In the last post I talked about the best way to select a teacher. However, many people will live in areas where there isn’t much choice. Jazz musicians often move to cities seeking more opportunities to play, but if you live outside the city it may be a struggle to find a suitable teacher.
Fortunately, there are many products on the market today that are designed to help you develop your own playing and in this and a couple of future posts, I’ll be taking a look at some of the most popular resources. First up is…
Books
There are hundreds of tuition books on the market covering all kinds of instruments, methods and approaches to playing. There are books about harmony, theory, chord voicings, soloing, intros and endings, turnarounds, licks and pretty much every aspect of jazz you can think of.
Books can play a useful role in learning – particularly in regard to understanding harmony and theory. In fact, most of my basic jazz theory knowledge came from them and there are plenty of useful techniques I still use regularly that I got from books. In a moment, I’ll mention a couple of titles I have personally found useful, but first of all, a word on book learning in general.
The great thing about books is that you can absorb the information at your own pace. If you don’t get something straight away, you can always come back to it at a later date when you’re ready. Many books contain a lot of information and you will return to them many times over the years as you improve and are ready to assimilate material that was previously too advanced.
There are more books on the market than ever before and whilst it’s always great to have so much information available, beware of falling into the trap of buying books instead of practicing! Some people will buy book after book, constantly searching for the the magic sound or the secret jazz scale that will suddenly make them sound like a jazz musician.
Buying books does not automatically make you a better player and is not a substitute for practice. You will not absorb anything by osmosis so if you do choose to learn from books, make sure you read them with your instrument and put the techniques into practice or you’re wasting your time.
Also, whilst books are useful in some respects they are totally useless in others. They’re great for learning theory, voicings, and approaches but you’ll never learn to swing or have good time from a book. You can’t learn to play purely from books so make them just one part of your development.
The Jazz Piano Book
The book that I first bought when I started learning jazz was Mark Levine’s The Jazz Piano Book after it had been recommended by a couple of more experienced players. I was very glad I did.
In this comprehensive volume, the material ranges from the very simple (intervals and triads) to the more complex, (fourth chords, upper structures and melodic minor harmony) and the material is generally easy to read and well explained.
Most of my basic knowledge about chord/scale relationships came from this book and Mark does a great job of explaining how chords and scales are essentially the same thing and how to select a scale for improvisation based on a chord symbol.
There’s a huge amount of information on voicings here; everything from skeletal Bud Powell voicings to quartals, ‘So What’ Chords and upper structures are covered and I have kept returning to this book whenever I’ve felt the need to expand my harmonic palette. I still haven’t absorbed everything. The section on latin jazz and salsa is also excellent and explains clave and montuno patterns beautifully.
Whilst I would thoroughly recommend this book, I do have a couple of criticisms.
Firstly, this is not really a book you should work through from front to back. The chapters are organised in strange order; for example, Chapter Four is devoted to sus and ‘phrygian’ (susb9) chords. The latter are hardly essential knowledge for the beginning jazz pianist.
The author claims the book is designed to increase in difficulty as it goes on but I don’t think the format really works – if that is the case then should tritone substitution (chapter 6) be considered significantly easier to understand than pentatonic scales (chapter 15)?
Secondly, the book focuses very much on playing piano as part of group. If it’s learning to play solo piano you’re really after, this book isn’t going to be quite as useful. The chapter on stride piano is good, but is about the only one specifically aimed at the solo pianist.
Thirdly, whilst the book contains lots of good information on chord/scale relationships it doesn’t really go into too much detail about building a solo. Once you have learned to associate a particular chord with a scale (or scales) then you’re on your own. The soloing approach is exclusively scale based (there is almost no mention of lines built using chord tones and chromatic approach notes for example) and there is no real help with phrasing or advice on building idiomatic jazz lines.
Finally, this may be something that’s a personal gripe, but some of the musical examples given seem a little esoteric. Mark has tried very hard to keep his examples within the context of compositions by major artists and tunes that you are likely to play. However, sometimes the desire to stick to this criteria can make them hard to contextualise. For example:
“in figure 14-6…the upper structure #IV minor chords are on the third and fourth beats of the sixth bar of Thelonius Monk’s ‘Ask Me Now’.”
