Jazz Piano and Harmony: Keyboard/Piano Book & CD

Grounded and methodical. You're building a functional toolkit for comping and soloing, starting with clean triads and inversions, then discovering how smooth voice leading opens up the language of jazz. The progression feels natural, neither rushed nor overly abstract.

Beginning to intermediate pianists ready to move beyond classical voicings into jazz harmony and improvisation. This works equally well for students in a classroom ensemble setting or those pursuing jazz in private study.

• Listen to the CD recordings before attempting each exercise to internalize the sound of proper voice leading and spacing.
• Practice the left hand voicings separately from the melody line until the shapes become muscle memory, then integrate them.
• Record yourself playing the exercises and listen back to check for smoothness in your chord transitions and consistency in rhythm.
• Use the blues progressions at the end to begin improvising; start by playing the scale patterns before adding embellishments.

Assign this as supplementary material alongside jazz ensemble rehearsals to deepen players' understanding of the harmony they're hearing. Individual students can work through it during practice weeks when your focus shifts to technique rather than full ensemble repertoire.

• Voice leading through chord inversions
• Triadic and four-part chord construction
• Diatonic harmony and chord substitutions
• II-7-V7 progressions and secondary dominants
• Tension and extension application in voicings
• Left hand and spread (two-hand) voicing patterns
• Blues progressions and blues scale improvisation
• Melodic embellishment and improvisation techniques