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The
Top Selling Jazz Piano Books...
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Endorsed by Kenny Barron, Jamey Aebersold, Richie Beirach, and more, this book presents all the information a student of jazz piano needs in an easy-to-understand, yet thorough, manner. For intermediate to advanced pianists, written by one of the acknowledged masters of jazz piano playing.
List Price: $32.00 Amazon Price: $20.16 Used Price: $19.95 Customer Review: Da Bomb!
The Point: Levine's book is truly great.
Levine gives you the real thing, and he explains it in a way that darn near everyone will be able to understand.
This book is not just for keyboard players. (I play the Trumpet, and Levine taught me more about Jazz harmony than any of my Jazz-trumpet-player buddies ever did.)
CAVEAT: To benefit from this book, you MUST know the fundamentals of music. Can you read music? If you had to (and you couldn't get out of it), could you tell me what note I was pointing to on a piece of sheet music? No matter what "key" it was in? Okay. Next, do you really KNOW your Major scales? Can you play them on your instrument? Don't BS yourself - could you really do it, even if your life depended on it?
If you said "yes" to the questions above, and you really want to play jazz, you are probably ready for this book.
Again, for those who want to play Jazz, if you know what a "staff" is, and a "clef," and you "know" your major scales, get this book. I beg of you, start here.
Levine clearly explains a whole bunch of the basic stuff regarding how to hear and play real Jazz. If you master Levine's lessons, you probably won't sound like a hack.
Levine's book gives you just what you need to know, right now. Real jazz involves relatively complex harmony, but it isn't nearly as hard or mysterious as many "jazz" books make it seem.
If this book had been around when I first started fumbling through all of those lousy "How to Play Just Like a Real Jazz Cat" books out there, I would have progressed in my jazz playing at a much faster pace.
I recommend this book to all intermediate/advanced musicians who are studying jazz without the guidance of a genuinely knowledgable jazz teacher.
Recommended!
Customer Review: Simply the Best!
This is a great book on jazz piano. It should be part of every jazz pianist library - even beginners. This book is geared toward intermediate players, but it will act as a great guide no matter what your level of expertise.
It's nice to see a well formatted book. I'm so tired of buying jazz piano books that were hammered out on a typewriter.
Highly recommended!
A step-by-step approach to solo jazz improvisation for piano. Learn to improvise using the techniques pioneered by piano greats Lenny Tristano and Dave McKenna. This methodical approach to learning the art of solo jazz piano improvisation will free your creative sense of music. It begins with a review of chord symbol interpretation, walks through bass line development, and ends with how to play several melodic lines simultaneously in stimulating musical conversation. You'll learn how to develop solos that embellish and support the melody, and use lead sheets to help you generate your own musical ideas. Twenty-one lessons present techniques, practice exercises, and tunes based on jazz standards. Notated transcriptions of sample improvisations illustrate each lesson's technique, and the accompanying CD lets you hear a master improviser put these ideas to work.
List Price: $39.95 Amazon Price: $25.17 Customer Review: Great beginning!
This is a good book for someone with basic Jazz theory knowledge. You still need have some foundation of Music Theory. It's a good book to be taken with supplemental teaching! Great recording eventhough does not follow the book(mostly his own voice leading).
Thanks for creating effort and teaching for those of us that involve with music and love of it!
Customer Review: Poorly Published
The content of the book and CD is fantastic, see the other reviews for more info. Unfortunately, the binding of the book is useless, especially when you try to set it on your pianos' music stand and have it stay open. The first time I used it, pages started coming loose like they were never attached. I guess I'll keep it instead of sending it back, because I like the material, but I'll have to fix it to use it (huge waste of practice time). Really should have been spiral bound - buyer beware.
Arranged by Tom Roed. The 42 titles include: (They Long to Be) Close to You * All for Love * Don't Get Around Much Anymore * Evergreen * I Swear * The Lady in Red * Linus and Lucy * The Lion Sleeps Tonight * My Way * Take Five * The Rose * Theme from Ice Castles (Through the Eyes of Love) * You're the Inspiration and many more.
List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $19.95 Used Price: $19.00 Customer Review: Advanced Piano Solos Encyclopedia
This book is excellent and contains a great selection of songs. It is hard to find piano solos for advanced players and this fills the bill.
Customer Review: Absulutely Perfect for social occassions
At first I thought that this book would be just like the other hundreds of music books like it but it isn't. The book contains songs everybody will know and love. The songs are arranged in a way that makes them easy to sight read, wonderful to listen to (according to those who have heard me play them) and yet interesting to work on and perfect. They are arranged in such a way that they are clear for sight reading. The songs are not really easy to play properly so I wouldn't recommend it to beginners. This book is a treasure for the advanced pianist and wonderful to impress your friends with. I can guarantee you won't regret buying it
There are things in life you cannot learn from books. Jazz, rock, and the blues are among them. To play these improvised styles of music, it's important to look beyond the sheet music and theory manuals. The process involves learning by ear, directly from the music itself. Learning by ear acquaints you with melody, harmony, and rhythm in terms of how these elements sound rather than how they look on paper. This familiarity lies at the very heart of improvising. This book and its accompanying CD will serve as your guide as you develop your jazz, rock, and blues improvising talents. It introduces the experience to anyone with a year of basic piano under their fingers. Improvisations featured on the CD will offer inspiration, and illustrate improvising techniques introduced in the text. Ultimately, you will be prepared for learning directly from the recordings of your favorite artists.
