Reddit mentions: The best songbooks

Can’t comment on the Hanon, but I do have a recommendation you may be interested in. I’ve been playing classical for a while, but in the last year decided to take jazz improv on top of it. There are a few things that if you really work at then will show stellar results.

First thing is chord voicing, these are truly your bread and butter as a jazz pianist. If you ever play in a group, then these will give you a great sound with many many options to choose from.

It would take a very long time to write out a bunch of voicings, but here’s an example. For major chords there are two main interchangeable voicings which we’ll simply refer to as A and B voicings..
-A voicing is formed by starting at the root, then moving up a major third, then building a minor 7th chord. For example C root, then E minor 7. If you look at it, you’re really just playing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th. You can drop the root once you learn minor and dominance chord voicings, but seeing not only the expanded C major chord, as well as the chord writhin a chord (E Minor 7 within the C major 9) is extremely helpful.

-B voicing is a major third up from the root, then a minor 7th chord, finally inverted twice. This will give you another voicing option so you don’t use the same chords over and over. Now for any major chord, you have three options (Root, Rootless A, Rootless B).

There are more chord voicing beyond that, but that brief example should give you an idea of what’s out there. There are A and B voicings for Major, Minor, and Dominant chords, with Dominant chords having many many options.

For now I would recommend learning you major 7th, dominant 7th, and minor 7th chords in all 12 keys. Play the root an octave lower, then with both hands play the given rootless voicing above it. This will give you an excellent foundation to build from.

Next most important thing is Modes and Scales. Each chord has a corresponding scale with notes that will sound great over a particular chord. Again due to the vast array of options, I’ll give you a starting place to go from.
-Major chords can be paired with major scales. Pretty cut and dry.

-Minor chords will be paired with the mode Dorian. Dorian is similar to a minor scale, but instead of being formed with a flating the 3rd, 6th, 7th Of any major scale, it’s formed by flating the 3rd and 7th of any major scale. So D Dorian would be all white keys.

-Dominant chords can be paired either the Mixolydian Mode. Mixolydian is formed by flating the 7th note in a major scale. So G Mixolydian would be all white keys.

Now there are many MANY options just like with chords, but this will give you a very firm place to begin improvising. As an exercise to get you playing the right scales with the right chords, play in your right hand a particular scale up two octaves and a third, while playing in your left hand the corresponding chord every 8 notes. You’ll see it line up perfectly. When you can do that reliably at 80 bpm with you major, minor, and dominant chords/scales, you’ll be in a great places.

Last but not least is basic Roman numerals theory. If you know what Roman numerals sound good going to each other, then you’ll be in a great place to not only improvise, but to even write and improvise your own songs on the fly. Again, there’s a whole lot we could cover, but to give you a taste, we’ll talk about probably the biggest progression in Jazz. The ii-V-I.

If you break it down a ii-V-I is the culmination of what we’ve talked about so far in this post. First, why this progression. Well the V-I is a common pull in music. The dominant is one of the first in the overtime series, and it’s pull to I is extremely strong. Almost if not more in some cases powerful than the pull of a vii-I. That’s cool, but what about the ii? The ii-V is actually a very strong pull in its own right. So ii now leads us into V, which then takes us home to I.

For great examples of this in action listen to Afternoon In Paris, and Take The A-Train.

Now once you have those chords in place from earlier, you can fill in the minor 7th chords for the ii, the dominant 7th chords for the V, and the Major 7th chords for the I. So in the key of C this would look like d minor 7th for ii, g dominant 7 for V, and C major 7 for I. Once you can do a ii-V-I in every key, practice playing the corresponding scales while you ii-V-I. Or you could also add rootless voicings to the ii-V-I by doing ABA voicings (Minor A, Dominant B, Major A), or BAB voicings (Minor B, Dominant A, Major B).

I would highly recommend buying a copy of The Real Book. This is a set of over 150 standard lead sheets for famous and great jazz songs. Both songs I mentioned above are in the book. Take the book, find a song, and break it down using Roman numerals. After a while things will make sense as far as what chords go where, and things will really start to click.

If you’re interested in further reading, I would highly recommend The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine. This book covers many many topics, and will take you far. I like the book a good bit because by any topic, it will show a real excerpt from a jazz standard of a chord used so you can see how what you’re learning is utilized.

I know this is a lot to do, but just pace yourself. You can’t build a house in a day, but if you’re patient and diligent, the world of Jazz Improve is a fun and exciting one. Best of luck, and if you have any questions feel free to comment or shoot me a dm.

One thing you'll need to do is lower your expectations. You might be good at classical, but so many things in jazz are skills you just haven't really practiced and while the technical ability you're bringing will definitely help, a huge part of jazz is mental. It's a ton of theory in application in real time. It took you years to be able to play what you can on the classical side, and it's going to take years more to learn what you're wanting from jazz. So you're just going to have to start with some baby steps and slowly build from there.

Particularly for those coming from a classical background, I highly recommend this book. And I'd highly recommend watching this video a few times along side the opening bits of the book. An important thing early on is to get three note or 3-7 voicings down for your ii-V-Is. In the book they are explicitly written out in every key in both inversions. That will help your reading side, but like the video mentions, you should get to where you're not relying on the page as soon as possible. Try to write out a chart of the changes around the Circle of 4ths or find one online.

You need to be associating the chord symbols you see with the actual chords you're playing the way you would associate a written chord with how its played, but in a looser and more complicated way. First off, you need to be able to instantly identify the 3rd and 7th of any chord and just know it and know how the voice leading works between the chords. But over time you'll have an increasingly broad interpretation including lots of potential voicings, or extensions and alterations. You might read Dm7 and play Dm9. You might read G7 and play G7b9. You might read Cmaj7 and play CMaj13#11.

While the ii-V-I is the cornerstone and the i-VI-ii-V turnaround is common, you really need to learn how functions work so that you can do something like apply a diminished chord in place of a dominant or insert a tritone substitution, or insert the ii-V of a given chord to give it more motion. Pop lends itself more to memorizing short bursts of repeated progressions, but jazz needs you to know why and how it works more. The book I mentioned will get you started applying these concepts to lead sheets so you can take the info in the first few chapters and apply it directly to your Real Book for infinite practice and the book itself is using actual very common standards.

As for playing by ear, I heavily subscribe to the method that both Bert Ligon and Mark Harrison suggest. Don't go learning your intervals in isolation because that's not how music works. You need to learn to hear the individual steps of a scale as the relate to the tonic of the key you're in. The short version is that you should be able to feel do-mi-sol (1 3 5) as settle and home. Everything else wants to go to one of those and they all feel a certain level of settled or unsettled.

A point Bert Ligon makes it that students often want to play by ear, but can't even dictate the melody of a simple song like "Twinkle, Twinkle." If you can't do that, they you can't possibly expect to be able to pick out much more complicated concepts. He has a list of folk tunes and children's songs in his book Jazz Theory Resources that he recommends doing dictation of. Even without the list you could just pick some well known tunes and force yourself to write them down without a piano for reference. Bonus points if you can also notate the chord changes by ear (usually pretty obvious by the highly melody notes in such tunes). But slowly building from this and knowing what's happening from a theory standpoint will get you past the wild guessing phase.

You can actually get good at purely diatonic ear playing just by a lot of trial and error, but it's going to be very difficult to move past that without some much deeper theory knowledge.

I'd also recommend that any time you find a progression you like, pick a comping pattern and go play that progression in every key. The pure repetition will seal it in your brain aurally. But also, forcing yourself to do it in every key will have several effects.

• You'll be better at playing in any key technically and identify your weak keys.
  
• You'll be forced to consider the harmonic relationships in every key.
  
• You'll get much better at transposing by forcing your brain to think in Roman numerals or functions rather than explicitly in one key.
  
  I'm sure you can tell me that I-vi-IV-V in C is C-Am-F-G, but how quickly can you tell me what it is in Ab? F#? Db? E?
  
  You can take that an extra step and pick simple songs (perhaps some of those your transcribed) and go play them in every key so you also are forced to think about the melodic notes as scale degrees rather than just note names and really understand their relation to the tonic of whatever key you're in.
  
  You might actually want to check out that Bert Ligon book. It gives a good review of the pre-requisite theory you should have (coming from common practice period background), covers ear training, and lays the ground work for jazz theory in a way that I think rivals the Mark Levine book that most jazz pianists endorse. The Bert Ligon book is a much more instructional book whereas the Mark Levine book is more of a deep reference book great for people who already have a pretty solid grasp on jazz.
  
  
  I also recently found this amazing book at a used book store and was surprised I'd never heard of it. It's full of great left hand comping patterns (in 3 and 4), right hand patterns, fills, progressions, and generally extra pizzazz for interpreting things from lead sheets. It's definitely not so much a jazz book, but it might be a good stepping stone for you since it involves the improv and comping without throwing you head long into the density of jazz theory and lets you get comfortable playing by ear in a more diatonic setting that you're likely more comfortable with.
  
  
  

When I was younger, the concept of improvisation in music gave me a reason to live. I was 17, I didn't want kids and there was no point to middle-class suburban life. But if I could come home from whatever my job was, even if I hated it, I could sit at my piano and play how I felt... if I could express myself through music, in a way I could never do so in words - then I would be happy.

I wrote about that idea in a college entry essay, and it has never left me, 13 years later I still feel the same way. Granted, I feel a bit more responsible about many things in life, but at the end of the day I still hold on to that belief.

Initially, jazz was the vehicle through which I learned improvisation, so I feel very close to the music, even if I really don't play in a traditional jazz style. Improvisation was the outwards expression of my feelings; before I learned about jazz, I could only read notes on a page to play music, and I was way too shy to talk or even write about how I was truly feeling, let alone share that with other people.

My "life" has essentially revolved around music ever since high school. I've played gigs, gone on tour, recorded/put together an album (doing the artwork, manually putting together the CD jewel cases), taught music theory/composition/performance, organized shows/event calendars, funded bands/projects, ran venues/music spaces, produced music for video games... I work a regular day job nowadays, but my #1 passion is and will always be music, whether I'm performing it or enabling others the opportunity to perform.

***

I took classical piano lessons as a young kid for ~6 years, then I quit. I had a little bit of technical knowledge and form but I never really "enjoyed" the music I was playing.

I played drums in grade school. While in drumline (marching band), another drummer asked me to play some keyboard parts for his band. Like 3-4 chords during a Pink Floyd song ("Wish You Were Here" actually, you can hear the synth towards the latter part of the song), and some bird chirping sounds. For other songs, I would swing a hockey stick around while wearing a hooded coat (kinda like a grim reaper) while the band played some Black Sabbath covers.

