The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Jazz Piano Book
Book Review: "The" book for playing jazz on piano
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not an easy book to get a handle on. Beginner's may be overwhelmed. Intermediate students will need help in structuring the topics and lessons. Advanced students will probably find plenty of nuggets of jazz wisdom to make the purchase of this book worthwhile. As a long time musician relatively new to jazz, I find this book extremely valuable for learning about jazz, but it isn't terribly helpful in improving my piano chops. I still give it five stars because I didn't buy it to learn the piano so much as to learn jazz, and obviously, jazz piano. That may sound crazy, but it makes sense when you realize there aren't many specific "drills" to learn the various aspects that Levine teaches about jazz and specifically, jazz piano. Yeah, he may say something like, "Be sure you can do this in all twelve keys", but you're not going to stop reading the book, rush to the piano and practice for four weeks before you continuing reading. The kind of stuff he "teaches" takes a lifetime of experience and playing to learn. So I appreciate being told about it, and I like having some perspective added to such a very deep field of music, but after you buy this book, you're still going to need to do some drills, (try Jazz Chord Hanon: 70 Exercises for the Beginning to Professional Pianist, Jazz Hanon (Private Lessons), Post-Bop Jazz Piano - The Complete Guide with CD!: Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series (Hal Leonard Keyboard Style), and even Piano Essentials: Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, and Cadences for the Contemporary Pianist (Book & CD)), learn some songs (use The Real Book: Sixth Edition), and get some instruction (try your local community college or music store). In short, Levine's book is a wonderful map and a readable, useful guide for just about anyone with interest in playing jazz on the piano.Book Review: The definitive jazz piano instructional book
Summary: 5 Stars
I have searched high and low for a comprehensive instructional book that contains equal parts application and exercises. This is the book. The book is replete with snippets of famous jazz songs that provide a window into the techniques of many great players, and Mr. Levine is thoughtful enough to provide source albums and songs for listening purposes.
Additionally, the book provides you, early on, with a method for interpreting songs out of the real book. With this easy method, you can instantly begin building a repertoire of material, and revisit these songs with the techniques learned in later chapters
Book Review: Jazz Piano
Summary: 5 Stars
Use the concepts in this to help you decipher & transcribe jazz you like into you're own playing.Book Review: A Treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the book I have been waiting for for many years. Levine has come up with the ultimate tool for teaching both yourself and others. It is amazing how skilful he is in proceeding progressively, building on previous chapters as he goes along. He convincingly pieces things together one by one. Following these steps you are invariably gaining competence and confidence in negotiating the piano. A bit of background knowledge in (not necessarily Jazz) harmony and scale theory on the side of the reader would be useful, but it is certainly not indispensable, since in this respect Levine takes nothing for granted, unlike many other authors who seem to relish in building up walls and talking to the initiated few exclusively. Particularly helpful are the suggested tunes to work on and the suggested recordings to listen to. They make you understand the points at issue by putting them into practice. Conversely, it is exciting to suddenly hear and understand often quite familiar compositions and solos on a different level by seeing how they "work".
The book may be a little hard, though, for beginners on the piano. The density of the material together with too many technical difficulties regarding playing would simply be overburdening. But an intermediary level of skills is perfectly sufficient, technical brilliance by no means necessary.
I should not forget to mention Levine's enthusiasm grounded on a breathtakingly complete command of the material. The pleasure he obviously has in teaching is also quite contagious. It must be wonderful to have him as a teacher.
The spiral binding is a rather good idea, since it keeps the pages in place. And the book smells alright when opened - not altogether unimportant, given that you are likely to sit in front of it for hours on end.
Book Review: Wonderful one volume work on jazz piano....
Summary: 4 Stars
If you are already a piano player and have some knowledge of music theory, this book will help you take your understanding of jazz to a new level. It covers a LOT of musical ground and places it within a historical context.
This is not a book that is loaded with exercises, but it is packed with concepts that one could apply and that would take most pianists years to master. Even if you are very good, you will not outgrow it anytime soon.
The Jazz Piano book goes into various types of chords, voicings and how to use them. It also talks about modal harmony, constructing various types of scales and how to apply these ideas to improvistational solos.
This book is well-organized, fascinating, filled with good pictures, examples and ideas. It is a bargain at any price.
If you are new to the jazz world and classically trained, I recommend Jazz Improvisation for the Classical Pianist. This will help you to get away from thinking in patterns on a page with specific fingerings and get you to develop your ability to hear tones and intuit music in intervals. This is an important step toward being a good jazz pianist. It will also help you to break a lot of the conditioning that comes from many years of classical training that does not serve you well within jazz.
I also think it is essential for pianists getting into jazz to apply what they are learning as much as possible. For this reason, I recommend Vol. 3, The II/V7/I Progression: A New Approach To Jazz Improvisation (Book & CD Set) and anything else by Aebersold because this gives you experience playing. The specific link above covers a progression that constitutes 70% plus of most standards. Therefore, this is a good place to get started.