Harmonic Development and Contrapuntal Techniques for the Jazz Pianist serves as a guide for harmonic expansion and development for jazz piano, offering pianists both a rationale and methods to improve contrapuntal hand techniques. The text focuses on the relationship between theory and execution and both of those components’ usefulness in creating a jazz sound at the piano. This kinaesthetic method provides the learner with a systematic approach to harmonic movement, revealing options that may not have been otherwise apparent. This method will allow pianists to add depth and dimension to their chord voicings in the same way that vocalists and wind instrumentalists give character and shape to the notes they create. Key features include musical examples ranging from singular chord construction to sophisticated harmonic progressions and song application. Performance exercises are provided throughout the text. Learners and instructors are encouraged to create their own exercises. Related ancillaries at harmoniccounterpoint.com include: Musical examples Audio tracks Performance exercises Written assignments Intended for the learner who is reasonably familiar with essential jazz harmony, this textbook will be both a significant resource for the advanced player and a fundamental component for the learner in a structured academic musical setting.

The first book to teach the necessary mechanisms in an organized format that will be used for improvising two lines at once on the guitar (bass lines and melody lines). The material covered in the method includes: All of the diatonic seventh arpeggios in both ascending and descending forms, organized by the root in the bass, third in the bass and the fifth in the bass. Scale fragments with both static and moving bass lines. Basic rhythms with moving lines and syncopation. Each of these sections is further broken down into individual chapters focusing on a specific aspect of the topic. The material is geared towards both the intermediate and advanced guitarist. Topics such as fingerings, finger stretches and finger independence are also discussed. Having taught professionally for 35+ years, the author has the experience and curriculum to help takes students to the next level. The book is suitable for guitarists interested in players such as Ted Greene, Chet Atkins, Howard Morgen, George Van Eps, Jimmy Wyble and Charlie Christian. Classical guitarists looking to build a foundation on learning how to improvise multiple lines, will find the material suitable for their technique. Although improvisation is the focus of the book, the material can also be used for composition and song writing.

This is the first volume of Harmony, Counterpoint & Improvisation, a textbook which offers each of these three facets as one organic course of study. The harmony section covers the whole technique of common chords and their inversions. Counterpoint is initially discussed as a vocal art and the early exercises explore the art of Palestrina and the English Tudor composers. In the improvisation section many keyboard techniques are introduced, such as transposition, chord progression and simple harmonisation.

The first history of keyboard improvisation in European music in the postclassical and romantic periods, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-Century Music documents practices of improvisation on the piano and the organ, with a particular emphasis on free fantasies and other forms of free playing. Case studies of performers such as Abbé Vogler, J. N. Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Robert Schumann, Carl Loewe, and Franz Liszt describe in detail the motives, intentions, and musical styles of the nineteenth century's leading improvisers. Grounded in primary sources, the book further discusses the reception and valuation of improvisational performances by colleagues, audiences, and critics, which prompted many keyboardists to stop improvising. Author Dana Gooley argues that amidst the decline of improvisational practices in the first half of the nineteenth century there emerged a strong and influential "idea" of improvisation as an ideal or perfect performance. This idea, spawned and nourished by romanticism, preserved the aesthetic, social, and ethical values associated with improvisation, calling into question the supposed triumph of the "work."

"The Piano Improvisation Handbook" offers a comprehensive overview of the practical skills and theoretical issues involved in mastering all forms of piano improvisation. It explores a wide range of styles, including classical, jazz, rock and blues. Whereas other books on improvisation typically offer little more than models for imitation and exercises for practising, this one adopts an approach specifically designed to encourage and enable independent creative exploration. The book contains a series of graded tutorial sections with musical examples on CD, as well as an extensive introductory section detailing the history of keyboard and piano improvisation, an appendix listing useful scales, chords, voicings and progressions across all keys, a bibliography and a discography. In addition to sections outlining how melody, harmony, rhythm, texture and form work in improvised piano music, there are sections devoted to explaining how ideas can be developed into continuous music and to exploring the process of finding a personal style. A key feature is the distinctive stress the author puts on the interconnectedness of jazz and classical music where improvisation is concerned. This book is best suited to those with at least some prior experience of learning the piano. However, the rudiments of both music theory and piano technique are covered in such a way that it can also serve as an effective basis for a self-sufficient course in creative piano playing.

This collection of etudes, written during the 1970's, was composed as a result of Jimmy Wyble's explorations into the musical worlds of counterpoint, harmony and chord melody improvisation for the jazz guitar. the right and left hand fingerings presented in this book were also developed as techniques needed to improvise jazz in two lines. Jimmy uses very standard jazz guitar chord shapes in these etudes; however, these shapes move through the harmony in lines rather than block chord structures. This broken chord technique creates a unique contrapuntal sound that separates Jimmy from the rest of the fingerstyle jazz guitar world. It is hoped that jazz and classical guitarists playing and working through these etudes will see many familiar chord shapes moving in new ways and creating new sounds. These new harmonic sounds combined with beautiful melodies will inspire any quitarist to new levels of musical creativity. Written in notation and tablature. 92 pages.

This is the second volume of Harmony, Counterpoint & Improvisation, a textbook which offers each of these three facets as one organic course of study. The harmony section covers the whole technique of common chords and their inversions. Counterpoint is initially discussed as a vocal art and the early exercises explore the art of Palestrina and the English Tudor composers. In the improvisation section many keyboard techniques are introduced, such as transposition, chord progression and simple harmonisation.

Designed for Music Theory courses, Music Theory Through Improvisation presents a unique approach to basic theory and musicianship training that examines the study of traditional theory through the art of improvisation. The book follows the same general progression of diatonic to non-diatonic harmony in conventional approaches, but integrates improvisation, composition, keyboard harmony, analysis, and rhythm. Conventional approaches to basic musicianship have largely been oriented toward study of common practice harmony from the Euroclassical tradition, with a heavy emphasis in four-part chorale writing. The author’s entirely new pathway places the study of harmony within improvisation and composition in stylistically diverse format, with jazz and popular music serving as important stylistic sources. Supplemental materials include a play-along audio in the downloadable resources for improvisation and a companion website with resources for students and instructors.

This book offers compelling new perspectives on the revolutionary potential of improvisation pedagogy. Bringing together contributions from leading musicians, scholars, and teachers from around the world, the volume articulates how improvisation can breathe new life into old curricula; how it can help teachers and students to communicate more effectively; how it can break down damaging ideological boundaries between classrooms and communities; and how it can help students become more thoughtful, engaged, and activist global citizens. In the last two decades, a growing number of music educators, music education researchers, musicologists, cultural theorists, creative practitioners, and ethnomusicologists have suggested that a greater emphasis on improvisation in music performance, history, and theory classes offers enormous potential for pedagogical enrichment. This book will help educators realize that potential by exploring improvisation along a variety of trajectories. Essays offer readers both theoretical explorations of improvisation and music education from a wide array of vantage points, and practical explanations of how the theory can be implemented in real situations in communities and classrooms. It will therefore be of interest to teachers and students in numerous modes of pedagogy and fields of study, as well as students and faculty in the academic fields of music education, jazz studies, ethnomusicology, musicology, cultural studies, and popular culture studies.