You Can Teach Yourself Jazz Piano

Book excerpt: This book is the perfect introduction to jazz piano for those who are already somewhat proficient as pianists but aspire to playing in the jazz style. The author emphasizes the importance of chords in playing jazz music and offers a comprehensive dictionary of traids, dominant sevenths, half and fully diminished seventh chords, plus ninth, and thirteenth chords. Chord symbols and voicings as well as modal and blues scales are also addressed. The last half of the book includes a generous "fakebook" and a "songbook" consisting of several of the author's progressively arranged compositions.