An instruction book or tutor for learning good jazz playing?

[Ryk Loske]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Ted Eschliman's Getting Into Jazz Mandolin and Don Stiernberg's Jazz Appetizers, both published by Mel Bay. Also check out jazzmando.com.

That makes two of us!! All the other suggestions are excellent ..... but One and Two are in Mandolincelli's post.

Ryk

[Joel Glassman]

Pete has a video teaching bebop on Youtube--an excellent lesson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivu-iznLWk0

Here are a bunch of jazz guitar instruction links--guitar lessons are maybe best adaptable for learning mando jazz.
http://www.psych.nmsu.edu/~jkroger/lab/jazz/guitar.html

One suggestion for studying jazz.
Keep reading a variety of materials, even if some of it can't be understood.
Not so easy to do on a conceptual level. Eventually things become clearer.

[Joel Glassman]

Excellent post!

If I may dare to suggest going even farther. Pick one player in one style and learn as much from them as you can. I can tell you from personal experience, this has HUGE benefits of learning the language of the style you are studying.

Yes, and learn to play the blues and all its jazz variations really well. It is the root of most Jazz styles. Jazz musicians may not know the same tunes, but they can all jam on the blues. Pay careful attention to Tiny Moore's hero Charlie Christian. He is the basis of most mainstream jazz guitar music. Learn to scat-sing your favorite solos along with the recordings. Most Jazz players can do this. [Its an automatic part of any wind instrument jazz.] Look for "less complex" players in your style. People who use the space between the notes. For example "soul jazz" players. Check out the sax, guitarist & organ player on this video. Simple, but its definitely Jazz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeoYdbJwMZc
Learn to play rhythm with just the 3rd and 7th of each chord. It makes the patterns of chord movement really clear. Jam as much as possible with your nearest jazz guitarist...

[DavidKOS]

Yes, and learn to play the blues and all its jazz variations really well. It is the root of most Jazz styles.
Pay careful attention to Tiny Moore's hero Charlie Christian. He is the basis of most mainstream jazz guitar music.
Learn to scat-sing your favorite solos along with the recordings. Most Jazz players can do this..

All are great ideas.

The need to learn jazz blues is paramount.

You can't play the modern styles unless you can play bop.

You can't play bebop unless you can play swing.

You can't play swing unless you can play New Orleans/Chicago/Dixieland

You can't play Dixieland unless you can play blues.

It all starts with early jazz blues.

[crisscross]

Don Stiernberg's Jazz Mandolin Appetizers are rather good sounding examples than instruction.
In the same vein I can recommend "Jazz Solos" by guitarist Frank Vignola. In these two books are examples of jazz solos for standards like All of me, Green Dolphin Street or Take the A-Train.
They are written for guitar but can also be played on the mando.
http://www.melbay.com/Products/99322...-volume-1.aspx
He has some jazzblues books too.
http://www.melbay.com/Products/99317...-volume-2.aspx

[DavidKOS]

And if you plan to play bebop, you need to get a C copy of the Parker omnibook, and read and practice out of that.

[Pasha Alden]

Thanks to you all! There's a whole three weeks left of my holiday and aside from days at the swimming pool there is time for mandopractice and playing!

[Joel Glassman]

Ultimately, I think the goal of improvising is to be in the present, listening carefully, not thinking. Painting improvised variations on melody, harmony and rhythm. An act of pure inspiration... The hard work is to design practice exercises which show you all the possible pathways through chord tones & progressions. If they are practiced until they can be used intuitively, they become the "palette".

[DavidKOS]

Ultimately, I think the goal of improvising is to be in the present, listening carefully, not thinking. Painting improvised variations on melody, harmony and rhythm. An act of ... The hard work is to design practice exercises which show you all the possible pathways through chord tones & progressions. If they are practiced until they can be used intuitively, they become the "palette".

If thinking gets in the way of being in the moment, I'd agree - but a tiny bit of thinking can help you remember forms, structure solo ideas on larger scale, etc.

