Student’s question:
I’m currently working through the Seven Worlds video course and loving it. My ultimate goal is to improvise over jazz standards, and my favorite is Autumn Leaves. What do you think about exploring your lessons on Autumn Leaves right now? Would this hurt my learning because I’m doing things out of order?
How we think about this in IFR:
You can absolutely dive into Autumn Leaves! Literally everything you find in the IFR learning environment can be explored in any order, and at any pace you like. It’s all based on a single integrated method, and all of the activities are designed to work together.
The only thing you might find if you jump ahead to looking at jazz standards is that you might not understand some of the chord concepts that appear in those songs. But there’s absolutely no harm in having that experience! Being exposed to those rich harmonies and struggling to make sense of the chords will be incredibly stimulating and enriching for you mind. And the thrill of hearing yourself improvise over those tunes can supercharge your motivation to come back to your Seven Worlds practice and build your foundation. So there’s truly no way you can go wrong.
This applies equally to everything else that you have available to you at this website. You should always feel free to enjoy whatever activity appeals to you in the moment. Some days it might be a very simple exercise that you understand completely. Other days it could be throwing yourself into a singalong exercise over chords you’ve never even seen before. ALL of these experiences will stimulate your brain and together they will gradually start to come together into a single integrated understanding of harmony.
We also give you a very organized path through the world of harmony in our video courses and the IFR Jam Tracks series. But as long as you know that this path is available, there is absolutely no harm in straying from this path and having lots of interesting side adventures.
