazz musicians. All 47 episodes are still available on my YouTube channel. Then, in 2020, we moved our summer school online.
I hosted 66 zoom sessions over three days with up to 15 sessions running simultaneously, which the participants could drop in and out of. It was pretty stressful but it all worked really well and I learned a lot. After that, we continued to run masterclasses and short courses online and now have some great video courses available from our various tutors.
Before lock-down I’d also been running two local jazz workshops for adult learners, so I moved those online too. I started a weekly Zoom workshop covering one particular recording of a classic jazz standard. These continued through covid and when things started getting back to normal, I moved it to once a month, which I still do. I’ve now done over 70 online workshops and have built a video library of all the past sessions, which forms the backbone of my Learn to Play Jazz website.
I’ve also created a lot of additional resources and courses around that, covering essential musicianship skills like ear training, scales, rhythm skills, key centres and intervals. There’s currently an extra 9.5hrs of that content and I’m adding to it all the time.
UKJN: How do you overcome the restrictions of online teaching and do you find there are any benefits?
BB: Apart from the obvious benefit of not having to leave the house, the video lessons mean you can pause, rewind and rewatch them as often as you like, which is really useful when you are learning. No need to take any notes. But there are some things that are essential to making online teaching work well. Mostly, preparation. I do loads of prep for all my online classes and have tons of resources for the students to download well in advance of each class. So they can go through it all and print it out before each session. I never use any Real books or backing tracks.
Nothing beats the original recordings. I transcribe everything off the records, then write full band arrangements for every workshop. Plus, I create extra handouts with theory and harmony explanations, licks and warm up exercises that support what we are learning in the class.
UKJN: What makes Learn to Play Jazz different from other online resources?
BB: Because we are studying particular recordings of the classic jazz repertoire, rather than generic lead sheets, we explore a lot more of the detail and ingredients in the music. Not just the solo transcriptions, but also the intros, endings, interlude sections, backings and shout choruses – all the good stuff that the Real books miss out. The way the artists play the heads is important. We study their phrasing, which is a fantastic lesson in itself because no-one plays it like it is written in the Real book. That’s why I say we learn from the masters, off the records, just like they did.
When you study a recording, it puts you in a time and a place. Those musicians were exploring particular concepts and particular improvisation techniques with that music. That is why it sounds as it does. It’s all about the context, which is what Real books and generic backing tracks miss. Louis Armstrong recorded St Louis Blues in 1933 and Herbie Hancock recorded it in 1998 with Stevie Wonder. Both recordings are great, but they are using totally different techniques and concepts in the way they approach the music. It’s the same tune, but it’s different music. This is why a lot of jazz students get confused if they’ve been to a workshop or watched a YouTube video where they learned a particular technique and then they turn up to a jam session and try to apply that technique and find it didn’t work so well. At Learn to Play Jazz we don’t just study the how, we also study the why. That’s what you learn from the recordings. On the new website the video lessons come with links to the original recordings plus useful information about those sessions and Wikipedia links for each musician on the recording.
UKJN: What has the feedback been so far?
BB: The students love the new website. It’s very user-friendly and allows you to search through all the workshops in alphabetical order and filter them by jazz style. So if there’s a particular tune you want to work on, or a style you want to check out, like hard bop, latin jazz, swing or modern jazz, then it’s easy to find what you are looking for. Plus, the various musicianship courses are simple to navigate and work through at your own pace. I’ve made a sneak preview video on my YouTube channel, which you can watch here…
UKJN: How do people sign up and is there any minimum tie-in?
BB: There are a few options. I have a free mailing list that people can sign up to on my website and they will receive a free book and some short video clip tasters from the classes. If there’s a particular tune they want to study they can cherry pick any workshop videos or courses, or join my monthly live zoom class. Those can be purchased individually on my website. But if they want the full experience and access to all the premium content including the complete library of lessons with all the downloads, plus all the courses and the new videos that are added every month, they can join my VIP membership program and jump straight in. It’s a one month rolling subscription which they can cancel at any time, so there’s no tie-in and it’s the same price as one live zoom class.
4 responses
Busters focus on specific recordings makes the workshops far more relevant than many of the generic play over a backing type experiences. I have been to many of his workshops and they are excellent. Also being an expert percussionist means there is naturally a strong rhythmic element which can often be overlooked for harmonic instruments.
If there was ever one positive outcome from COVID lockdown it is the growth of online resources such as Buster’s jazz education website. He is a generous and very knowledgeable teacher who clearly works very hard to keep us all on our toes with his ever expanding teaching resources. His videos on musicianship skill development are excellent. Not only does Buster reference everything he teaches from original recordings but he also explains background and historical context. This adds so much more depth to the whole learning experience. As someone who lives on the other side of the world I am so grateful to have stumbled across Buster – online education does work very well!
A great resource, and so handy to have past lessons to refer to. A lot of work goes into transcribing classic recordings to extract the jazz language of a particular period or player.
After attending the Jazz Summer School in Cardiff for the first time last year I signed up for Buster’s online lessons and have got a lot from them.
For a start it’s great to keep in touch virtually with your tutor, plus you get a lot of tips and insights about harmony and jazz history.
The resources are also really helpful for downloading and practicing offline in your own time.