"Pure inspiration" is usually tempered with a little bit of perspiration (in the form of thought, as in study and practice), too, to twist an old saying to my purposes. That's the palette you mention.

Still, for the most part, it is about being in the moment with the music.

[Beanzy]

Pasha two things I'm doing may be of use to your quest;

The box-set is your friend at this stage when building a colletion of any genre of music in which to immerse your ears.
I build them by record label as in recent years the back-catalogue releases of re-digitized master tapes have been great. They tend to be done by companies at different times, but at the outset it doesn't matter that there are gaps not yet released.
I've been doing this with my classical and Jazz collection and it's been a great way to build collections of anywhere from 20 up to 60 CDs at a time, for the price of a few albums each.
As you mentioned the holidays; I've told anyone who wants to get me a gift that they should give me vouchers so I can then go buy exactley the set I want or add it to other vouchers, then send them a thank-you note letting them know what they bought or helped me to buy. Last year I bought one called "The Perfect Jazz Collection" which was a great starter and since then got the second set as a follow up along with a collection of Columbia Jazz recordings Disques Vogue label. So far that (very Sony centred) and some Blue Notel label jazz sets have been a great way to access a good starter collection for me, even though I had loads of different records from previous sorties into jazz. I'll then expand out into other labels as I go and as new sets come up.

The other thing my mandolin teacher has got me into is the Jamie Abersold play-along series of jazz training books. This has been a super gateway into various aspects of playing jazz, with the advantage of CDs to back you up and support your practice.
So far I'm working through four of the books;
1 How To Play Jazz and Improvise
2 Nothin' But Blues
3 THE ii/V7/I PROGRESSION
16 TURNAROUNDS, CYCLES, & ii/V7s
the links I've given all go to one company but you can hunt them up all over the internet and get some bargains too.

Happy exploring.

[DavidKOS]

The Abersold play-alongs are a standard part of jazz education. They are an excellent way to learn tunes and learn to blow over them.

One caveat - I'm not a fan of the "chord scale" theory that is used in these books. This method is useful enough that it's the way many jazz players think now, but should not supersede the earlier way of playing swing and bebop, based on tonal centers, chord arpeggios, and melodic lines.

[jshane]

Ultimately, I think the goal of improvising is to be in the present, listening carefully, not thinking. Painting improvised variations on melody, harmony and rhythm. An act of pure inspiration... The hard work is to design practice exercises which show you all the possible pathways through chord tones & progressions. If they are practiced until they can be used intuitively, they become the "palette".

Wow.. This is pretty much what I am always trying to articulate...... and fail at. Nice, Joel.

[JonZ]

Pasha two things I'm doing may be of use to your quest;

The box-set is your friend at this stage when building a colletion of any genre of music in which to immerse your ears.
I build them by record label as in recent years the back-catalogue releases of re-digitized master tapes have been great. They tend to be done by companies at different times, but at the outset it doesn't matter that there are gaps not yet released.
I've been doing this with my classical and Jazz collection and it's been a great way to build collections of anywhere from 20 up to 60 CDs at a time, for the price of a few albums each.
As you mentioned the holidays; I've told anyone who wants to get me a gift that they should give me vouchers so I can then go buy exactley the set I want or add it to other vouchers, then send them a thank-you note letting them know what they bought or helped me to buy. Last year I bought one called "The Perfect Jazz Collection" which was a great starter and since then got the second set as a follow up along with a collection of Columbia Jazz recordings Disques Vogue label. So far that (very Sony centred) and some Blue Notel label jazz sets have been a great way to access a good starter collection for me, even though I had loads of different records from previous sorties into jazz. I'll then expand out into other labels as I go and as new sets come up.

The other thing my mandolin teacher has got me into is the Jamie Abersold play-along series of jazz training books. This has been a super gateway into various aspects of playing jazz, with the advantage of CDs to back you up and support your practice.
So far I'm working through four of the books;
1 How To Play Jazz and Improvise
2 Nothin' But Blues
3 THE ii/V7/I PROGRESSION
16 TURNAROUNDS, CYCLES, & ii/V7s
the links I've given all go to one company but you can hunt them up all over the internet and get some bargains too.

