Tell me about your vision.
Well, my vision is that I'm a classical pianist and as classical pianists, we were not taught,
it was not in our curriculum to get out of their written score.
So my vision is to help classical pianists from all over the world to easily improvise
without too much theory at first, but rather in a more intuitive way, how to create their own music
because that's how, what I believe is that when we create our own music or our own art in general,
it could be gardening, it could be visual art, it could be any art, I think that we become more alive.
And in creating your own music, if I talk about classical musicians,
it's also because it's allowing you to understand better the composers and to be more rounded musicians,
to be able to speak more languages, to play with more musicians and to be more rounded human beings as well.
So this is my vision to help classical pianists freely improvise and get out of their written score.
That's a very, very unique vision.
I think that's the first time I've had someone along those lines with music.
There's one thing to do what you do and perform in front of people,
and there's the other thing to teach the art to other people.
I think it's a very unique skill. So where did that vision come from?
How did that come about?
Yeah, when I was really young, I was creating my own music when I was about four or five, six.
I was composing, I was improvising, and I was having lots of fun doing it.
But when I pursued my classical studies, I put everything aside in favor of piano performance.
I put the creative part aside and I studied the great composers' technique, and this was taking a lot of time.
I even went so far as to win the Montreal Symphony Orchestra first prize at the age of 17.
So it was really demanding to practice for many hours,
and I didn't have time for the creative side that I had when I was really young.
Then I developed injuries because of repetition of movements and the demands
and the extreme rigor of being a concert pianist.
I developed injuries and I couldn't play anymore.
So I started teaching, and then by starting to teach, I was facing students coming to my studio
and wanting to compose and improvise, and I couldn't guide them.
And I felt frustrated also because I saw, you know, for years I've been studying and playing great,
you know, really complicated music, but I could invent or create something very simple.
And when people are asking you in a party, you know, to play something,
you don't necessarily want to play Mozart's.
So it's then that I started looking for different avenues of making music because I was blocked physically.
I couldn't play anymore, and I was not having fun teaching.
And I called short answers to help my students to get out of their written score.
So this is where I met a group of improvisers in the United States, more on the East Coast.
And I had such a revelation starting to improvise that it was easier than I thought
and was coming out of the blue with just a few guidelines and a few triggers.
And I could improvise in different styles. I could find my own style, which I found priceless.
So it was like a huge revelation for me.
And when I came back from these workshops, I was transmitting all this knowledge to my students,
and we started having way more fun in our lessons because they became more alive, those lessons.
Because when you improvise, you have to try a theory concept right away on the spot,
and you master it more, and you live the music from the inside, which is the important key.
So that's how I decided to finish a four-year, to complete a four-year program in improvisation,
but not so much because of the certificate. It was more because I had so much fun doing it.
And this is why I want to teach it today to people, because it transformed my life.
Since then, I've been releasing piano album, solo album of improvisation.
I've been composing songs. I've been composing piano solo music, and that came all from improvisation.
So I believe that it's an important tool to develop, and it's very human also as a process
to live the music from the inside, but also to learn to let go, to learn to live the moment,
to go with the flow, to accept your sound. There's so much learning inside of it.
Jose, first of all, doing what you did, starting to do that at four, five, six years old,
that is very, very, very impressive. I don't even remember what I was doing when I was four or five years old.
Music is some talent that I don't think I have. It's something I've never developed,
but you don't need to have that to appreciate good music.
No, you don't need to have that to appreciate the music.
But I would say that human beings all have their own capacity of learning
and have some musicality inside themselves. It's just that it hasn't been discovered or brought up.
But I believe that everyone has a musical sound that you just need to start simple, you know, baby talk, babies talk.
You can make vocal sounds. You can use drumming, if you like. This is already music.
We think of being on stage and mastering complicated music, but it's not necessarily the case.
To me, the simple, I think the music would be. I've tried actually in college,
someone I knew who was teaching me how to do some piano for a little bit.
I'm a very tough student, so they gave up easier than I did.
And that was the end of piano lessons.
But I used to sing when I was, I think, in high school or below that, maybe middle school.
And that was the last of it. And since then, I have not developed those skills.
But going back to the point of improvising music, that I've heard improvising in rap,
improvising on top of your head, right, and other areas.
But how does improvising music mix with the piano side of things? How do you do that?
I want to know more about that. I think that's very intriguing.
How do I teach improvisation?
Yes. Yeah.
Well, I start with very simple technique. It could be just to hold a drone.
A drone is a sustained notes, and let's say like a bagpipe in your left hand.
And improvising with just a few notes, and that is to support that drone.
And just improvise with a few notes in your right hand that belong to a specific key or a specific mode.