List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $19.95 Used Price: $34.45 Customer Review: Terrific way to get to know your piano
This approach to learning to play piano by ear is terrific. You get familiar with playing in all the keys and can explore improvising without feeling self conscious. It's a great way to learn how to speak keyboard. I'm working on Book 1, but bought and looked at all three volumes. I'm sure that it'll be fun to learn from the whole series.
Based on the author’s experience in teaching in jazz workshop, explains the principles of this art form. Useful for teachers wishing to include jazz in the music curriculum.
List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $12.97 Used Price: $11.66 Customer Review: Purely theoric
This book concentrates only in concise theory, don't giving any further explanation or real-life examples in music. Aside that, the book wastes several chapters in basic music theory telling what any amateur musician already know. For me it was useless.
Customer Review: Good reference
I am a classically trained piano teacher who has worked over the years to expand my skills to include faking off chord charts and jazz techniques. This book is a logically organized reference guide. I think, perhaps, it is not the best choice as a guide book for teaching yourself how to improvise. It has very few examples of what the author is teaching. Once I hit the polychord tables, my brain kind of seized up in the sense that I wasn't sure how to internalize them enough to apply them to my playing. (20 tables with 48 to 120 information blocks per table!)Again, an excellent reference book, but you should not expect to study and play your way through it without assistance unless you are already half-way there.
This comprehensive book and CD package will teach you the basic skills you need to play smooth jazz piano. From comping to soloing, you'll learn the theory, the tools, and the tricks used by the pros. The accompanying CD features many of the examples in the book performed either solo or with a full band. Specifically, you'll learn: scales and chords, harmony and voicings, progressions and comping, rhythmic concepts, melodies and soloing, characteristic stylings, the history of jazz, and more. THE HAL LEONARD KEYBOARD STYLE SERIES provides focused lessons that contain valuable how-to insight, essential playing tips, and beneficial information for all players. Comprehensive treatment is given to each subject, complete with a companion CD.
List Price: $17.95 Amazon Price: $11.67 Used Price: $11.66
Legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson has long been devoted to the education of piano students. In this book he offers dozens of pieces designed to empower the student, whether novice or classically trained, with the technique needed to become an accomplished jazz pianist.
List Price: $9.95 Amazon Price: $9.95 Used Price: $6.61
This is a survey of the development of jazz piano from 1950 to the present, with many illustrations of left-hand chord voicings, right-hand modes, turnarounds, harmonic distortions, blues and modal fragments.
List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $14.92 Used Price: $8.95 Customer Review: Mehegan's Contemporary Piano Styles
This is the last in a series of four volumes created between 1959 and 1965 by jazz pianist and instructor John Mehegan. The complete set is of the utmost historical importance for anyone with a serious interest in jazz piano. Before Mehegan, no other author had succeeded in unlocking the mysteries of jazz piano and then communicating them to a mass audience in a clear and cogent manner. Volume 4's "contemporary" styles include such jazz giants as Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver and Bill Evans. In Mehegan's view, these three were the primary architects of modern jazz piano. At the very beginning of the book is a note-for-note transcription of Bill Evans' classic "Peri's Scope." Serious jazz piano students will want to memorize or "cop" this performance in its entirety, since it encompasses so many of Evans' stylistic innovations within one comparatively short space. The "meat and potatoes" foundation of this volume is the series of chord-like clusters Mehegan refers to as "A" and "B" voicings. One set of voicings derives from Chopin, the other from Ravel. For accompaniment or "comping," these are played in the right hand with single bass notes or "root seven" intervals played in the left. For soloing, they are played in the left hand. This volume goes on to describe melodies voiced in "block" chords as developed by pianist George Shearing, and then outlines a solo piano architecture based on the A and B voicings [arguably prescient, anticipating the solo piano renaissance that occurred during the '80s]. The book's primary flaw -- one which persists throughout the serie -- is its unfortunate allegiance to the concept of "figured bass" used within traditional music theory instruction. Indeed, there is a conspicuous overall effort throughout the series to "suck up" to academia, but this is a forgivable byproduct of an age when traditional academia persisted in viewing jazz as something too vulgar and intellectually impovershed to merit acceptance within hallowed academic environs. -- Cortland Kirkeby
In this book in the Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series, author John Valerio provides essential, detailed information for bebop and jazz pianists on the following topics: chords and voicings, harmony and chord progressions, scales and tonality, common melodic figures and patterns, comping, characteristic tunes, the styles of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and much more. The accompanying CD features many of the examples in the book performed either solo or with a full band. Also included are combo performances of five of the tunes featured at the end of the book.
List Price: $17.95 Amazon Price: $12.21 Used Price: $7.95
Perform timeless Flute works! Perfect for practice, rehearsal, auditions, contest solos, performances, and more! This Suite, when first introduced, was performed by Claude Bolling and Jean-Pierre Rampal. It swiftly became the most successful chamber music recording in history with over one-half million copies purchased. Comprised of seven movements, it cleverly exploits the differences between each instrument in a wonderfully effective way. We are delighted to make it available to you, the soloist. Claude Bolling has endorsed this recording.
Includes a high-quality printed music score and a compact disc containing a complete performance with soloist, in split-channel stereo (soloist on the right channel); then a second version in full stereo of the accompaniment, minus the soloist.
MMO CD 3342 Performed by Suzanne Kirton, flute and bass flute Accompaniment: Michael Junkroski, piano; Kevin Mauldin, bass; Tim Miller, drums
List Price: $29.98 Amazon Price: $29.98
The
Top Selling Jazz Piano Books...
