Excellent Book from a Master Improviser and Teacher

books:


	• Mel Bay presents Jazz Pentatonics: Advanced Improvising Concepts for Guitar (Mel Bays Private Lessons) Bruce Saunders Mel Bay Publications, Inc., 2004 - 48 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Excellent Book from a Master Improviser and Teacher

This book gives the student (we're all students aren't we?)a very balanced approach to broadening his or her mastery of pentatonics in a jazz context. Bruce Saunders explains the many applications of familiar pentatonic scales in a really concise way and lays out very musical illustrations in notation and tab with recorded examples. I like the recorded tracks because they are played in a swinging relaxed style by some really happening players who make a living playing jazz in New York. Bruce has been a teacher at Berklee College since the 1980's and a working musician for a long time. I've found that good focused work on this material has opened my ears and fingerboard awareness. While the book begins with the familiar minor seventh pentatonics, Bruce shows how to use them in new ways and then gives us other less familiar but really important pentatonic scales with applications and recorded examples. There's lots to work on here but I believe it's just the right amount of material - not overwhelming and that's important.

Jazz improvisation is a life long pursuit and no one teacher or book will make a student a great improviser over night. This book is one of the really useful ones due to its balanced content, the quiet competence of the author, solid musicality and straight ahead playing by the musicians on the included CD.

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Jazz Pentatonics? is for intermediate to advanced players wishing to expand their melodic and harmonic vocabulary. The music is in standard notation as well as tablature and a CD is included in which the more difficult exercises are played at a slower as well as faster tempo. The CD was recorded with live drums, acoustic bass and guitar. All the exercises are included on the CD as well as play-along tracks that enable the student to play with a rhythm section. The book covers the minor 7, dominant 7, minor 7(b5) and major (b6) pentatonics and gives the student many etudes and exercises from which to draw improvisational ideas

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