Charlie Banacos and Learning for Life

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Kmrumedy

Kmrumedy

May 12, 2004
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#1
Hi Jeff -

Been a big follower of your lessons for years. Thank you.

I was always curious about your relationship with Charlie Banacos with regards to the lessons he imparted upon you and what elements of those lessons remain with you today? How much of Charlie is in your own teachings?

For those of us that were never able to study with him, I was always hoping an alumni like yourself and/or Mike Stern might get together and write a harmony book based on Charlie's teachings. Is that a possibility in the future?

Also - there are still correspondence courses available through his website by Garry Dial. Apparently he was given many document teachings of Charlie's by his wife and they are now offered to musicians through the site. Have you tried any of the courses? Is it worth pursuing?

I know Charlie's strength was assessing a musician and coming up with the exact thing they needed to work on to take their playing to the next level. Not sure how Garry or someone else can do this through a website.

Again, my thanks for all your free lessons. You should really start getting paid for all this stuff! Lol!

My condolences for the lost of your teacher and dear friend.

My favourite quote I read of his was : "Find out what to practice and then do the work. It never fails."

Cheers,
John
 
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#4
GastonD said:
Joe Hubbard, who is here on TB as Snake Doctor, also was a student of Charlie's AND has pursued studies with Mr. Dial afterwards... Hopefully he will be able to drop by and share some thoughts.
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What's nice about Joe Hubbard videos is he shares knowledge without the backdrop of running the rest of his profession down.
 
#5
Hi Kmrumedy

Before Charlie passed away, he had set things up so that his daughter Barbara and Garry Dial who carry on the legacy of Charlie's teachings through email correspondence, much in the same way that Charlie taught to his correspondence students. Barbara teaches beginner to intermediate students, while Garry teaches advanced students.

Garry was Charlie's longest running student, having studied with Charlie for 38 years. Garry is an amazing musician, improvisor and teacher and teaches Charlie's authentic material written in Charlie's hand. This is all done in cooperation through the Banacos family. I studied with Charlie through mail correspondence for 10 years. In the year 2000, I gave up playing music for ten years. A chance search for Charlie on the internet (he just popped into my mind for no reason) revealed taht Charlie had passed away some days earlier late in 2009. I decided right there there to pick up the bass again.

After blowing off the cobwebs for the next year, in 2011 I decided to start studying with Garry Dial. I had to send him MP3s of my current playing abilities and listed everything that I had studied with Charlie. What's great about Garry is that he coaches you though a study segment and gives you his personal feedback about how he intrprets the material systemactically. As awesome as Charlie was, he never wanted to reveal the "system" and would sometimes teach a segment 'out of order' to retain intellectual copyright. Charlie always made you figured out your own system regarding how everything worked. He was very aware how charlatan teachers would rip him off- that's why he took his books off the market.

I would totally reccommend both Barbara and Garry to anybody looking to improve their musicianship and improvisational skills. Along with their expertise in actually being able to play what they are teaching, they are both some of the kindest people I've come across.

I've recently been featured on Charlie's website talking about my experience as a student and teach a short lesson on one of the topics Charlie taught to me. You can find that here: Videos

Hope that helps!

Best

Joe
 
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