Well it turns out that we won a Battle of the Bands in front of a few hundred high schoolers, got some money, and I had my young ego blown up then, going from unknown nerd to "piano player with the hockey stick" - but at least people knew who I was. I even bought a keyboard so we could gig around town (I still have it, this ridiculous thing, even though the screen doesn't work anymore)

As I practiced with the band, I was introduced to the idea of "soloing" - other classically trained musicians might understand the helpless feeling I had when I was told "just jam over this blues" - I had no idea what I was doing. One of the guitarists in my band told me about the blues scale, a set of 6 notes that I could riff endlessly over and somehow they all sounded great to me.

A year later (and another battle of the bands won), I was invited by the same guitarist to hear one of his friend's dad's jazz trio. I was told his dad, a drummer, had once opened a concert for Parliament. I get to hear this trio, and they are playing Miles Davis' "So What" according to my friend. I'm ask my friend, "How are they playing all that, improvising?" And he says "Yeah"

At this point I'm like, "Well let me jump in there, I know the blues scale!" And my friend is like "Nah dude, you can't do that!"

Later that night he plays me this recording of Thelonious Monk "Epistrophy" and is like "this is jazz, man, you can't just play blues scale over it"

My classical ears heard this song and I thought to myself, "This is some bullshit music. Sounds terrible. This guy sold records? I can do this!"

I went home and realized quickly that I had no idea how to actually play "randomly" - my fingers would not allow me to. I needed some sort of direction, short of just riffing up and down the blues scale.

The internet was starting to become a thing at this point, so I jumped online and looked up how to improvise jazz on a hip new search engine called "Google" (lol). With a little digging and the help of Napster, I ended up finding an mp3 of Keith Jarrett "The Koln Concert Part IIc"

I listened to that shit so many times. How could someone just sit down and PLAY that?

The summer after my senior year, I used two websites (Jazz Improvisation Primer and LearnJazzPiano.com) and Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book to learn about jazz and how to improvise. I spent 4-5 hours a day going through the book, listening to music from the websites, reading about music theory, and practicing on my parents' upright.

When I went to undergrad, I sold my drum set and brought the keyboard along. Really glad I chose that path.

On campus, I found other jazz musicians and tried to hang out with them whenever I could; even though I wasn't a music student, I lived in a dorm really close to the music department, and my classes were also relatively close. I ended up going to my first jam sessions my freshman year, and while I struggled to keep up (I was literally pushed off a piano bench once), I found a few kind souls who were willing to be patient with me and let me play with them. Many of them are doing great musically/career-wise now, and my heart warms up SO much whenever I think about them

Anyways, I transcribed solos, played off lead sheets, and listened to jazz all the time that year, trying to practice an hour or two every day or at least every other day. The first tune I ever completely transcribed was Cannonball Adderley "Autumn Leaves" and it took at least half a year, I probably spent a month alone on the first 4 bars of Cannonball's solo

I don't know exactly when it happened, but my girlfriend at the time was really into Prince/Michael Jackson and the summer of my junior year, during an internship in California, I somehow found myself watching the Britney Spears' "Toxic" music video and figuring out how to play it on piano. Sure it was "pop crap" but something about the little string riff caught my attention. That summer I started learning a ton of radio songs and I realized that I could use my jazz transcribing skills to learn almost any rock/pop tune, since the basic harmonies/melodies were generally much simpler than dealing with something like the changes to Coltrane's "Moment's Notice".

I filled up ~200 notebook pages of chord changes and reharmonziations of pop/rock/musical/video game songs I had grown up with, thinking to myself, "Isn't this what all those bebop heads did in the 40s? Take their favorite childhood tunes and turn them inside out?" Around this time, I started playing solo piano gigs, quoting these familiar tunes occasionally, enough to grab an audience, but keeping the whole "cool jazz" feel to them.

When I came back to school I started playing around town a lot, and by the end of undergrad, I finally felt like I could sit down and just play how I felt. I can't pinpoint exactly when this happened, but it was a big turning point in my musical life. I had a friend record me at the on-campus music studios, which became my first album. I decided that I would go "on tour" around the country, playing at venues in college towns/big cities, partly to prove to myself that I could make it as a musician, partly because road trips!!!!!

I could write a book about those 4 months but basically at the end of it all, I had played in ~50 cities, smoked a ton of weed, realized I could "keep up" w/some of the best jazz musicians (playing in New Orleans, LA, and NYC for a week each), and was broke as shit. The money thing scared me. I grew up what I considered to be middle class, but I couldn't stomach having $20 in my bank account with no paycheck in sight. As a musician, playing jazz, I realized how difficult it would be to live comfortably.

At the same time, I knew where I wanted to settle down. I moved 2000 miles, took a corporate day job near San Francisco, and was incredibly lucky to find relatively affordable housing out here (prices were high a decade ago but not as bad as they are now, I think).

Most "new" stuff in my life from that point on (in terms of music) didn't really specifically deal with jazz, although I did play a lot of jazz gigs both solo and with a quartet (clarinet+rhythm section) over the next few years. Got into lots of other kinds of music, started DJing a bit, saved up money from my day job to find other musicians gigs/avenues to play, eventually got into electronic dance music, raves, music production, but anyways. There's a somewhat related post about that here

I stream improvisational piano on Twitch occasionally, and there are definitely touches of jazz, although I would never compare myself favorably to anyone who practices and studies jazz consistently. Over the last 5-6 years, not playing with other jazz musicians has kind of dulled my chops, plus I don't really practice that way anymore anyways... but I'm quite OK with that. I still love sitting down and just playing how I feel, and it's kind of cool in this modern age that people all around the world can listen and enjoy it if they want - good for the ego heh ; )

Music is fucking great. Keep listening, keep playing : )

(7)

Remember that the Mixolydian scale had a structure of Root, major 2, major 3, perfect 4, perfect 5, major 6, and minor 7.

If our root is G that would be G, A, B, C, D, E, F, (G).

If we are to arrange this as a chord (by skipping notes) we get:
Root, major 3, perfect 5, minor 7, major 9, perfect 11, major 13.

(Remember that a 2nd becomes a 9th in the higher octave, so major 2nd = major 9th. A 4th becomes an 11th in the higher octave, so perfect 4th = perfect 11th. A 6th becomes a 13th in the second octave so major 6th = major 13th).

So now we can see how and why modes are used.

If you stack a Mixolydian scale as a chord, you can see how the first three notes spell out a major triad. Therefore, the Mixolydian scale can be used over a major triad. e.g. play a G major triad with the left hand, and improvise with the G Mixolydian scale in the right hand.

If you stack a Mixolydian scale as a chord, you can see how the first four notes spell out a major triad with a minor seventh: in other words, a dominant seventh chord. i.e. G Mixolydian works over a G7 chord, because the notes in the chord are contained within the scale.

If you stack a Mixolydian scale as a chord, the fifth note is a major 9th. A dominant seventh chord + a major ninth is a dominant ninth chord (usually just called a ninth chord). i.e. G mixolyidian works over G9.

We can keep going but you probably get the idea. A scale will work over any chord that contains the notes in the scale.

(8)

If you stack a major scale as chord you get:
Root, major 3, perfect 5, major 7th, major 9, pefect 11, major 13.

Note that both the major scale and the mixolydian scale contain a major triad as the first three notes. Therefore, both scales will "work" over a major triad (i.e. both G major and G mixolydian will work over a G major triad).

However, look at the 4th note you get when the major scale is stacked as a chord. It is a major seventh. Major triad + major 7th = Major ninth chord. Here's where the major scale and the mixolydian mode differ. The G Mixolydian scale will not work over a G major 9th chord, and the G major scale will not work over a G dominant ninth chord.

(9)

How to know when to use which scale?

Remember that the mixolydian mode was built off of the 5th note of the major scale. e.g. G mixolydian is the fifth mode of C major. So in the key of C the chord built off of the fifth note (the "V" chord) will naturally take the Mixolydian scale built off of that note.

However, for practical purposes, there's no need to think of modes when playing key-center based music: if you're in the key of C, playing the C major scale over the C major chord (the I chord) and then playing G mixolydian over the G major chord (the V chord) means that you're just playing the same scale over both chords--it will give you a different perspective, but the notes will be the same.

The real benefit of modes is that it gives you tools to play over songs that aren't necessarily major/minor key based; i.e. songs that use non-functional harmony. Imagine a song with a chord progression of G7 to Bb7 throughout the tune. These two chords don't belong to any one key: this is a situation where you'd want to think modally, i.e. play G mixolydian over the G7 and switch to Bb Mixolydian over Bb7.

(Note that chord-scale theory is not an improvisation method*. Many students are misguided when they are taught to play x scale over x chord. Chord-scale theory let's you understand harmony, which notes are strongest or most stable against a particular chord how to add extensions. Learning improvisation is more about learning how to target chord tones on the strong beats, and embellishing a melody using mostly chromatic devices.)
***
(10)*

So I used the major scale and the Mixolydian mode as examples in this essay. Since there are seven notes in the major scale, each one of those notes can be thought of as the root of a different mode; each one will be distinct, and the fully extended chord will be different for each mode.

The seven modes of the C major scale are:

C Major scale (a.k.a. C Ionian): C D E F G A B (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
D Dorian: D E F G A B C (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
E Phyrigian: E F G A B C D (Root, min2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
F Lydian: F G A B C D E (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
G Mixolydian: G A B C D E F (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
A Aeolian (a.k.a the Natural Minor Scale): A B C D E F G (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
B Locrian: B C D E F G A (Root, min2, min3, P4, diminished 5th, min6, min7)

We can say these seven modes are relative to each other, because they use the same set of notes. In other words, D dorian is relative to C major.

If we build each of those 7 scales on C, and look at their structure, we get:

C Lydian: C D E F# G A B (Root, Maj2, Maj3, Augmented 4th, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
C Major/Ionian: C D E F G A B (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
C Mixolydian: C D E F G A Bb (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
C Dorian: C D Eb F G A Bb (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
C Aeolian/Natural Minor: C D Eb F G Ab Bb (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
C Phrygian: C Db Eb F G Ab Bb (Root, min2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
C Locrian: C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb (Root, min2, min3, P4, diminished 5th, min6, min7)

We can say that these 7 modes are parallel to each other, because they are built on the same root*. In other words C Dorian is parallel to C major, while C Dorian is relative to Bb major. (Also, try to figure out why I listed them in that order!)

It's up to you to go through them. Just remember what the important information is:

• What is the interval structure of the mode, and how does it compare with the major scale built on the same root?
  
• What are the chords produced by the mode when you skip every other note? What is the triad, what is the seventh chord, and what are the extensions?
  
• Learn to sing each of the modes from memory; this is how you will learn the individual character of each.
  
