Thanks for replying Johnny. Im working on improvisation at present. I feel I have laid a good base of ground work but still needed the key.

I have shelves of 'how to improvise books' each promising to slip me the answer but it has been like being stuck outside a ten cent sweet shop with only 9 cents. All those books have frankly freaked me out with their way of promising the simple but delivering the complicated so one becomes overloaded and shuts down on the subject. Ive been simply running the blues and pentatonics over the changes and it has become very unsatisfying.

Your simple lessons, taking the subject and breaking it down to the basics is fantastic…..you have a talent for teaching as well as playing and that is very often not the case. After only a week Im already making progress. The problem with a lot of Jazz teachers is that while their talent is unquestioned, they dont seem to be able to remember back to when they were starting. I used to teach people how to fly helicopters so I know a bit about taking the complex and breaking it down into manageable bits.

Very happy I found this site ….

Well Alan, of course while 5 and a half hours each way may not seem much on your side of the ditch, one imagines that the ever present danger of banging into a large mountain is not one you are afflicted with on the western side. I am however planning a trip there to drive trucks and experience REAL long distance …… Thank heavens for GPS eh? at least there wont be mountains to bang into, although the 'roos may need to be worried.