Having left behind the rat race of the Bay Area, jazz and blues instructor Mark Stefani put his roots down here in the Portland Metro area (Tualatin to be exact) in 1994. I met Mark in 1995 when he was already known as one of Portland's busiest and most in-demand "coaches" of jazz and blues guitar. Mark has always strived to teach at the highest level while still advancing his own musical vision, which has made him a coveted teacher here as well as a sorely missed teacher in his "home town" of San Francisco. Many of his previous students were so distraught about his move that they convinced Mark to undertake correspondence lessons. It is these very same correspondence lessons that have become the cornerstone of Vision Music -- Mark's publishing company offering tailored Lessons-By-Mail and a landmark educational website.
Brent: Tell me a little about the early days of Vision Music and the expectations you had at the time.
Mark:
Well, the early days
of Vision Music preceded the
website by about a decade. I created the company in the later
eighties when I was teaching and performing in the San Francisco
Bay Area. Back then, I was marketing solo guitar arrangements
and other educational learning materials through conventional
mail order.
The website itself began almost
on a whim. In the late summer of 1997, three years after we had
relocated to the Portland area, I thought it would be fun to combine
my teaching experience with my lifelong love of art and writing,
by creating a simple website. I had no expectations to speak
of at the time, and felt that I'd probably be the "caboose
on the train" with regards to guitar education on the web.
I quickly found out that wasn't the case at all but instead realized
that there was an opportunity to do something unique and possibly
innovative.
Brent: How many Lessons-By-Mail students did you have in the beginning and how many students do you teach now? Has the success of LBM changed the way you teach?
Mark:
That's a very good
question. Technically, LBM
started back in '93, but really took off when we left San Francisco
a year later. It served the dual purpose of continuing my relationship
with my longtime Bay Area guitar students, while giving our family
some much-needed income due to the move. So, to answer your first
question, I had perhaps 24 LBM
students when we first moved to Oregon.
Three years later, even though I
had developed a solid reputation here in Portland, we were in
tough financial straits and faced the possibility of bankruptcy.
One of my local jazz guitar students was impressed by my rather
modest, 10-12 page website, and suggested that I make some internet
newsgroup announcements.
All of a sudden, players began lining
up for correspondence lessons. I knew that my work was cut out,
but 14 months later we were completely out of debt, and Vision
Music had grown to some 200 pages. It's
now well over 800 pages of quality content.
In the years since then, I've taught
anywhere between 60 and 90 long distance students, both domestically
and from overseas. I wouldn't quite say that the success of Lessons
by Mail has changed the way I teach,
but it certainly has provided the impetus for constant lesson
development, and it's been an inspiration to positively affect
the lives of guitarists all over the world.
When you author an educational book,
you rarely get a sense of the impact on players who are exposed
to it. I often refer to LBM
as "chapters in a living book," with an interactive
relationship with the author. The gratification is on an entirely
different level.
Brent: How many students were you seeing face-to-face in the beginning and how many are you able to accommodate nowadays?
Mark:
Of course, the "beginning"
goes back several decades for me. Like many full-time guitar instructors,
I've worked with as many as 50-60 students privately, but those
days are long gone.
Because of the gradual success of
the Lessons by Mail program,
my local teaching days dropped from 4-5 days a week to currently
only one. I'm actually coaching on four different levels nowadays:
1) Privately face to face, 2) Long distance via correspondence,
3) Indirectly to several hundred site members, and 4) Indirectly
to thousands of players who utilize the free online resources
at Vision Music.
Brent: VisionMusic.com was, at the beginning, a completely free site, how has the change to a membership site changed your career?
Mark:
Adding affordable
membership was something that had to be done, and the changes
have been two-fold. Obviously it provided some income for the
amount of effort that went into developing the site, where there
was none before. Trying to support a family in the music business
is a huge challenge, and when you give away too much value for
free, someone is going to suffer.
Secondly, it created an extra tier
in my circle of influence as a music educator. There was a long
period of time, prior to membership, when I was developing an
abundance of new material, but couldn't release it because I knew
what had to be done. Pulling the membership trigger changed that,
and created a fresh motivation and inspiration for me.
Brent:
One of the things you have stressed over the years is that if
you're going to be a serious student, you should make a serious
effort to
transcribe, arrange, compose, and jam on a regular basis.
In terms of jamming, any serious student of jazz would know about
Jamey Aebersold's Play-Along series, but in my experience, VisionMusic's
Jam
Central Station is in many ways preferable
because the MIDI tracks can be downloaded and altered using any
commercially-available scoring program (e.g. Finale or Encore).
On my own system, I now have several JCS tunes transposed to different
keys and at different tempos. Anyway...tell me a little about
the beginnings of JCS and where it's going.
Mark:
The concept behind Jam Central Station dates back to the mid-eighties,
and my first experience with desktop music publishing and MIDI
sequencing. While others were using hardware and software sequencers
primarily to write original music, I developed the forerunner
of JCS on an antiquated Atari 1040ST, in its day the most popular
music computer. I used the original "Keyboard Controlled
Sequencer" software from the now-defunct Dr. T.
The original collection of sequences
was called "The Rhythm Workshop," which contained 128
tunes, each available with a single keypress, perfect for jams
and for backup during lessons that focused on improvisation. I
had the titles spread over three pages, listed in alphabetical
order, just like the index of a
fakebook. As you know, I still use that program to this day during
lessons, and many of the bass lines for the JCS page came originally
from those sequences.
Fast forward to 1997, when Vision
Music was in its infancy. I had just started implementing audio
aids for the lessons and was having a discussion with a
local student, when it all of a sudden it dawned on us that the
earlier Rhythm Workshop could be developed as an online affair.