  ***
  (11)**
  
  Beyond the modes of the major scale, (and aside from the chromatic scale) you also have the seven modes of:
  
  
• The Melodic Minor scale (a.k.a. the jazz minor scale)
  
• The Harmonic Minor scale
  
• The Harmonic Major scale
  
• The Double Harmonic scale
  
  And there are the three symmetrical scales:
  
  
• The symmetrical diminished (only two different modes)
  
• The symmetrical augmented scale (only two different modes)
  
• The whole tone scale (only one mode)
  
  These scales pretty much cover every possible scale/chord. Some people may include pentatonic scales, but those are really just derivatives, created by leaving out a couple notes from the other scales.
  
  (For a more in-depth resource on the theory/philosophy behind scales, see:
  TheTonalCentre.org, and
  Slonimsky's Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns)
  ***
  (12)**
  
  The best general jazz chord-scale theory text I've seen (I've seen them all) is probably the Berklee book,
  Chord Scale Theory and Jazz Harmony;
  However, even better would be the Bert Ligon books, because they go into more detail about how to actually put it into practice:
  Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony
  Jazz Theory Resources Volume 1
  Jazz Theory Resources Volume 2
  Comprehensive Technique for Jazz Musicians
  

One important thing is to relax, and especially relax your fretting hand. If you've got the strings in a death claw, it's going to sound bad and you might eventually wind up with carpal tunnel.

Instead of trying to do hammer-ons right away, force yourself to go back to fundamentals. Set the metronome (you must have a metronome) to 40 beats per minute and play one finger per fret. Your fingers should fall immediately behind each fret. Whole notes, half notes, quarters, eighths triplets and 16ths...make sure you're playing in time with the clicks. Try to relax completely and use only the minimum amount of pressure it takes to sound each note without buzzing. The idea behind this exercise is to teach your muscle memory the exact amount of pressure you need to play a given note. Forcing yourself to play slow will give your muscles time to readjust in order to sound the notes accurately. Your fingers, wrists, body posture, etc. should be completely relaxed and comfortable throughout. If you start tensing up or feel pain or burning in your fingers, make yourself relax and loosen up.

Couple other popular hand exercises.

1. The Soft Touch. Play exactly as above, only leave your fingers on the frets until each finger is ready to move up to the next string. Example: you play index A on the E string, middle finger A#, ring finger B, pinkie B#, keeping each finger in fret position. Now leaving your mf, ring and pinkie down on those frets, pick up your index and move it to D on the A string. Then pick up your mf and move it to play D#, ring to E, pinkie to F and hold. Then continue up the D and G strings the same way. It might help to start higher up on the neck, like C on the E string. Throughout this exercise, the most important thing is that you relax your hand. There should be no pain, no strain, no bizarre wrist angles. Just smooth, slow, relaxed and locked in to the 40 bpm pulse.
   
   
2. The Spider. Purpose of this exercise is to learn independent control of index/ring fingers and middle/pinkie fingers. Play A on the E string with your index, then E on the A string with your ring finger. Then A# on the E with your middle, followed by F on the A string with your pinkie. Then switch up and hit B on the E string with your ring finger, followed by D on the A string with your index, then B# on the E with the pinkie and D# on the A with the middle. Alternating 1-3, 2-4 fingers the whole time. Practice that until it's comfortable (could take a few days), then play the same pattern skipping up to the D string, and finally all the way to the G string. The full spider pattern is played E string to A string, then E string to D string, then E string to G string, then back down E to D, finally back to E to A.
   
   For books, there's a big difference between a good one and a bad one. I can personally recommend Serious Electric Bass, Bass Logic, Bass Grooves, and Standing in the Shadows of Motown (this last book is less of a beginner's guide and more of a project you could spend a lifetime on: i.e. learning from the great James Jamerson). Also highly recommended is Ed Friedland's Building Walking Bass Lines. I also have and recommend The Bass Grimoire, but it is more a reference book for advanced scale and chord building, as opposed to a beginner's guide. Bass Guitar for Dummies is actually pretty good and comprehensive.
   
   And there are some good online resources as well: studybass.com is great and starts from a beginner level. Scott Devine is an amazing teacher especially with more advanced techniques, but also for fundamentals. Paul from How To Play Bass Dot Com just steps you through a bunch of popular rock & r&b tunes...not bad for picking up new songs, but it's far better to learn the theory & structure behind a song than just memorizing the finger patterns. MarloweDK is a great player with hundreds of videos, but he's highly advanced.
   
   Finally, musictheory.net has some great ear training exercises you can do any time, in addition to a wealth of info about basic theory that applies to all instruments.

Alright, my last two comments on this sub were downvoted, so I'm going to give it one more shot.

One of the mainstays of jazz since the early days has been common repertoire, the songs that have come to be known as "standards." If you resurrected Louis Armstrong from the grave you could take him to a session anywhere in the world and he'd find common tunes to play with the jazz musicians there. I'm going to guess that a big part of what you're not getting about jazz is you have little or no familiarity with these songs, so learning them, even just as a listener, is going to be one of your main jobs right now. I posted a video the other day called Aimee's Top 25 Jazz Standards To Know that is as good a list as any to start with. I used Nat King Cole's vocal recordings to introduce my daughter to some of these when she was five, because Nat sticks with the melody but still has a jazz delivery. Frank Sinatra is another good source, because he recorded just about every damn standard that is a vocal tune and did it with great jazz musicians. Obviously there are a zillion great instrumental versions of these tunes as well. A good place to look for the songs' histories and seminal recordings is jazzstandards.com.

One resource that you really should purchase to help you get up to speed on standards is a good, legit fakebook. The most common one is called The Real Book, and I advise getting a hard copy. I actually prefer the Chuck Sher New Real Book and its sequels, but either it or the Hal Leonard RB will get you started. If I'm not mistaken all of the tunes on Aimee's list (25 standards) are in the HLRB.

Next you should select a song from the fakebook, an easy one such as Blue Bossa or Satin Doll, and learn it all the way down, soup to nuts. This means you should know the written melody and chord changes cold. If you don't know some of the chords get a chord encyclopedia and learn them (I used books such as the Mickey Baker's How To Play Jazz and Hot Guitar, The Joe Pass Guitar Style, Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry and other to learn what Howard Roberts called "garden variety jazz guitar chords.") Be able to strum the chords to whatever tune(s) you pick in quarter notes in every bar, and you can apply comping rhythms later. There's an app for the Android and iPhone called the iReal pro that plays backing tracks to practice to, and they have a forum where you can download a playlist of 1,300 jazz tunes. It's well worth the $14 or so.

One main reason I'm starting with telling you to learn songs right away is literally everything else - chords, scales, arpeggios, lines, substitutions, rhythmic concepts, and so on - can be applied to tunes. Learning tunes enables you to play with other people, and as you get better you can find work backing singers and horn players, playing in guitar-bass-drum trios, and playing solo guitar if you're learning the songs as chord melodies. Believe me when I tell you almost every jazz musician you can name went through this process of learning and studying standards.

Last, one element of becoming a competent jazz player is rhythm. A lot of the rhythmic vocabulary is acquired naturally by listening, but if you're serious about learning this art form you'll want to study rhythm as well. Over the years I've used a number of books designed to improve reading as tools to help improve my time, including Melodic Rhythms for Guitar, Louis Bellson's rhythm reading books, and most recently Gary Hess's Encyclopedia of Reading Rhythms. These won't necessarily help as far as developing a jazz "feel," but it's mandatory to be comfortable with all the basic units of time so you can have a solid rhythmic base to improvise and interact with other musicians.

I hope this helps, and I'm up for questions about anything else.

So I have spent the last month researching this exact subject! I have been reading every bit of info I could find on Fugue subjects, and analyzing more than I'd like to admit. Before I continue, I highly recommend buying a used copy of Counterpoint in the Style of J. S. Bach and read the first chapter, the chapter on inventions, and the chapter on fugue subjects, answers, and C.M.s

Anyhow, I'll share a couple of the most important things I found (Disclaimer: this is my own research, take this merely as an opinion)

1. Rhythmically, anything goes. You'll find just as many rhythmic patterns that attempt to build up motion (going from long notes to short notes), as you'll find subjects that are the opposite, or have almost no rhythmic variety.
   
   
2. Rhythmically varied subjects will often have the simplest implied harmonies. Rhythmically steady subjects will often be the most chromatic (secondary dominants). This appears to come down to tension.
   
   
3. The counter motive is pretty much always counter to the main subject in rhythm, note values, etc. The interplay of two very different, yet complimentary lines is what makes the fugue so fun. Also, it is nearly always invertible.
   
   
4. Fugue subjects of the baroque era largely use non harmonic tones in the most "textbook" (our textbooks today I mean, because they are written based off this old music) way. Nearly always prepared/resolved as expected, nearly always on an off beat, etc. Obviously there are a lot of exceptions to this rule, but you'll be amazed at how easy it makes analyzing subjects.
   
   4.5) This means most subjects are just outlining the harmonic formulae, but ornamented with smooth use of non harmonic tones.
   
   
5. The majority of subjects in the baroque area follow simple harmonic formulae. I V I. I IV V I. I ii6 IV V I, etc etc.
   
   
6. The implied high and low notes of a melody are nearly always going to be the dominant, the tonic, or the mediant. These will often have some sort of ornamentation that goes seems to break this (very often a neighbor note), but if you simplify and remove these obvious ornamentations, you will find it is nearly always one of those.
   
   
7. Tendency tones nearly always follow their... tendency!
   
   
8. Most subjects start on the tonic or dominant, and end on the mediant, tonic, or dominant, sometimes the 7th, rarely the 2nd, 4th, or 6th.
   
   Finally: the most important thing I learned
   
   
9. Even the greatest Fugue subjects played alone often sound... meh. And this is one thing I fought for so long. You can turn just about any melody that outlines I V I into an absolutely gorgeous fugue. Nobody is going to sing the subject from Bach's Fugue #6 from WTC book 1, and yet it turns into one of my absolute favorite fugues merely through it's use and development. Hell, Vincent Lo turned the Nokia Ringtone into a Fugue (yes, I know the nokia ringtone is based off a valse by Francisco Tarrega).
   
   So uhh... good luck! I write at least one new melody every single day as practice. 99% of them suck, but I get better every day. You should do the same :)

Hey man, glad you have picked up piano! I'm by far not the best pianist out there, but I can give you some advice on this.

When I was younger (elementary to middle school) I would practice each piano piece I knew 10 times a day and then continue to learn the piece I was on. I can tell you that while I did learn quickly, just as quickly I began to not like piano. Then on the opposing side, near the end of middle school throughout high school I would only play when I went to my piano teacher. As you can probably tell, my progress slowed down incredibly and I believe I only learned about 4 pieces over that time. Now I am finally back into piano after a 4 year hiatus and while I am practicing every day I still only put in about half an hour and on rare occasions will put in an hour.

My point in saying this is that you should prioritize playing and practicing so that you still enjoy it versus trying to hit some kind of benchmark because you feel you have to.

