Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Jazz at the Keyboard: Keyboard/Piano Book & Online Audio

Konowitz understands what happens when you learn jazz on keyboard without a teacher standing beside you. This book strips away unnecessary theory jargon while refusing to oversimplify the essential structures that make jazz sound like jazz: the scales, the progressions, the rhythmic independence between hands. The recorded examples give your students real models to hear and match against, which is exactly what self-directed learners need.

The journey from classical reading to jazz freedom happens gradually, measure by measure. Early chapters establish blues and jazz scales as gateway sounds, then progressions begin to feel less like academic constructs and more like the harmonic language that powers swing, bebop, and fusion. By the end, you're not just following notation; you're learning to speak a musical dialect that rewards listening, risk-taking, and rhythmic flexibility.

Self-taught pianists and keyboardists who already read music and want to add jazz vocabulary and techniques to their playing. Adult learners returning to music and young students with solid classical fundamentals will both benefit from the step-by-step progression. Anyone preparing to sit in on jazz sessions or read from a fake book will find the structured approach to progression, voicing, and bass line construction invaluable.

• Listen through each audio example completely before attempting the piece on your keyboard. Notice where the walking bass enters, where the comping (chord accompaniment) sits rhythmically, and what role your improvisation fills in the texture.
• Play the written melodies and progressions slowly until your hands can find the patterns without looking. Jazz reading from a fake book demands automatic chord recognition, and this foundation prevents you from getting lost during performance.
• Practice the left hand walking bass patterns independently first. The bass line gives structure to the entire phrase, and confident bass playing frees your right hand to explore melodic and improvisational possibilities.
• Record yourself playing through a section, then listen back to identify where your rhythm anticipates or lags behind the harmonic changes. Jazz timing lives in the space between strict metronomic precision and responsive listening to what the other musicians are doing.

Assign this to advanced pianists in your studio who want to expand beyond classical or contemporary repertoire without formal group study. Teachers can use the blues and jazz scale chapters as supplementary material for students interested in improvisation, and the fake book instruction section prepares musicians who plan to participate in jazz ensembles or community jam sessions. The recorded accompaniments make this ideal for independent practice between lessons, giving students consistent models to work against.

• Reading and playing jazz and blues scales (major, minor, and dominant seventh)
• Understanding and playing ii-V-I progressions and other foundational jazz changes
• Playing walking bass lines with consistent four-note phrasing
• Comping (rhythmic chord accompaniment) with left and right hand independence
• Reading from a fake book using chord symbols and lead sheet notation
• Playing Latin jazz patterns and feels
• Constructing and performing jazz ballads with expressive harmonic voicing
• Listening and responding to recorded jazz models from swing through fusion eras