That's one technique. Another is just to start with a simple groove in your left hand.
And add up a few notes in your right hand.
These are very simple techniques.
And then I guide people to look in their repertoire, a classical repertoire.
And these, what we call grooves, could be called ostinati, repeated rhythmic pattern, melodic pattern.
And they find some, and I say, now could you improvise using these eight bars of music, repeating patterns,
and improvise with just a few notes in your right hand.
And then people, oh, I didn't know that music was written out of patterns, ostinatis.
And that's another technique.
Sometimes it could be, you know, with chord progressions, you know, specific chord progressions.
And sometimes I use Let It Be from the Beatles.
And I say, look, this is a famous chord progression that tons of songs were written with.
And so we go through that chord progression, like let's say four chords in a row, and then a few notes in your right hand.
You can improvise a melody.
So there's many ways I teach a little bit about how to improvise in a classical style, how to improvise in world music.
I have books also, very simple books, not too much theory, with already given patterns and a few notes to guide the students.
And then, you know, you can start improvising in a little bit of jazz, a little bit of world music, classical pop.
And I also teach how to improvise very intuitively out of an image, a poem.
And that could be not necessarily sounding right and good, but sounding like an inner landscape, let's say.
Thank you for sharing that.
My next question for you, I think you've already answered that.
But I think you're some of those people who don't just do music, you live music.
What would you say is the why of what you do?
What gets you out of bed every morning to do what you do?
Oh, that's so important.
Well, yes, I shared a little bit of this when I told you about my story.
It's because improvisation opened doors to my musical life and to my life in general.
And it has enlarged my vision of music and has brought the fun back that I lost a long way because classical musicians are so, you know, it's like ballad dancers.
It's really strict and rigorous and it's very demanding.
And sometimes we lose the fun.
And I got back with improvisation.
And the way it was taught to me was in a very humanistic way.
Like it was including all types of musicians because in classical music, you have to be on top or you're nobody.
But that group of musicians, it was called Music for People.
It could gather, you know, like first class musicians with people, you know, nonprofessional playing in their basement.
And we were all playing together.
And from different backgrounds, music therapists, classical, jazz, whatever.
And we were all playing together.
So to me, it transformed my life to do this.
And it's not like all my colleagues who've been through this training said it.
We all said the same thing.
So I want what gets me out of bed is that I want to help other classical musicians to enlarge their vision of music and to teach in a more, you know, in a better way or more fun way.
Better wouldn't be necessarily the word, but in a very exciting way and practical at the same time.
And to, yeah, to experience music from the inside and to communicate because music is a wonderful way to communicate with other human beings.
And with improvisation, you can right away start to make music without learning necessarily how to read.
So this is why I really, I really do it to help other musicians to experience what I experienced through it.
And that keeps me still alive as a musician.
That's awesome.
I first I agree with you that music is also a very another good way of communicating with people.
There's so many times where people can just stay at a place and just feel and and sometimes people don't even speak the same languages when they're listening to music.
Doesn't have to be just tune.
I think they can feel a lot of stuff that goes on.
I don't know what rhythms those are.
I don't know how that exactly works, but I know it works because I felt it my way.
And second thing, if I understand that correctly, your goal is.
The reason why you get out of bed and why you do things because classical music, I want to say, has its way.
And there's a lot of repetition involved and there's a lot of patterns you have to follow and it can get tiring, maybe boring.
And there's a lot more.
So if improvisation for us brought out of the way to make it more fun and lightning and maybe more encouraging, is that did I hear that right?
Or would you want to add or remove something from that?
Well, what I want to add is that I don't teach improvisation to become key.
Jared's, you know, great jazz improviser.
I don't teach improvisation to be necessarily good at it or to perform, because that's also what I want to musicians, classical pianists to experience, is to get out of the performance mode to have to be perfect and have to.
And I believe that the way I teach improvisation is also to express themselves.
And that's the most important key is to release emotions, is to have a reflection back of who they are when they improvise and that, oh, that came from me and I don't know why, but it came out this way and it's a release.
So, of course, I'm giving them tools and their specific parameters, but I'm trying not to be too strict either in my classes, because what I want is that people experience music from the inside and, you know, express who they are, express their music with certain parameters.
And of course, I'm saying without the theory overwhelm at first, because if there is too much theory, then they get into their head.
But of course, later on, we can add some more layers of understanding of how far we can go with improvisations.
And then my programs, I have a level one and a level two.
And so I introduce people very simply and I have different levels. There are some piano teachers and there's some nonprofessional as well. So it's not necessarily that you have to be professional to follow my programs.
If you are, I would, you know, switch you or direct you already to the second level.
But yeah, so it's not just to perform music, but to live it from the inside.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.