Jazz: Learning to Play

Contemporary Piano Styles by John Mehegan

Creative Jazz Improvisation by Scott D. Reeves

Free improvisation : a practical guide by Tom Hall

Improvisation: its nature and practice in music by Derek Bailey Derek Bailey's Improvisation, originally published in 1980, and here updated and extended with new interviews and photographs, is the first book to deal with the nature of improvisation in all its forms--Indian music, flamenco, baroque, organ music, rock, jazz, contemporary, and "free" music. By drawing on conversations with some of today's seminal improvisers--including John Zorn, Jerry Garcia, Steve Howe, Steve Lacy, Lionel Salter, Earle Brown, Paco Pena, Max Roach, Evan Parker, and Ronnie Scott--Bailey offers a clear-eyed view of the breathtaking spectrum of possibilities inherent in improvisational practice, while underpinning its importance as the basis for all music-making.

Jazz Bass by Ed Friedland

The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine Over 300 pages with complete chapters on intervals and triads, the major modes and II-V-I, 3-note voicings, sus. and phrygian chords, adding notes to 3-note voicings, tritone substitution, left-hand voicings, altering notes in left-hand stride and Bud Powell voicings, block chords, comping ... and much more!

Jazz Rhythm and the Improvised Line by John Mehegan

The Jazz Singer's Handbook by Michele Weir Book is accompanied by CD-ROM 275 shelved at the Circulation Desk.

Jazz Theory: from basic to advanced study by Dariusz Terefenko

The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine A great jazz solo consists of: 1% magic 99% stuff that is explainable, analyzable, categorizeable, doable. This book is mostly about the 99% stuff ... 'Theory' is the little intellectual dance we do around the music, attempting to come up with rules so we can understand why Charlie Parker and John Coltrane sounded the way they did. There are almost as many 'jazz theories' as there are jazz musicians ... When ... listening to a great solo, the player is not thinking 'II-V-I, blues lick, AABA, altered scale, ' and so forth ... Experienced musicians have internalized this information to the point that they no longer have to think about it very much if at all. The great players have also learned what the chords and the scales look and feel like on their instrument ... Aim for that state of grace ... no longer [thinking] about theory, and ... it [will] be much easier to tap into the magical 1%

Perpetual frontier : the properties of free music by Joe Morris

Saxophone High Tones by Eugene Rousseau

Voicing : an approach to the saxophone's third register by Donald J. Sinta ; edited by Eric Satterlee and Sam Merciers. "The efforts of Donald Sinta bring a necessary and long awaited perspective to teaching and learning skills related to the production of overtones and the altissimo register. It is the sincere hope of the author that Voicing will become invaluable resourcerfor all students and teachers of the saxophone"--Foreword.

The Bassist's Bible: How to Play Every Bass Style from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco by Tim Boomer; Mick Berry; Chaz Bufe The incredible diversity of the bass guitar is revealed in this newly revised, all-inclusive style guide. Each chapter covers particular styles or families of styles, gradually introducing players to techniques that will allow them to get the most out of their instrument and easily increase their bass repertoire. More than 400 bass grooves are presented, spanning an excess of 100 styles that musicians can follow along with on each of the two accompanying CDs. In addition to techniques for mastering the various styles, historical information about how they developed is included, giving players a one-of-a-kind opportunity to be true masters of the bass guitar. All musical samples in this updated edition are in both standard notation and tablature and the style histories, bibliography, and discography are up-to-date. Also included are 50 new grooves and a DVD with videos of the proper way to play more than 100 examples.