If you really feel like you want to be playing more than you are my tip is pretty simple and is one I employ all the time. Just have more than one practice session per day. I often will spend 10-15 minutes on the piano at a time but will go back multiple times a day whenever I feel an urge. It will all add up to an hour in the end and you won't feel like you are forcing yourself to continue playing when you don't want to.

As for scales, like I said i'm not the best player in the world, I only really know C major and A minor (the gimme ones because they have no flats or sharps). It is definitely important to know if you want to go into composing or are going to school for it, but for a casual player it isn't the end all be all if you don't know them. Knowing your scales is definitely important when you are sight reading hard pieces as you can pretty much just make an assumption as to how the continue the piece without having to dictate all of your energy to reading every note. That being said, it is still possible to sight read (albeit more slowly) pieces without knowing all the theory.

Finally, if you want to add something to your practice without having to learn new pieces or just work on the piece you are on you could definitely try out Henle's virtuoso pianist.

https://www.amazon.com/Virtuoso-Pianist-Exercises-Technique-Schirmers/dp/0793551218/ref=asc_df_0793551218/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312030486371&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3857077932830151143&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9019572&hvtargid=pla-473618322154&psc=1

This will also help you with scale memorization and technique.

You're not going to get a lot of people in r/classicalGuitar that are going to answer this without some kind of recommendation that you just improve your regular score reading skills instead. Tab can be a great tool at times, but more often it seems to be used as crutch.

My advice is to start sight reading as much as you can whenever you find tab-free scores because it is skill that you can only develop with dedicated and focused practice. Whenever you go to the effort to transcribe a score to Tab, you are still leaning on a crutch because when you start playing, you aren't using the music, you're using your Tab instead and not actually getting any score reading practice in. In your mind, you are probably translating your scores to Tab instead of actually reading the score. Tab and score notation are similar in that respect. In fact, I suspect that if you just force yourself to give up tab you'll see an amazing and very rapid increase in your ability to process standard scores.

Here is a personal example: When I read Spanish I am not actually reading Spanish... I'm translating it into something I am familiar with. I still have to learn to transform my thought process into Spanish before I am truly reading Spanish. Once I stop communicating by saying buenos noches to mean "good afternoon/night" and I just start saying buenos noches when I mean "buenos noches", I am actually speaking Spanish. Until then, I am just translating words. That won't change until I immerse myself in Spanish without clinging to English as my crutch. The same thing applies to changing from Tab notation to score notation.

http://www.amazon.com/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333574358&sr=8-1

I have this book and it is great practice in sight reading and you may want to check it out. It is nothing more than a bunch of short sight reading exercises. Teach yourself one or two of them a day without transcribing them to tab first and I am absolutely confident that your reading skills will improve noticeably.

If you are really insistent on using Tab though, classtab.org is decent.

This book has some decent stuff in it as well: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Guitar-Solos-Book/dp/1603780599/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333575720&sr=1-1

Thing is, that sort of thinking doesn't really work too well in jazz - there isn't really "repertoire" in the same sense as in classical music. Some standards are more complex than others, sure, but the difficulty is really what you make of it. In jazz, you generally work from what are called "lead sheets", where all you have is the melody and the chords. Here's one for When I Fall in Love. Pretty simplistic, right? Here's Oscar Peterson playing it. The lead sheet is the basic framework for what he's playing, but all the embellishment and runs and extra chords and everything is just coming from him. So you can't really say whether When I Fall in Love is an "easy" standard or not.

As for how to learn, the single best way is to get a teacher. But if you just want to start dabbling, I would suggest getting some books of transcriptions of famous jazz pianists, just to start getting the feel and sound of it in your mind. Those books will have real performances transcribed note-for-note, so you don't need to know how to read lead sheets or improvise to play them. I would also check out Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book to start learning the theory behind it all, and a Real Book to start practicing with. If you're good at teaching yourself things, the combination of those two books will give you years and years of material.

But I want to re-emphasize that getting some kind of teacher or mentor will help enormously. It's good for classical music, as you know, but jazz is even more like learning a foreign language, because it's improvised. If you just want to dabble for fun, that's fine, but if you get serious about jazz, find someone to guide you, even if it's just an hour a month.

This book has solid overviews of the various playing styles, including for left hand

For improvisation, you are not going to sound good right away. What it sounds like you are doing is basically exercises, just running pentatonic scales over chords - that will sound very exercisey. "Okay, Cm7, playing C minor pent, okay, F7, playing F pent..." etc. What you want to do is look ahead to the notes in common and work on your ear training around that. So, instead, you might go: "Okay, Cm7, gonna play C - Eb - F - G, then the F7 comes up and you continue to A - C - D - F....

Basically, point is you can still play pentatonics, but try to create runs and melodies that move over and through the chords, not just shifting the scales once per chord.

It's not something you think about - you want to get used it and how it sounds so that you can focus on using a combination of ear and theory to make musical sounds and shapes that you want, and the fabled melting away of the notes and chords happens.

As rough as it is, you gotta do that kind of thing in all keys as well. It really opens up the piano and reveals secrets of how things work.

Also, listen a lot and try to play along with your favorite recordings. Take a class / find other improvisers who are at your level. It helps so much.

Final thing is, there is more to improvisation than getting the notes right. A solo with wrong notes and great rhythm and lot of passion is much more interesting and listenable than a solo with all the "correct" notes and no feeling and just running uninspired rhythms. Try soloing with just roots and fifths of the chords and see how much fun you can have. Try soloing with absolute abandon and let your hand just flop around and see what kind of interesting sounds you can make. Prepare your mind to forget about the notes...that's the eventual goal (even though you can still be strategic about scale degrees and chord tones and such).

Good luck and have fun!

u/Lemwell gave you an especially great answer, and the others are quite good as well. So I'll simply provide some resources.

Here is a link for a free download of the Aebersold Redbook. There's a lot of great general info in there for all instruments, but it does discuss chords and voicings.

Probably the best jazz piano resource is Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book. (linked to Amazon, but available at several places. It's available spiral bound so it fits nicely on a music stand. It has a great deal of information about chords, leading, and everything else jazz piano related.

For a fun, easy beginning, do you know the blues scale? If not it'll be in the free Aebersold book, but it's 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7-1. So a C blues scale is C-Eb-F-Gb-G-Bb-C. Practice playing that over a standard C major chord. Then try mixing it up, finding some phrases you like. Then try the F blues scale over an F major, and a G blues scale over a G7. Then put them together in a 12 bar blues and see what you come up with.

Top Left - Right:


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Music - IMSLP printed, Beethoven Urtext and Hanon exercises for Piano.


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First what you want to do is probably get a decent book of beginner songs and just work your way through them.

The piano literature series is popular, but I personally have not used them. I know volume 2 has a bunch of popular songs like Sonatina that everyone plays.

Burgmuller is also very popular among intermediate beginners.

You probably also want to get Hanon because everyone uses it for warm ups no matter what level, and it has all the scales.

And you might want Czerny, which are really short decent sounding pieces that people use for warmups.

These few books will get you started. Just start working through the books. Work on something from all three or four books.

Just a note. You'll probably be very enthusiastic in the beginning and get really bored before you reach your third month. You need to persist if you want to get good. I personally did not enjoy playing piano until I got pretty good and was able to play the more virtuoso piano pieces.

Classical pianist for 15 years, and I'm going on 3 years as a self-taught jazz pianist. I can honestly say that the book I have used the most is The Jazz Piano Book. Learning modes, memorizing the circle of 5ths, 3-note voicings, left hand voicings (a la Bill Evans and others) are all things included in the book. It will teach you how to interpret lead sheets, taking basic "scale/chord" theory knowledge and applying it to improvisation, and it also will teach you a variety of tricks used by the professionals. Mark Levine, the author, writes in a cohesive, down-to-earth voice (although sometimes a little corny), and it makes it really easy to understand what he's talking about. Other books you may want to look into are A Creative Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony, A Classical Approach To Jazz Piano, and of course, LISTEN TO GREAT PLAYERS! There's a saying in jazz - probably the most true of them all - the textbooks are the records!

Hope this helps get you started.
Remember, knowing the fundamentals is the key to learning the complexities of jazz. Seriously, I can't stress this enough. Always pay attention to your technique, and always play with the best possible sound. And more than anything - enjoy the process of learning. Have fun!

Cheers.

Depends what gaps you have. Standard classical theory is good enough for functional jazz harmony, although some terms are different. (No augmented 6ths or neapolitan chords in jazz; but lots of "tritone subs".)

[Jazzology] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazzology-Encyclopedia-Jazz-Theory-Musicians/dp/0634086782) is a good survey of functional jazz harmony. It's somewhat dry in presentation, and it's a shame that all the examples of tunes (melody and chords) are written by the authors, not taken from jazz standards.

For post-functional jazz theory (modes and chord-scales), Mark Levine's [Jazz Theory Book] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499166438&sr=1-2&keywords=jazz+theory+book) is the bible. As a standalone jazz theory text it has many drawbacks, which is what provoked Rawlins to produce the above book. So you could see them as companion texts.
The two great advantages of Levine's book are its easy readability and presentation, and its many quotes from jazz recordings (mainly chord voicings and licks from improvisations). However, Levine's interpretation of those quotes should be taken with a pinch of salt: he uses them to support his chord-scale theories, but they can be interpreted in other ways. It's by no means clear the players themselves thought in those terms.
A great scathing criticism of chord-scale theory can be heard [here] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NehOx1JsuT4) (Not as a theoretical principle, note, merely as a system for improvisation.)

Bert Ligon's books are also highly respected - I see them recommended all the time, although I haven't read any myself. [This] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/JAZZ-THEORY-RESOURCES-1-BOOK/dp/0634038613/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TK8Y6EQRPH62NAYVHB2G) is probably the best, and there is a [volume 2] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Resources-Harmonic-Organization/dp/0634038621/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499166895&sr=1-3&keywords=bert+ligon).

In short, one gets the impression that "jazz theory" is a live body of knowledge that is still being worked out. Different authorities have different views and perspectives. In particular there is a tension between how the players themselves think (especially older ones), and how academics analyze the music produced. After all, the period of jazz that many people hold up as the zenith (the bebop era) was produced by musicians whose jazz training was on the bandstand, by example from older players. Some may have studied music at conservatoires, but it would have been exclusively classical theory. "Jazz" was learned by ear.

Are you looking for just a good chord chart for the tune? That one was mediocre. I can give you a more accurate chart, no problem.

Or, are you looking for an EXACT transcription of what Les played on the Bing recording? I could make that as well, but honestly, I usually charge people (guitar students) to do it.

Aside from very popular recordings, most chord charts and TABs online are highly inaccurate. Often the "official" transcriptions you see in books aren't right either. I'm a huge Les Paul fan, particularly the pre-multitracking era (Les Paul Trio, this Bing session, etc). I've seen him play live a few times as well. Congratulations, you have good taste!

