How to Play Jazz & Improvise

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." Read more