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The Online Guitar Store - Solo Jazz Piano: The Linear Approach
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List Price: $39.95
Our Price: $26.37
Your Save: $ 13.58 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Berklee Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781
EAN: 9780634007613
ISBN: 0634007610
Label: Berklee Press
Manufacturer: Berklee Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 310
Publication Date: 2002-11-01
Publisher: Berklee Press
Studio: Berklee Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: absolutely to be reccommended to serious jazz students & pros
Comment: I was genuinely surprised by the quality of this work. I am a classical pianist who has dabbled in jazz from time to time. This book, together with the Mark Levine's books (Jazz Theory, Jazz Piano, and Masterclass) have gotten me psyched up about jazz. Years ago, jazz books seemed a muddle to me (for example John mehegan's 4-book series and David Baker's stuff), mostly because I came from the classical 18th-19th century theoretical background. The only thing that worked for me was studying LPs until they wore out (my age is showing). I still study CDs deeply, but these books really help to fill gaps, at least as far as analysis goes. There is very useful information in this volume.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It is an excellent book!
Comment: The book is very well organized. There is no deception on the part of the author or the publisher to sell this book. The details of the book clearly let you know what the book covers. As a student of jazz piano, intermediate, I find this book very helpful. I really like the way the author introduces the concepts and then gives examples and etudes to practice. It is one of the best jazz piano books I've bought. But it is not the only book I use to learn how to play jazz piano. You should have an open mind and study all you can from different books in order to progress musically. You'll find similarities in jazz beginner/intermediate piano books, but the good books, like this one, provide you with the proper guidance you need. In my opinion, Neil Olmstead "poured his heart out" in this book. As a music educator myself, I really appreciate the great effort Professor Olmstead put into writing this outstanding book.
In order to get another great insight on jazz piano improvisation, I also highly recommend the following book:
Mel Bay's Essential Jazz Lines: Piano Style of Bill Evans One of the authors of this book, Per Danielsson, offers a lot of great free guidance on jazz piano on the internet. Check out his web site.
I'm currently studying both books and I'm highly motivated to practice. Good luck with your jazz piano learning journey.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book works against itself
Comment: This book has a wealth of information for people who want to develop their left hand in order to play solo jazz piano. The problem is, the author expects the reader to laboriously plow through tons of non-intuitive etudes with strange right-hand melodic lines in order to practice his techniques. It would be much more helpful, and much less confusing, if the author just provided left-hand etudes, or less unorthodox melody lines for the right hand. I was excited to approach this book, but I was really looking for a much more straightforward approach. (If I wanted to learn to play like Tristano, I would transcribe a difficult Tristano solo.)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ok if you are new to jazz piano
Comment: I was looking for some ideas to improve my solo jazz piano playing, but found that if you are in any way a performing jazz pianist, you will find most of the exercises in this book are already familiar to you. It focuses a lot on walking bass lines. I was hoping for a little more in the way of ideas for intros reharm and such. A good book if you are not all too familiar with jazz piano playing, but not for anyone who is at more than intermediate level.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Fine Book in What it Sets Out to Do
Comment: I bought several books recently to help me class up my fake book renditions (I'm a old rocker. I can read music with effort, but I'm much better at playing fake books), including this and Mark Levine's Jazz Piano. I'm still working through them, so some of this review may evolve over time. Random observations:
* I find the CD only marginally useful.
* The real strength in this book for me is the pacing. It slows me down, forcing me to spend time on fundamentals that I get tempted to skip over to get to the "fun part". It's a lot like having a real piano instructor saying, "Let's learn this first, and we'll get to that other stuff in good time when you're ready." Olmstead's teaching experience really shines through here.
* The slight differences in left hand voicings between Olmstead and Levine (Levine uses VII and III for bottom notes almost exclusively; Olmstead does not) were a little disorienting.
* Olmstead is kind enough to provide complete example songs with the same chord progressions as popular standards. He gives completely scored versions, and fake book renditions, depending on the lesson being taught. Very user-friendly, and no need to go find a fake book that tracks this volume.
* The traditional book binding is very inconvenient - it is hard to keep the book opened for practice and the book gets very beat up over time.
* This book gives a LOT of attention to walking bass lines, with very good explanations. It could be beneficial to beginning bass players despite the "solo piano" title. Even though I did not feel like I lacked in this area, I found this section worthwhile, and helpful to give me a vocabulary to communicate better with bass players.
* Due to the attention paid to the fundamentals, constructing strong improvised melody lines and interesting chord voicings don't get much attention.
* At a certain point the book jumps from basics to creating multi-part basslines and gets pretty advanced in parts. Even so, the author remains true to his promise and lays out the concepts clearly before throwing the student in the deep end of the pool.
This book and Levine's give you two perspectives on the same elephant. Both are valuable, and neither is really complete on its own (nor are they complete when combined). There is less overlap between the two books than one might expect. This book would be particularly gratifying to proficient music readers, because so much is written out, while Levine's is more gratifying to me because I take what he gives me and apply it to my fake books. We should all work on our weaknesses, so it is good that this book forces me to read music. This book and some hard work will do a fine job at creating the foundation of skills and knowledge that the author sets out to build.
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