If you'd like to advance your skills in trad/swing/jazz rhythm guitar to get the skills to play through the chart, check out these books:

http://www.amazon.com/Mickey-Bakers-Complete-Course-Guitar/dp/0825652804

http://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bay-Jazz-Guitar-Method/dp/0786600365/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411405636&sr=1-1&keywords=ronnie+lee+guitar

http://www.amazon.com/Mel-Rhythm-Guitar-Chord-System/dp/0871665158

Give me a few minutes and I'll post a chart.

Sounds like the problem isn't music theory, but applying it to composition.

I can recommend two things. First of all, you have to spend A LOT of time noodling around on an instrument. I'm sorry to say, but while the push may be useful for its purpose, it will not train you to recognize and spontaneously create melodic elements that deviate from simple chord progressions and leads. I learned on a piano, and I spent hours a week just jamming and noodling around to see what worked, what didn't, and how to add different elements like passing chords, dissonance, counterpoint, bass composition, modal improvisation, and so forth. This is just stuff that you naturally pick up after practicing a while. Try something new here and there, and you may find that it works quite nicely.

The second is to study the music of other composers. For this, I can't think of anything better than jazz. Classical music can help too, but it gets a bit more complicated and doesn't apply well to electronic music. Jazz is modern and simple enough to study, but can be musically complex (using those things like passing chords, modes, etc). It teaches one to get out of comfortable poppy chord progressions and melodies.

You might want to try this book http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151. I've heard good things about it.

Ok. I'd definitely recommend buying a book of exercises to work through. In my experience, most technical playing improvement comes from exercises, not concert pieces. Without hearing you play, it's a bit hard to recommend a particular book. But you might try Alwin Schroeder's book. Just the first volume has a large number of exercises that span a wide difficulty range. Another book at roughly the same level is Sebastian Lee's 40 Melodic Exercises, which I just found out is available for free (!) here.

The key to these exercises is to progress slowly and methodically. Try to figure out the particular techniques each one is focused at, and be aware of that as you practice. Maybe set an initial goal of conquering one exercise per week (as they get harder, they will take more time). You don't have to do every exercise, but try to really master the ones you do work on. And don't skip the harder ones. ;)

One nice thing about exercises imo is that you can really see your progress. Six months in, you can count the pages of all the exercises you've worked through and you'll be playing stuff deep into the book that there's no way you could have played when you started.

If you need harder stuff we can talk, but I think those two books should get you going again. Don't forget scales and arpeggios; they really help keep your fingers limber.

Good luck!

A few key things will help you:

Practice everyday, at least 30 minutes. Most of us can't afford the time to practice hours and hours a day, but 30 minutes consistently is necessary.

Get a piano teacher to work on improvisation with. This is THE best way to develop yourself.

Although I'm a big proponent of improvisation NOT being exlcusive to jazz (I think a musican should be able to improvise regardless of instrument or genre) there is an excellent book for piano you should definitely have: The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine

Make sure you know all your scales very, very well. Every type of scale - major, minor, modes, diminshed scales, etc. And practice improvising around the circle of 4ths (or 5ths) with a metronome on beats 2 & 4. This will help your rhythm and everything out a great deal.

/u/improvthismoment is right about how jazz is generally learned, but if you prefer to sight read insead of lifting from recordings, there are lots of great jazz transcriptions out there that can help develop your style and vocabulary. The World's Best Piano Arrangements has a generic sounding name but is a pretty dynamite book that has taught me a lot.

If you're interested in getting going with real jazz piano, The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine is a classic that has kicked off many great jazz piano journeys. Good luck!

I like Claude Gordon's approach, so I recommend his Systematic Approach to Daily Practice. It will be too much for you at the outset, but that's ok— most exercises will have a "play as much as you can" deal; move on after you've missed three times in a row.

Good books for specifically lip flexibility are Collin and Irons.

And of course, you can't go wrong in general with Schlossberg or Arban's.

Either Clarke or Arban's will be good for technical facility/etudes, once you're there, but really the only way to get there is to play them so start now. Play them way downtempo if need be, but you're not going to wake up one day out of the blue and be good enough to start playing out of the Clarke book full speed.

That being said, I also agree with the stuff /u/awashsound said; I just felt like giving you options if you want to go deeper, or if you—you know—prefer dead trees to computer screens.

I've been a drummer since I was 8. Quite rusty right now as a lot of things have kept me from practicing (moving to apartments for years, etc.). Honestly, it's never too late to start. Are you going to be playing Carnegie Hall in a year? Wildly unlikely. But as long as your expectations are grounded in reality, that learning anything takes time and practice, you should be good.

As for practice and sense of tempo/timing: it is imperative that you buy a good metronome and practice with it regularly. You don't necessarily need a Dr. Beat, though I have one, and it is useful at times. But you do need some kind of click to play off of.

Can you read music? If so, there are some really good technique books out there that I'd recommend that are classics. Most people hate grinding technique, but I find it oddly relaxing. Here's some good books:

• Stick Control
  
• Syncopation
  
• Master Studies - (Do wait on this one a bit and start slow. It is possible to injure yourself if you get too carried away. Stone Killer exercises are no joke)
  
• New Breed - This one's actually a full drum set book. Quite challenging. May want to wait on this one a bit or try to just play one or two of the lines together (eg. right and and right foot).
  
  The first two books are probably where you should start. With all of these, start the metronome at molasses level slow - like 60 bpm or maybe even slower if you're not accurate at that speed. Get comfortable with that speed - maybe 15-30 mins at that speed without any mistakes. Then bump the timing up slightly 2-4 bpm and repeat. At no point should you be tensing up. If you are, you need to stop immediately, shake out your arms, and back down the tempo a bit.
  
  Make sure that you're making more use of your fingers than your wrists. Wrists can be good to start the stroke, but your fingers should be doing a lot of the work.
  
  There's a lot of other technique stuff that you can do, but the above alone could take you 5-10 years of solid daily practice if you're being thorough.
  
  Good luck!

As others are saying, I think you're going to be hard-pressed to put together a solid audition in six weeks if you don't have any jazz experience. But you've got four years, right? There's no reason you can't go out your sophomore year. If you really want to get into jazz piano, I recommend checking out Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book. Each chapter represents months, if not more, of practice, but you'll have a very strong foundation to build on if you keep with it.

I think going out for choir would actually be a great idea. Singing in harmony with others is one of the most satisfying musical experiences you can have, and it's GREAT ear training. Plus, there's no reason you can't continue playing solo repertoire, right? If you hang out in the music department a bunch, you might even be able to pop in on jam sessions or start a band with some like-minded musicians. Not to mention what's out there if your school is near a major metropolitan area.

It's hard to find stuff on Jazz Theory on Google for sure, much less recommendations for music transcription. I really can't think of a good place to start with regards to the songs you should try to transcribe, but there are books I've used that have plenty of suggested reading/listening listed. Hopefully you don't already know about these...

The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine (it can be kind of pricy, here's a link to it on Amazon) which has a whole regimen of listening suggestions in its curriculum, focusing a good amount on jazz harmony, and melodic improvisation.

I learned a lot about jazz chords and voicings from Miracle Voicings by Frank Mantooth. Working through these books will help you understand better how to approach jazz chords, which should help you better conceive of what you're hearing when you try to transcribe them.

EDIT: The book has been republished as Voicings for Jazz Keyboard by Frank Mantooth

Depends on what sort of rep you're in to (into?). I read a lot of popular music scholarship. These are books that I have either read or am going to read, in no particular order:

Brad Osborn - Everything in its Right Place: Analyzing Radiohead

Robert Walser - Running with the Devil:Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music

Walter Everett - The Foundations of Rock

Walter Everett - The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul, Revolver through the Anthology

† Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, ed. John Covach and Graeme Boone

Richard Middleton - Studying Popular Music

Allan Moore - Song Means:Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song

†Analyzing Popular Music, ed. Allan Moore

† = A bunch of essays crammed into a book. These are nice because you can read a 20-50 page study on a topic and move on.

I'll recommend these as more general reading, geared toward classical music but useful in other styles as well:

William Caplin - Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Every researcher in the field knows or should know this one. I would also recommend Hepokoski and Darcy - Elements of Sonata Theory, which is the other big form book, but it is a veritable tome and hardly light reading. Not that much of what I've recommended is very light.)

Janet Schmalfeldt - In the Process of Becoming:Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music (I haven't read this yet, but it's in the same universe of form studies as the above.)

Kofi Agawu - Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (Agawu has written a lot on various topics and should be on your radar.)

Alfred Mann - The Study of Fugue (Broken up into two parts: part 1 is a history of fugue, part 2 is about fugal technique.)

I'll point you toward this one since it is totally awesome and helped me to understand medieval liturgical music theory and culture (though you might find yourself lost if you are not already familiar with some of the concepts):

Anna Maria Busse Berger - Medieval Music and the Art of Memory

You might also consider ordering a hard copy of some journal issues, as these can be quite compact and give you a lot of breadth.

Journal of Music Theory (JMT)

Music Theory Spectrum (MTS)

> I can read tablature but not music notation (I'm assuming this is the first step!)

Standard notation is important - and definitely learn it. But as important, or maybe more so, is being able to understand chords and progressions.

Here's a really simple lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilh4uMAdss8 to illustrate how to get started. Scott's Bass Lessons has a lot more content, too. Christian McBride also has an online fundamentals course: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fjb-overview/

To apply even a basic knowledge, I'd recommend getting one or more real books. The app, iRealPro is a digital version of this approach and has some nice features like being able to change key and tempo. At its heart, jazz is a performance and improvisational art, and these resources let you build up those playing skills.

practice etudes too. they’re beneficial like scales but they are more fun to play / sound a little prettier! here is a nice book of them if you don’t mind shelling out. it also may help to have occasional lessons to make sure your posture is still on point— makes a much bigger difference than you’d think

First, if you can get a teacher, you will make faster and safer progress. I know that is not an option for everyone. Next, mouthpieces will not be a substitute for fundamentals.

There are several good recommendations on here. I heartily agree with the Caruso 6-note exercise. I also recommend the second exercises from the Chicowitz Flow Studies, and finding a copy of Irons Slurs.

The Irons is invaluable, as it brings attention to the position and movements of the tongue arch, and this is the key to regulating your air speed.

As you ascend in range, your air speed increases through increasing tongue arch, similar to whistling. It is common for players to interchange increased air speed with increased air volume. Be careful of this mistake. Even the most powerfully developed embouchure is still much a smaller set of muscles than the diaphragm, and can easily have the aperture blown open with excessive air volume. This in turn, can lead to the player pressing their mouthpiece into the embouchure with excessive pressure to counter. This limits range, endurance, flexibility, and tone quality. The key to increased range is faster air, focused through a smaller aperture.

