Jazz Piano: Piano Book

Structured but alive. The book respects the logic of jazz harmony while leaving room for personal voice. You're learning the rules that actually govern the music, not arbitrary patterns.

Early advanced and advanced jazz pianists ready to move beyond comping and single-note soloing into serious harmonic language. This works for high school jazz band pianists, college music majors preparing for jazz studies, and serious private students committed to improvisation.

• Start with the melody and chord studies before diving into full improvisation. They establish the vocabulary you'll need to think clearly over changes.
• Record yourself playing the given progressions, then improvise over your own playback. This develops independence from the page and trains your ear for what works harmonically.
• Work through the scale and mode exercises slowly enough to hear how each one colors the harmony differently. Speed comes after you've internalized the sound.

Use this as the core resource for jazz band pianists during the fall and winter, working through it alongside the ensemble's selected jazz charts. The studies build directly into more confident solo work in performance. It also serves private lesson students as a bridge from classical training into jazz thinking.

• Jazz chord voicings and voice leading
• Improvising melodies over chord changes
• Modal interchange and modal improvisation
• Jazz scale applications (major, minor, modes, diminished, whole tone)
• Harmonic analysis and chord substitution
• Comping rhythms and shell voicings