Free to Be Musical: Group Improvisation in Music by Lee Higgins; Patricia Shehan Campbell; Gary McPherson (Foreword by) Free to Be Musical: Group Improvisation in Music is for those who lead musical experiences in the lives of children, youth, and adults. Offering a set of experiences to inspire creative musical expression, this book will prove useful for music education majors, practicing music teachers, community musicians, and music therapists alike. The experiences (or 'events') are designed to reduce the musical barriers that Western societies pass on to children by the time they reach the 'age of reason,' when the natural childhood penchant to sing, dance, and play musically gives way to perfect performances of standard repertoire preserved in Western staff notation. The authors present ways to encourage music that is expressive and inventive, spontaneous yet thoughtful, communal and collaborative, and unlimited in its potential to bring fulfillment to those who make it. You'll find opportunities to release the musical imagination in ways that are free and expansive, playful and instructive, personal and interpersonal. Higgins and Campbell have created a context that validates the experiments and explorations of all people who are potential makers of all styles of music. Their musical events embrace the belief that music-making is 'a trail of no mistakes,' a celebration of the many and varied musical pathways that both teacher and student can take.

Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz As Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society by Edward W. Sarath

The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music by Bruce Ellis Benson This book is an important contribution to the philosophy of music. Whereas most books in this field focus on the creation and reproduction of music, Bruce Benson's concern is the phenomenology of music making as an activity. He offers the radical thesis that it is improvisation that is primary in the moment of music making. Succinct and lucid, the book brings together a wide range of musical examples from classical music, jazz, early music and other genres. It offers a rich tapestry incorporating both analytic and continental philosophy, musicology and performance-practice issues. It will be a provocative read for philosophers of art and musicologists and, because it eschews technicality, should appeal to general readers, especially those who perform.

Noise Orders: Jazz, Improvisation, and Architecture by David P. Brown In this lively book, David Brown locates jazz music within the broad aesthetic, political, and theoretical upheavals of our time, asserting that modern architecture and urbanism in particular can be strongly influenced and defined by the ways that improvisation is facilitated in jazz. Improvised music consists of diverse properties that fail to register in the object-oriented understanding of composition. As a result, it is often dismissed as noise—an interfering signal. However, Brown asserts, such interference can bear meaning and stimulate change. Noise Orders identifies how architecture can respond to the inclusive dynamics of extemporaneous movements, variable conceptions of composition, multiple durations, and wide manipulation of resources found in jazz to enable outcomes that far exceed a design’s seeming potential.By exploring overlapping moments between modernism and the cultural dimensions of jazz, Noise Orders suggests that the discipline of improvisation continues to open and redefine architectural theory and practice, creating a world where designers contribute to emerging environments rather than make predetermined ones. Comparing modern and avant-garde artists and architects with individuals and groups in jazz—including Piet Mondrian and boogie-woogie, John Cage and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Le Corbusier and Louis Armstrong, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)—Brown examines how jazz can offer alternative design ideas and directions, be incorporated in contemporary architectural practices, and provide insight on how to develop dynamic metropolitan environments. Interdisciplinary in its approach, innovative in its methodology, and unexpected in its conclusions, Noise Orders argues for a deeper understanding of the infinite potential inherent in both music and architecture.

The Saxophone by Stephen Cottrell In the first fully comprehensive study of one of the world’s most iconic musical instruments, Stephen Cottrell examines the saxophone’s various social, historical, and cultural trajectories, and illustrates how and why this instrument, with its idiosyncratic shape and sound, became important for so many different music-makers around the world. After considering what led inventor Adolphe Sax to develop this new musical wind instrument, Cottrell explores changes in saxophone design since the 1840s before examining the instrument's role in a variety of contexts: in the military bands that contributed so much to the saxophone's global dissemination during the nineteenth century; as part of the rapid expansion of American popular music around the turn of the twentieth century; in classical and contemporary art music; in world and popular music; and, of course, in jazz, a musical style with which the saxophone has become closely identified.

Marsalis on Music by Wynton Marsalis Wynton puts a fresh spin on music appreciation. His inspired instruction, backed by superb performances and exciting graphics, not only teaches the fundamentals of music but also makes learning fun.

A pianist's guide to free improvisation: keys to unlocking your creativity by Marilyn Crispell