If that sounds complicated, that is because it is - at least in the beginning. It is one of those things you look back on later and wonder why it was so hard to get. If you can at all, a teacher will be the most effective way forward.

You can start by buying these two books and reading them cover to cover: Jazz Theory by Mark Levine and Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine That's a good first step. There's plenty of other books out there obviously, but I've had good success with these. Learning Jazz is all about becoming acquainted with a new musical language and internalizing it to the point where it becomes as natural and automatic as speaking. This takes a lot of practice. Good luck and be sure to listen to lots of jazz!

In my opinion Troy Stetina's Fretboard Mastery is still the most comprehensive, well thought out and explained, and easy to understand guitar theory book. If you could only get one book, this book would cover all you need to understand the instrument.

Beyond that Troy's Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar is very good book of technique building exercises, Dave Celentano's Monster Scales and Modes is a short, easy to read, and good book for referencing some of the most commonly used scales and modes, it also has some short but good description of when and where to use certain scales/modes.

For a more reference/appendix use, I like the Guitar Grimoire books as they have very complete information and are laid out in a fairly easy to read and easy to understand fashion.

IMO, you can't really start tackling theory and go straight to jazz, you really need to understand the basics of music theory before you can move on to advanced jazz harmony. There are a number of theory books our there that explain the basics well, I have a couple of music degrees and a good overall text used in many schools is Tonal Harmony. As far as jazz the best book I've come across in regards to explaining harmony is Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book.

Both of these are pretty involved books, they might be a bit much for the casual player. But they are the best I know of.

Instructional:

Mel Bay Encyclopedia of Scales, Modes and Melodic Patterns - Everything you need for jazz and beyond.

Any Czerny Book - Simple and fun pieces that don't take a long time to learn and can help a lot with technique.

Any Bach Book - I don't care if you play classical, jazz, pop, whatever; Practicing Bach will make you a better player.


Songbooks:

Maiden Voyage - Great place to start with jazz and get used to play-alongs.

The Jazz Piano Book - Good reference book for expanding your jazz ability.

Piano Classics - Good compilation of some of the more popular classical pieces.

You're right on the first point. On the second point, I would say to you that using good fingerings may be deceptively difficult, and it doesn't necessarily correspond with the difficulty of your piece. Something as simple as a closed position (within an octave) C major chord in 2nd inversion in the left hand can throw you off. Typically, you'd want to use 5 on the G, 2 on the C, and 1 on the E, but a lot of students try to use 5 on the G, 3 on the C, and 1 on the E. 5 - 2 - 1 is the better choice. I'm just talking about this chord as if it's an isolated thing, where you're coming from and where you're going will effect your fingering, so you might not be using 5 - 2 - 1. It depends.

You might think that you're using the best fingering because it feels most comfortable, but sometimes what's most comfortable isn't necessarily the best fingering, especially for beginners.

It might be a good idea to practice your major and minor scales and arpeggios with the correct fingering. Check out Hanon to learn all of your major and minor scales and arpeggios. If I remember correctly, they only have the harmonic minor scales, not melodic or natural. That wouldn't effect the fingering though.

I'd probably suggest this one, or maybe this one

In terms of walking bass, the only to get better at it is unfortunately just to keep working at it. Start on a not-too-complicated tune such as Satin Doll, or something else with lots of II-V-I progressions in it, or a 12-bar blues, and work up to more complicated charts.

Here's a "quick and dirty" method to work out some walking bass lines. It's a bit simplistic perhaps, but it will at least get you started, and it does work. Assuming a 4/4 time sig:

ON BARS WHERE THERE ARE TWO CHORDS PER BAR:

Beats 1 & 3: On the beats where the chords fall (1 & 3) play the root (at least at first).
Beats 2 & 4: On the other beats (2 & 4) play an approach note that gets you to the root of the next chord, so a note either a half-step or whole step above the note you want to get to. Use your ear to judge which is best. So if the chord on beat 3 is G7, on beat 2 you could play either A, Ab, F# or F.

ON BARS WHERE THERE IS ONLY ONE CHORD PER BAR:

Beat 1: Play the root (again, at first)
Beat 4: Play an approach note as above, so either a half or whole step above or below, whichever sounds best.
Beats 2 & 3: You have a few options:

a. outline the chord notes. For example root, 3, 5 then, or root, 3, 5 then to your approach note.

b. move by step (don't be afraid of chromatic notes, you'd be surprised how often they work). So going from Dmi7 to G7 you could move up be step playing D, E, F, F#.

c. Try going from the root on the first beat up or down to the 5th on the second beat, then keep going in the same direction to the root an octave above or below on the third, before hitting your approach notes.

d. Do something else entirely.

So a sample bassline for the first 8 bars of Satin Doll might look something like this. Note that in the last bar it moves completely by step while in the three bars before that it uses that root-fifth-root pattern. Obviously that's just one way to do it. When you're new to walking bass and learning a tune don't try and go right through straight away. Get from bar 1 to bar 2, then from 1 to 4, and so on. Build it up in stages, and try different ways to get there. If you can figure out how to get up by step to the next chord, then try moving down by step the next time.

Now, before anyone tells me that I am the awful spawn of satan and I have killed Jazz by explaining things this way and thus downvoting me to the diminished 7th circle of Hell, I know it's a very simple way of explaining it, I also know that walking bass can be a wonderfully nuanced thing with infinite variety. But we've got to start somewhere and the above will work. As with everything, the ear has to be the final judge.

I learned a lot from taking classes and private lessons, as well as self study by reading books and analyzing music. I'm not really aware of that many good resources for jazz theory online unfortunately, but there is this site: http://community.berkleejazz.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

EDIT: I love the Jazz Piano Book, it's not really a theory book but I thought it was great. The author has also written a Jazz Theory Book which a lot people seem to like, but I haven't really gone through it yet. Some other options are the Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony and the Jazz Harmony Book

Sithu Aye's Motif


The more you improv and learn licks, the more tricks you can fit into 16 bars. I learned on Piano but a great transcript to study for bebop is Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce," especially this part which is a lick he did a lot on the final 2-5-1. Also, maybe study some walking bass. You can speed those approaches to the final note for effect.


Lastly, some John McLaughlin. It's part knowing the song and transitions well, and having those familiar riffs and melodies at your disposal.


Edit:RELEVENT "The Lick"

Edit part II: I saw you were asking about modes. My favorite book is Mark Levine's THE Jazz Piano Book who covers the standards and the permutations of jazz, bebop, afro-latin (not trying to list each one), and general harmony. He's really good about modes.

I would say print it yourself too - but only if you have access to a copier that you don't have to pay for!

Because yes, ink is so unethically expensive today that it's probably more cost-effective to buy it from Amazon.

When I was in college we were required to by 11 x 17 paper and there used to be one company that made it on really nice paper - very thick so you could erase and wouldn't lose your staff lines or wear a hole through the paper. And that's why printing it yourself is still good - because you can customize it - put it on the paper you want, size you want, and so on.

But if you just need "standard" basic paper, yeah I'd buy it in bulk (they do also make manuscript paper books with spiral binding).

I printed out something from my printer last night and we've bought a little heavier paper because I'm tired of the way-too-thin paper being used everywhere now to save a penny.

But when I wrote on it with pencil, I could barely see it. Either the paper is too glossy to abrade the lead off it, or the lead material in the pencil is no longer the quality pencil lead used to be (most likely the case as everything now is just made cheaply and poorly and quality is nothing).

This:

https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Wirebound-Manuscript-Paper-Green/dp/0881884995/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=manuscript+paper&qid=1567876609&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Usually covers it.

Go with the Archives or Carta brand if you want something a little nicer.

Though I want to say, even though blank manuscript paper still has it's place, you should really be becoming an expert in Finale or Sibelius in this day and age if you want a career in music, especially given you're in college.

Troy Stetina's book is a well-respected approach to developing rock lead technique: http://www.amazon.com/Speed-Mechanics-Lead-Guitar-Stetina/dp/0793509629

Probably not your style of music (mine neither) but I would definitely check out the free material on Tom Hess's site too, he has excellent advice in there and his chops are undeniable: http://tomhess.net/

Other than that, if you have a couple of months, I suggest picking one technical thing (e.g. alternate picking) and one vocabulary/learning thing (e.g. a scale) and staying focussed. I've spent too much of my time in the past switching between things that seemed interesting but not persevering with anything long enough to really master it.

I'm others will pitch in with good books / DVDs etc...

I asked my university piano teacher a similar question. "What are the best transcriptions of common tunes?" His answer: "The ones you make yourself."

I think this is true. The only charts/transcriptions that you can really trust are the ones that you've created with your own ear. Real books and their many versions and electronic iterations (the irealbook ap is an amazing resource for learning tunes and transcribing simple chord charts) are invaluable sources for being introduced to tunes, but they are merely sketches. Choose an artist/version of a tune that you dig and learn that specific version using the real book chart as a starting point.

Recognizing those subtle differences and artistic choices is the beauty of learning jazz tunes.

That being said, I feel that the most accurate realbooks are the "New Real Book" series . They are based on specific recordings so they stay true to an actual version that a particular artist recorded or performed regularly.

Of course, not every tune is included so you have to rely on your faithful ears to figure out those Shorter tunes you're looking for.

Another resource is The Real Book Videos Subreddit . It has definitive versions of the Real Book tunes.

Scales. Particularly major. And practicing in all 12 keys. Even when not playing I'd work on memorizing the notes in each key. Once you have that branch to minor scales, modes, and maybe some pentatonic and altered scales for flavor. Again. All 12 keys.

ii-V-I progressions, again in all 12 keys. Start with simple voicings at first, like playing the bass in your left hand and playing just playing the 3rd and the 7th in the right hand. You can add more fingers once you get comfortable with that.

Honestly, that will keep you busy for years, if your anything like me. You can also just dive in and practice these concepts in your favorite DAW. If you got a section with a V-I in it, try substituting the V with a bII7 and see how it sounds. Like any art, you can learn as much as you want, but you gotta get your hands dirty.

Edit: I'd also get a good Jazz piano book. This one by Mark Levine is a great one. Been going through it for at least 3 years now. I can't play as well as I like, but from these concepts, I can take a lead sheet and work out an arrangement of a song in Ableton.

The Arban's book really is the gold standard for trumpet playing. If you're a beginner I would focus on the first 10-15 exercises in "First Studies" and the first 5-10 exercises in "Slurring and Legato Playing." If you practice that consistently and correctly (as the book tells you to) then that will help you tremendously with creating a good solid tone. Move on to other exercises in the book when you're comfortable with those first exercises.

Another book you could use is called Advanced Flexibilities for Trumpet. This may seem like a bit much, but if you work on just the first couple of exercises, they can do wonders to your lip muscles and help you get a large, flexible range. Some of the best warm-ups are in this book.