Happy exploring.

This all seems rather 20th century. You would probably get more bang for your buck for with Spotify and iRealB.

[Pete Martin]

Spotify is terrific as you can hear a LOT of versions of tunes you are learning.

[Beanzy]

I like the look of the iRealB thing there. Money wise I'd have to lay out a shed-load of money for an iPad or something, but it's probably long over-due. We've got rubbish internet connections though so I'd need to store the stuff on the unit I was using.
I'm a also bit sketchy about using Spotify as I had heard they don't pay proper royalties to bands and composers. Are these both ok like that now? How do artists fare in their payments?

[bohemianbiker]

Spotify pays what the law requires, but it's paltry. bb

[JonZ]

I like the look of the iRealB thing there. Money wise I'd have to lay out a shed-load of money for an iPad or something, but it's probably long over-due. We've got rubbish internet connections though so I'd need to store the stuff on the unit I was using.
I'm a also bit sketchy about using Spotify as I had heard they don't pay proper royalties to bands and composers. Are these both ok like that now? How do artists fare in their payments?

There is a free program you can download to your PC called Impro-Visor that does what IRealB does (and a lot more, actually), but it has more of a learning curve. It could be a good option if money is tight.

[outsidenote]

Pasha,

I don't know who is in Grahamstown, but I would recommend that you contact the "Jazz Workshop" in Cape Town, run by Merton Barrow (http://jazzworkshop.co.za/). I took saxophone lessons there eons ago from Kevin Davidson (http://www.kevindavidson.co.za/)- great memories. They have been running an excellent school of music for so long that they likely know people in your area - likely even former students or instructors. Perhaps not mandolin but possibly piano or guitar. They could help you with Jazz theory and concepts like chord substitution, voice leading, harmonizing, approach notes and approach chords that you could use as a mandolin player.

[crisscross]

How are you defining "jazz"? I'm thinking the genre extends in huge swaths from Louis Armstrong to Miles, bebop to cool-blue, Dixieland to cold-war Berlin. About the only universal common-thread I can identify would be the presence of a level of improvisation. Is that what you are looking for?

They could help you with Jazz theory and concepts like chord substitution, voice leading, harmonizing, approach notes and approach chords that you could use as a mandolin player.

I guess, in the end, it comes down to what your aspirations are. If you want to impress the contemporaray jazz police playing in an impromptu realbook session, then you better work on your modal scales, chord substitution, approach notes...
But if you play in a band, that has the occasional swing standard(All of me, Autumn leaves...) in its repertoire and you want to be able to improvise a decent solo, then in my experience, a basic knowledge of chord tones is the most important.

We have an instructional series here in Germany that is called "Jazz Studio-Anleitung zur Improvisation ". There are volumes for different instruments, but the basic concept is the same:
-First step: chord notes only
-Second step: to the chord notes are added notes from the diatonic scale of the song
-Third step: Chromatics are added

Example tunes are a blues, Careless Love, Rhythm changes and Go down moses.
For the mandolin I like the saxophone book, because the examples are in G,C and a-minor, and can easily played in the first position.
For demonstarion purposes I recorded the tune with melody, first chorus chord notes, second chorus diatonic scale and the third chorus from the guitar volume with chromatics and blue notes


The series is from the sixties, the guitar examples are composed by Attila Zoller and the trombone examples by Albert Mangelsdorf, the sax by his brother Emil.
There are only major and minor 6th and 7th chords in the examples, no diminished, augmented or altered chords.
The only drawback I see is, that there is no CD included, so you have to record your own background or work with other players.
But I like the fact that the main focus is on chord notes. That seems to make more sense to an occasional swing player like me than a lot of mixophrygian scales.
http://www.schott-musik.de/shop/1/show,35374.html