Within a week I had the first
six tracks up, and the rest is history.
For years it's been the #1 page
on the web for improvisers, and the only one that features high-quality
rhythm charts that display while the music plays,
plus mute options for keys and bass, chord and scale resource
links, and so on. It is clearly the most fun and innovative feature
at Vision Music, and the most
compelling reason for players to return again and again. Presently
there are over 130 track selections, and we entertain at least
2,000 jammers a day.
Brent: I have surfed the web quite a bit for musical resources and I've noted that most websites are run by, and/or focused on the work and methods of, only one instructor. Most serious students know the value of having at least a couple of different teachers/mentors over the years because you learn material from different points of view...not to mention having the opportunity of learning different styles or specialties. VisionMusic seems to be unique in that you have enlisted the help of other top-notch musicians and educators such as Wolf Marshall, Muriel Anderson, Jimmy Bruno, David Tannenbaum, and Portland's own Robbie Laws. How did Vision Music's Teacher Feature get started and how do you see it impacting the world of music instruction?
Mark:
Teacher Feature, like the website itself, also began on a whim.
The thought of inviting fellow instructors to share their knowledge
at Vision Music had great appeal to
me, but it wasn't until a guitarist and site fan by the name of
Paul Getty introduced me to jazz guitar virtuoso and educator,
Robert Conti, that things
started to materialize.
You see, most music educators know
very little about web authoring or creating interactive lesson
presentations, but I had already paid my dues in
designing Vision Music, and was up to the task. So I built a lesson
presence for Bob, which knocked his socks off, and that led to
discussions about inviting other players to join our guest faculty.
Conti extended a personal invitation
to Joe Diorio, and also put me in touch with a fine guitarist
and educator from New York, Joe Giglio. By coincidence,
Joe Giglio's childhood friend was none other than the highly-respected
classical guitarist, David Tanenbaum. Before long I knew them
all, and had designed online lessons based on their books and
material.
While all of this was transpiring,
I had invited jazz guitar legend Hank Garland to participate,
through my friendship with his sister in law, Amy Garland.
The real shocker for me came later, when Hank and Amy invited
George Benson, my main guitar mentor, to participate. As more
top names began associating with Vision Music, others wanted to
join, like Jimmy Bruno, fingerstyle great and student of Chrisopher
Parkening, Muriel Anderson, Oscar Peterson's fine
guitarist from Sweden, Ulf Wakenius, Steve Laury, Chris Standring,
and others.
The most recent additions to Teacher
Feature have been Henry Johnson of Chicago, who introduced me
to his friend, Wolf Marshall, a man I consider a genius in the
educational field. Wolf has now invited Pat Martino to join us,
which is the ucoming project for me. And, of course, I have to
mention what an honor it was to get to know the one and only Liona
Boyd, and create a fine presence for her within our faculty.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself when
I realize that my work at Vision Music has allowed me to meet
and gain the respect of players who were my heroes
growing up. Just like the movie title, it's been a "field
of dreams" for me.
Brent: Your teaching method is quite different from other jazz instructors that I have known in that you don't put much emphasis on scales. Do you feel that scales are blind alleys, to some degree?
Mark:
Now you're really
opening up a can of worms. In my opinion, scales are commonly
the bane of a guitarist's existence, a necessary evil that more
often than not chokes off creativity rather than promoting it.
Many educators and aspiring players,
especially in the jazz genre, view scales as a source of freedom.
While I recognize their value to a degree, I view them more as
a prison, an impediment to learning "real world" music
language. It doesn't have to be this way.
I see the excessive study of scales and variations as analogous
to reciting the alphabet over and over again, in a misguided quest
to become a decent speaker, or a competent writer. What you become
good at is playing scales, not music, and the audience wants to
hear music, not scales.
One thing I've learned, often from
painful personal experience, is that you are what you practice.
I tell my students not to ignore the study of scales, but for
every five minutes of scale practice, to fill the rest of the
hour with something that you would actually play for someone.
Brent: If you were to be asked by a new student what has allowed you to become the musician and teacher you are today, how would you answer?
Mark:
Hard work. My late
father told me years ago to assume that I had no natural musical
talent, so that I would work harder than anyone else. It was great
advice, because the subject of inate talent can be endlessly debated,
but I have yet to discover one successful musician who hasn't
labored obsessively to become the best that they can be.
The casual listener says that the
professional makes it look easy, but they often fail to realize
the mountain of hard work and effort that goes into what is perceived
as "natural" talent. They weren't born that way. As
a matter of fact, there are many stories of great musicians, even
some innovators, who were actually terrible players early in their
career.
Brent: Your main musical influences have been such jazz greats as Oscar Peterson, George Benson, Kenny Burrell, and Charlie Parker but I understand that your own father was just as important. Tell me a little bit about you and your dad.
Mark:
There's not enough time for that answer. My father,
Roland "Roy" Stefani, was a brilliant jazz trombonist,
but his listening taste and his appreciation ranged far beyond
that genre. For instance, he was an intense fan of classical music,
and knew the biography of every major composer.
The most important thing about Pop
was that he was the ultimate, patient communicator. I'd watch
him spend endless amounts of time counseling others, musically
and otherwise. Both my parents were musicians, and firmly believed
in sharing, as in "give and you shall receive." That's
why Vision Music is dedicated
to their memory.
Mark continues to teach and inspire in his Tualatin studio, though his face-to-face student enrollment has been reduced due to the demand of Lessons-By-Mail and his numerous online students. To see for yourself how Mark Stefani is changing the face of guitar instruction, please take the time to visit VisionMusic .