The short answer is: by going slow and slowly building up your speed with a metronome.

A more complicated answer would give you various exercises and stuff to play. That was one area where I struggled when I first wanted to build my speed up - I knew sort of what methods I needed to apply to my practice. But I didn't know what exactly to practice. I found this book: https://www.amazon.com/Speed-Mechanics-Lead-Guitar-Stetina/dp/0793509629/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 pretty helpful in getting my mechanics on point and to make me comfortable with playing fast. I like it because it's got lots of focused little exercises to work on and I can take notes and stuff in the book.

Steve Stine's youtube is also a good free resource for some speed building exercises.

When I was in college, I took jazz piano lessons on the side as an extra elective, even though classical was my main focus for my major. Also, I played in a few different jazz bands on campus, which really helped me to learn. I know your goal is to play solo, but it's much easier when you are starting out to play with a band who can keep time, a bassline, and the chord changes going for you while you ease in.

I've found it hard to learn on my own, and learned more from playing with others, but this book (The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine) is a great resource to start to wrap your mind around the approach.

Here's an album I did a while back of some basic jazz guitar chord shapes. I've outlined some nice-sounding but simple voicings of Maj7, min7, dominant, and m7b5 or half-diminished chords. Most of these voicings also include the 9th and/or 13th, so you can use these as jumping-off points to learn how to alter chord tones for different voicings and tonalities. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and all the chords are in root position on the 5th and 6th strings, but it'll get you started.

Once you get these down, the next thing to work on would be some drop 2 voicings on the higher strings. I like to take a chord, Fmaj7 for example, and learn a voicing that has each note of the F major scale in the highest voice. So the root, 9th, 3rd, 11th, etc. The goal is to be able to play the entire scale using different inversions of the same chord. Here's an album outlining the inversions for that example. Transpose to other keys and work out how to alter these voicings to achieve minor, dominant, and diminished tonalities.

The voicings with 1, 3, 5, and 7 in the highest voice are drop 2, which means you stack the chord in a closed voicing and drop the 2nd highest voice an octave. For example, a root position Fmaj7, normally spelled FACE, becomes CFAE when voiced as a drop 2. This is particularly useful for jazz guitar because it eliminates the need to do huge stretches to achieve dissonance with 2nds.

I'd also recommend picking up the Mickey Baker jazz guitar book (amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Mickey-Bakers-Complete-Course-Guitar/dp/0825652804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464620721&sr=8-1&keywords=mickey+baker)

This post ended up being significantly longer than I planned, but I think it'll give you a good solid foundation to work off of. Hope you find this helpful!

Edit: This is not necessarily a "how to get ready for this particular gig" post, but more of a "this is a jumping off point for jazz rhythm guitar in general" post. Obviously talk to the band, get a set list, and practice practice practice.

Feuillard (free on IMSLP is absolutely my bible. I don't use anything else any more for technique work. For etudes, everyone should have Popper - then, depending on your level, I would add Duport and/or Piatti collections. I spent years and years working my way through the Three Volume Schroeder Collection, it covers a great range of material. Probably 10-20% of the etudes there are a little thin, good to play through a few times but not worth real work. But I definitely became a good sightreader by just plowing through lots of it, and it contains gems from other collections (the aforementioned Duport and Piatti, for example).

There's also a very neat scales book called The Art of Scales. It's no Flesch or Galamian, but it has an interesting approach where each page is devoted to a key and you're presented with a variety of arpeggios, double stops, excerpts, etc for each key. It keeps things varied and covers lots of bases once you've already got your foundational work down.

Trumpet takes a long time to learn how to play well, but picking it up is not terribly difficult. The biggest problem you'll notice when you start is the finesse it takes to play high notes. It uses muscles that you've probably never used before and It will take a while for you to even be able to play one octave.

Rubank Elementary method is a good place to start. Then move on to Intermediate. http://www.hornplace.com/BB038.html .

Once you have those under your belt, Arban's is the trumpet bible http://www.amazon.com/Arbans-Complete-Method-Trumpet-Platinum/dp/0825858526 . That book will keep you busy for a lifetime.

If you ever need help or have questions, feel free to message me.

A couple of channels that are good are:
Kent Hewitt (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmjw5sm9Kn83TB_rA_QBCw): This guy is old school and can actually play. His overall production isn't flashy at all but the content is solid and he adds free sheet music.

Dave Frank (https://www.youtube.com/user/Dfrankjazz): I am not crazy about his playing style but he is a good educator. His lessons are well organized and the content is legit.


Also the Jazz Piano book by Mark Levine is a must-have (https://www.amazon.ca/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151). You need to be able to read music but that is something you should learn anyways.

As for the freejazzlessons guy, it's a personal opinion but I find him hacky and mediocre.


Finally, if you want some books to get started I can PM you some stuff I own.

Check out this book. It's what i started with in addition to the Noad book. Some of the pieces are harder than others, but some are easy and still sound great. Listen to the CD and then check the music for pieces you like to see if they look easy enough. Some of the first i learned were Malaguena and Roman Castillo.

I have this one, which I use frequently. It may be a bit more modern than you're looking for. It definitely has some of the old standards, but it also has some more recent stuff.

This one also looks promising and has good reviews, but I'm not familiar with it.

The arrangements are fairly simple and can be a bit sparse, but they also provide chords and you can fill in where you need to. I find they're great for the kind of thing you're talking about- people can just request a song from the list and you can sight read it well enough to be recognizable.

Yeah, looking here on Amazon, it looks they have a few used in great condition for a little over $20. This is the Field and Battle collection, which is decent, the best piece by far which is Xion's song.

The standard sheet music book, shown here, I like a bit more. The pieces' difficulties vary as well, with Roxas being barely into advanced, and my personal favorite, Concert Paraphrase on Dearly Beloved, being one of the most difficult pieces I've ever worked on.

Jazz scales, modal scales, arpeggios. Those have to be part of your "vocabulary" if you're gonna create "poetry" on the spot. A good starting place is to listen to LOTS of jazz and start noticing how they construct solos. It's not random. They tend to either use a rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic motive (or all 3) which gets treated like a small scale theme/variations. Also--it's ok to "compose" your solos ahead of time. It's a myth that great soloists pull the solo out of nowhere. If they do, it's a stringing-together of already pre-defined ideas like scales, arpeggios, and motives.

edited to add*
Jazz Piano bible: The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine

Buy a Hanon book.

If you've been playing a good bit, get the original.

If you're really just getting started, consider getting the junior book. Most of the exercises serve the same purpose, the notation is just a bit easier to read.

Each exercise is a little different, and focuses on different skills and techniques that will help you boost finger strength and dexterity.

I'm in almost the same boat as you. I bought Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506412955&sr=8-1&keywords=jazz+piano it's totally brilliant and I don't think learning to sight read is mandatory if you want to get going, but it's probably advisable.

I'm trying to learn to sight read through Sight Reading Factory - you pay a fixed amount each year and get endless small bits of sheet music to go through. This addresses the big problem with learning to read - once you've heard the piece you're playing, you tend to focus less on the dots and more on the sounds, which is why a huge supply of new music is so worthwhile.
https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/

Good luck :)

Practicing your endurance is the key. When you practice on your own, I'd recommend the Irons book which will help both flexibility and endurance, and try working up a few of the Arban's Characteristic Studies or the Charlier Etudes. Being able to play those etudes top to bottom have helped me a lot. Good luck!

What is your favorite genre? I recently bought the great american songbook which is just a compilation of popular jazz, pop, and broadway songs from the early 20th century. I have been reading through like 5 songs a day with a metronome at a slow tempo, and i have already improved a ton after just one week! I play piano, but the book also has lyrics, so it would be great for you too, i think.

It would help if we knew more about your own level of knowledge too. For instance I could recommend Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony or Levine's Jazz Piano Book but those books expect a lot out of their readers, so you may be better off with simpler books.

One book I liked a lot was Carl Humphries The Piano Handbook. It doesn't assume you know much and goes over a lot of material without a lot of depth. It might be a good starting point. It has something to say about pretty much every musical style from 1400 to today.

EDIT: I just reread your post and see you already have the piano handbook.

As a six-month player you probably need to work on physical technique more than anything. And you'll need a teacher for that. :( Can you find one to even meet once a month for 30 minutes?

I suggest you pick up a book for beginners, like this one maybe.

The Guitar Wiki is also a good resource for you I think.

Also make your way over to youtube, you will find tons of videos on guitar at all levels.

These are a few great ways to start to familiarize yourself with your instrument and playing the guitar in general.

Hope that helps

Chord extensions are just how you voice chords beyond the fifth. You just use scales and keep counting upwards, 9ths, 11ths...

Inversions are just chords with the lowest note moved to the top of the chord.

C-E-G-B
1st inversion
E-G-B-C
2nd inversion
G-B-C-E

Inversions let you change the flavor of a chord or play chord progressions with minimal movement. IOW you can play progressions without having to bound up and down the keyboard.

As far as chops, I don't really know. I have found this to be an excellent free online resource:

http://www.jazzguitar.be

A lot of people think this one of the best jazz piano resources out there:
http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151

Right. Okay so this is one of the books that I used...Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar and it talks about learning 'phrases.' So like...break the song down into different pieces/parts...whether that be verse/chorus or whatever...and then practice those different phrases. Rocksmith 2014 does this with 'riff repeater.' I've used that quite a bit to perfect different pieces in a slow, controlled way. Good luck and please let me know if you have any other questions!!!

Technique: Scottsbasslessons.com, hell, he JUST made a technique video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxWdiSZbjXw&list=UUWTj3vCqkQIsrTGSm4kM34g

Theory/reading music: musictheory.net and https://www.youtube.com/user/musictheoryguy note: he uses British terms for notes (what Americans call a 16th note, they call a semi quaver)

Scales: http://www.amazon.com/GT3-Grimoire-Complete-Adam-Kadmon/dp/0825821819/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412919788&sr=1-1&keywords=bass+grimoire . You need to know Major and minor in "zombie mode". To the point where you don't think about where the notes are, you just play them. Not saying it happens overnight, but those scales are 98%+ of what modern music uses.

This has every scale you'll ever need...and more. It has scales that are super esoteric but can be useful (one of my favorite lines I made has a F Hirojoshi scale!)

Note: the circle of fifths is on the cover. It is crucial that you memorize it and understand what it means. Father Christmas Got Dad An Electric Blanket. Blanket Exploded And Dad Got Charred Feet. Once you see the circle, you'll understand what these devices are referring to.

You're right that breathing is not just about bringing in more air. You could take the biggest breath in the world, but if you don't have any breath control and you only use a thimble-full of air to play, it's not really doing you any good.

Language is weird and typing about this stuff can lead to confusion, but I would not use the word "push" to describe how we use air when we play trumpet.