In cases like this, there is just the one bar of notated music shown. Even if you already know ‘Ask Me Now’, it’s hard to place one bar in the context of a tune. If you don’t know the tune, you’re going to have to go and get a lead sheet from somewhere to give the example context and meaning.
I do understand the desire to keep examples relevant to the repertoire of a working jazz musician, but sometimes I think the information could be better conveyed by an exercise written specifically for the purpose.
If a student has to go and find a lead sheet and learn a tune to contextualise a single bar of voicings, it wouldn’t be surprising if he/she lost focus or, worse still, simply turned the page without absorbing the material.
Despite these criticisms, if you aspire to play jazz piano in a group, this book will act as an invaluable resource that you’ll find yourself returning to time and time again as you continue to improve.
The Jazz Piano Book is well worth the investment as long as you don’t look at it as an progressive method book. You’ll get much more out of it if you view the chapters a series of individual articles on different aspects of jazz piano and dip in and out whenever you’re ready to tackle a new topic.
The Jazz Theory Book
For other instumentalists, the The Jazz Theory Book
There is also more information here about building solos, although the focus is still very much on a scale-based approach to improvisation. Sequencing, bebop scales and playing outside are covered in some depth and the section on pentatonic scales is more comprehensive than in The Jazz Piano Book.
The final third of the book is devoted to reharmonisation. None of this material appears in the other book and is an excellent study of ways that chords can be altered or substituted to give new sounds and add a personal twist to a familiar tune. This is one of the strongest parts of the book and I haven’t seen such a detailed look at reharmonisation anywhere else.
Overall, like its predecessor, The Jazz Theory Book is crammed full of useful information and I have found myself returning to it time and again over the years. Again, it should be treated as a reference volume rather than a method book – although there are often useful exercises included that are well worth studying.
The examples can still be hard to contextualise sometimes and it should be noted that whilst the chord/scale approach is probably the one most employed by the modern jazz musician, it’s certainly not the only approach to improvisation.
Despite a couple of criticisms, The Jazz Theory Book is still a fantastic resource and improving jazz musicians will find a wealth of knowledge in its pages.
Randy Halberstadt’s Metaphors for the Musician
Whereas Mark Levine’s approach can be erudite and professorial, Randy’s is friendly, informal and designed to put you at ease. The book is filled with metaphors, personal anecdotes, humour and a warmth that hardly makes it seem like you’re learning anything at all. This is the book to turn to if you’re feeling insecure about your playing or having a ‘I’m never going to get there’ moment; Randy’s voice is always understanding, sympathetic and reassuring.
His ‘harmonic astronomy’ metaphor is particularly novel and illuminating and is highly recommended to the beginner looking to figure out how the harmony in jazz standards functions.
As the author is a pianist, there is also a wealth of information on chord voicings and here you will find information on voicings for solo, duo, trio and quartet playing that can serve as a basic toolkit for playing in any situation.
As Randy says himself, Metaphors for the Musician is not designed to be a how-to-book but is a collection of ‘nuggets’ designed to sit along more comprehensive books on jazz theory and improvisation.
____________________________
These three books have been the ones that I have learnt the most from over the years and, whilst I will certainly review other books from time to time, it would have to be a very special book that would replace any of these in my recommendations. It is true that they’re not cheap but I’m convinced they remain a valuable investment if you’re learning to play.However, keeping the cost in mind, I would initially recommend going for the Randy Halberstadt book and one of the Levine books. This combination will cover a hell of a lot of bases for you – providing you practice!
Don’t forget that buying book or reading books is NOT practicing and the information on the page is only of use if you put it into practice on your instrument.
Next time we return to look at self-tuition material, we’ll be taking a look at the pros and cons of playalongs and how they should best be used.
Until then, good luck and don’t forget to practice!
Thank you for your insightful review of useful jazz tuition books. I looked at both of the Levine volumes, and felt that an additional advantage of the Theory Book is in its simplification of typical passages by various influential pianists. For those of us with a less-than-stellar piano technique (or sight-reading ability, for that matter), these simplified passages allow us to more easily comprehend the specific voicing or voice-leading being discussed.