How to Play Jazz & Improvise

Description

Do you want to learn how to improvise jazz? Then this is the play-along for you! Easy to understand and inspiring for all musicians wishing to explore the secrets of jazz improv. Now with Online Audio Recordings---some with slower practice tempos! The beginning tracks includes blues in B-flat and F, four Dorian minor tracks, four-measure cadences, cycle of dominants, 24-measure song, II/V7 in all keys, and Jamey Aebersold playing exercises from the book (hear the master clinician demonstrate exactly how it's done). Beginning/Intermediate level. Rhythm Section: Jamey Aebersold (p); Rufus Reid (b); Jonathan Higgins (d). The tracks of slower tempos included in this Book & Online Audio set is available separately for those wishing to upgrade their old single-CD set they may have previously purchased. Includes: Scales/Chords * Developing Creativity * Improv Fundamentals * 12 Blues Scales * Bebop Scales * Pentatonic Scales * Time and Feel * Melodic Development * II/V7s * Related Scales and Modes * Practical Exercises * Patterns and Licks * Dominant 7th Tree of Scale Choices * Nomenclature * Chromaticism * Scale Syllabus * and more! NOTE FROM JAMEY: When I first heard So What" on the Kind of Blue record, I didn't think anything was happening because I was used to hearing changes flying by and this seemed so tame by comparison. I quickly fell in love with Kind of Blue and of course we at IU started experimenting with modal tunes and trying to keep our place in those many 8 bar phrases that seemed at times to make me feel like I was in the middle of a desert and couldn't see for the life of me the beginning of the next 8 bar phrase. When I began teaching privately for the first time in Seymour, Indiana I had a girl flute student who really had a great sound. One day I asked her to improvise on a D- Dorian scale and off she went. I could tell she was playing what she heard in her mind and I was so surprised. It really sounded natural. So, I asked other students to play on a Dorian scale and they did fine. That's how I got started teaching improv. I think others at the time were using the blues as a vehicle but the students I was working with knew nothing about the blues but they could keep their place in the 4 and 8 bar phrases so I went ahead later and used that modal approach on my Volume 1 play-along . . . and the rest is history." Review: Buy for the printed material - dense and highly useful - This book is aimed at beginners in some respects but is full of information useful to any level of musician. I've studied music most of my life including a number of classic music theory and jazz theory courses, and I enjoyed this volume both for the included theory "cheat sheets" and for the ideas on how to instruct others re improvisation. For people new to jazz you may want to embellish with some other, "gentler" introductions to jazz theory, and approach some of the meatier subjects such as scale/mode choices with assistance from a teacher. The exercises and play-alongs are very helpful as warm-ups for more accomplished musicians as well as for beginners, but this volume does start from the easy-slow stage. The other thing to know about this volume is a little more like a method book than the other Aebersold volumes. So you will probably want to add another one or two, at least, to learn tunes and have some fun. Equal parts chops work plus musical gratification is more sustainable long term for most musicians. Review: Good background but this requires lots of proactice - I play in a jazz group, have always been able to sight read and play any written notes, but am humbled by how some of the (amateur) musicians can improvise. I purchased this book hoping to learn the secrets of improvisation and realize that it requires a lot of practice to improvise. Improvisation may come easier to those with piano and guitar training where chords are standard. I continue to work on this.