Here's a few book recommendations that have good information and exercises:

The Breathing Book, by David Vining

The Buzzing Book by James Thompson

27 Groups of Exercises by Earl D. Irons

I also recommend checking out the Breathing Gym:

The Breathing Gym (Book & DVD) by Sam Palafian and Patrick Sheridan

>https://www.amazon.ca/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151

Thanks!

Do you have the Mark Levine books? What's the difference between his "Jazz Theory" book and the "Jazz Piano" book?

I would love some book recommendations, please do PM me (:

Pure theory alone will not improve your technique on any instrument, but will enable you to understand the mechanics of the music being played, and communicate it to another musician. You might consider applying your knowledge to extended chords and harmonies available in Jazz. Books by the following would be useful:

• Mickey Baker - Book 1 and Book 2;
  
  
• Ted Greene;
  
  
• Mick Goodrick;
  
  
• Frank Gambale - Book 1 and Book 2
  
  ---
  An answer with useful music theory resources that I gave recently:
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/4h5i2y/question_which_book_should_i_read_to_understand/d2njtxs

Is orchestration, composition and harmony something you've studied quite a bit on? Like, have you grabbed a few books on the subject and dug in? The orchestra is a fickle mistress, especially when migrating from another, non-orchestra related, genre. If you haven't studied one or any of those things, it will make the learning process a living hell. Thankfully, the orchestra has been around for hundreds of years, so there is a massive amount of knowledge out there to pull from.

These lists are "start to finish" kind of lists. Do them in order and you should be alright. One will be a "quick start" list (not as much to read) and another will be a "long haul" list (way way more to read).



Quick start (a few months of study)

1. Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book
   
   
2. Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition
   
   
3. Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration
   
   
   Long haul list (will probably take you a (few) year(s) to complete):
   
   
4. Schoenbergs Theory of Harmony or Pistons Harmony plus workbook
   
   
5. Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition
   
   
6. Mark Levins Jazz Piano Book
   
   
7. Sam Adler's The Study of Orchestration vol. 4 plus Workbook
   
   
   I hope these resources can help a bit, if you decide to take the plunge. If not, there are tons of resources at openmusictheory.com that should be helpful.

What I'm going to say, I'm not saying maliciously. You need to stop being short-sighted and wanting instant gratification. You're not very good right now and you're not going to be good for a while. You need to make a practice schedule and stick to it. The tone, range, dexterity, and reading skills will come eventually through hard-work and dedication.

This is a great website for ear-training: http://www.musictheory.net/exercises

Beginning books: Clarke, Irons, Schlossberg

Good beginning pieces to work towards, (I've included links to videos and purchasing sites): Charlier Etudes 1 & 2, Leroy Anderson's Trumpeter's Lullaby, Handel's Aria Con Variazioni, Jules Levy's Grand Russian Fantasia

If you would like to end with Chopin, you only need to study tonal theory. So twelve tone topics are not of any use since that topic is 20th century, after tonality.

If you didn't do voice leading (SATB harmony): Are you interested in voice leading? If you want to get to the more advanced topics of tonal theory, you'll need to cover that. If so I would suggest this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Musicians-Guide-Theory-Analysis-Third/dp/0393600491/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535936804&sr=1-1&keywords=clendinning+theory

Have you done species counterpoint? Species counterpoint will be very helpful in dealing with just about all music. I would recommend Fux's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535936929&sr=1-1&keywords=fux+counterpoint

If you've already done species counterpoint: For more advanced counterpoint (not useful for Chopin, but necessary for anything with fugues in it, obviously) I would suggest Mann's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Fugue-Dover-Books-Music/dp/0486254399

For a complete discussion of forms I would suggest Berry's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Music-2nd-Wallace-Berry/dp/0133292851

For an in depth and modern discussion of sonata theory (remember that symphonies are also often times in sonata form), I would suggest Hepokoski's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Sonata-Theory-Deformations-Late-Eighteenth-Century/dp/0199773912/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535937360&sr=1-1&keywords=hepokoski+sonata

If you already know species counterpoint and voice leading you can study Schenkarian Analysis. For this there's two books I would suggest:

https://www.amazon.com/Analysis-Tonal-Music-Schenkerian-Approach/dp/0199732477/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535937496&sr=1-1&keywords=schenkerian+analysis

https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Analysis-Schenkerian-David-Damschroder/dp/0393283798/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535937488&sr=1-2&keywords=schenkerian+analysis

​

If you're interested in composition, that's the other side of the coin and so all the above are of limited use. Let me know if you want books for composition.

I have a habit of buying music books but then never really using them. What did you like about that book, pros and cons? How'd it help you?

I would also recommend the Bass Grimoire if you want scales, scales and nothing but scales.

There's an out of print book called Counterpoint in the Style of JS Bach

http://www.amazon.com/Counterpoint-Style-J-S-Thomas-Benjamin/dp/0028702808

I've only worked with the canon chapter out of that one, but it was really really well done - knowledgeable but also well written (kind of a rare combination int theory books ;)

My understanding is that a lot of the content was republished in "The Craft of Tonal Counterpoint" http://www.amazon.com/Craft-Tonal-Counterpoint-Thomas-Benjamin/ (same author)

I haven't used this book yet, so I can't recommend it. But hopefully your will library will have it?

It's always tough to hear this, but there's really nothing better than listening to your favorite recordings and transcribing everything you hear.

But... if you're just getting started and looking for a book, I highly recommend "The Jazz Piano Book" by Mark Levine

I picked this up several years into playing, and wished I found it sooner. He gives transcribed examples of the topic at hand from classic recordings, instead of just dumping a bunch of theory and voicings on you. (the theory is there too, but it's much more accessible the way he goes about it.)

If you don't already have them, go find the classic recordings he references, and listen until your ears bleed.

If you're really serious about it, go ahead and transcribe the full piano parts (including the comps, not just the solos) and you'll be well on your way

Links!

Chord Chemistry - Ted Greene

The Advancing Guitarist - Mick Goodrick

Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar: Book 1

Also, remember that 85% of odd jazz chords that come about, you should be able to work out. -Maj7? Min7 chord with a sharp 7. 7b5? 7 chord with a flat five. Chords with tensions can generally be played without the tensions, so G13 can easily be G7. However, you will loose some nuance. As for jazz solos? Totally not a jazz guitarist. My rock soloing didn't go well with my jazz teachers. However, I was given some fantastic advice: Even if you don't play a style, solo in it like you would normally because that is where you are comfortable. If you find the groove, you'll fit.

JustinGuitar is awesome, if you are JUST beginning I really found this book to be fun / motivating to get you started also

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Absolute-Beginners-Daniel-Emery/dp/0982599803/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416441749&sr=8-3&keywords=learn+guitar

I am mostly into classical at the moment, but I would really-really love to start entering the jazz-part of the Piano at a point, is it easily readable for jazz-beginners?

EDIT:

This one?

Lawrence Stone's Stick Control & Master Studies by Joe Morello

Great books to utilize while simultaneously working your sheet music skills. Good luck

100% agree on books.
The best one I've seen for beginners is: Guitar for Absolute Beginners.
http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Absolute-Beginners-Daniel-Emery/dp/0982599803
It's the only one who actually sticks to what beginners should learn and nothing more. It's also pretty funny and a 'light' read.

But still, a book alone really isn't enough unless you are completely obsessed with learning at all costs (and have extra time)

>I was wondering if having a classical background was something necessary in learning to play jazz

No, not in the slightest. Your classical background is helpful, but jazz is a very different musical form with very different theory and technique. Most of the greatest jazz players had no classical training whatsoever.

I recommend The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine. It was written for experienced classical pianists who are switching over to jazz.

I highly suggest you buy the platinum version. It has spiral rings that allow for the pages to easily turn and STAY turned (and that makes a BIG deal if you tend to get angry during practice like I'm sure most of us do)

The prices I saw in this entry are extravagant save for the $34 "collectible"; you may as well buy it at a music retailer for ~$50.

I took up Jazz Piano a few years back. The guy I took lessons from recommended this book. It is, hands down, the most useful jazz piano book, arguably best jazz book overall, that I have ever run across. It has all kinds of theory and improv techniques with quotable licks and riffs from a number of jazz standards. You cant go wrong with this book.

Mickey Bakers Complete Course in Jazz Guitar

While the book is labelled as a jazz guitar resource, really what you're getting is a set of really good lessons which will instill a lot of habits that strong playing skills are based on. I must warn you though; the lessons can be tedious (he makes you transpose a lot) but they're very effective if you follow through with them.

Thanks! And these are all from the Kingdom Hearts Piano Collections book!

I suggest flex exercises for the range. I use "Advanced Lip Flexibilities for Trumpet" https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Flexibilities-Trumpet-Complete-Volumes/dp/B000JSM5QU

My motivation usually comes from having to play in situations where I feel like I fail. So when I was asked to improv and couldn't do it, I started on a journey to get better.

My instructor has me practicing patterns in all keys (like ii V I patterns), transcribing jazz solos and practicing improv over increasingly more complicated changes.

If you're going to print it you might as well just buy a published version, the pages will be larger and better quality and easier to read, it's on Amazon for $3.99:

http://www.amazon.com/Virtuoso-Pianist-Sixty-Exercises-Piano/dp/tags-on-product/0793551218

I recommend Mickey Baker's Jazz Guitar Course to get quicly going with easy jazz strumming (really useful turnarounds and all), and Ted Greene's Jazz Guitar Single Note Soloing for some nice'n'easy soloing ideas over major, dominant and minor chords. Ymmv though

I would also recommend:

Advanced Lip Flexibilities for Trumpet by Dr. Charles Colin

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JSM5QU


And all the Etudes by Hering are nice too.

I can highly recommend "The Jazz Piano Book". It covers a lot of ground and is very readable. Best jazz book I ever bought. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151/

1. It IS available! http://www.amazon.com/Battlestar-Galactica-Songbook-Piano-Solo/dp/1617803677
   
2. Can't vouch for Linux software. I use Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Sibelius as primary software
   
3. Haven't jammed with those guys.
   
4. That heavy synthesizer pulse you're hearing is a combination of a number of synths, run through a number of processors including amp simulators and distortions. The pulsing sound comes from an LFO (low frequency oscillator) on a synth filter. Fun stuff!
   
5. No concert in Houston, but I'm going to be there at Galacticon! Maybe I'll play a little piano if the crowd wants to hear it ;)

A few quick questions?

1. Will the sheet music for Kara Remembers be available? Awesome tune by the way.
   EDIT: It's here, derp: http://www.amazon.com/Battlestar-Galactica-Songbook-Piano-Solo/dp/1617803677
   
   
2. What tools do you use? And if someone wanted to get started on the cheap, would you recommend Linux audio software/hardware (assuming you've tried it)?
   
   
3. Have you jammed with Zimmer, Newton-Howard, Williams, Jablonsky, any of those guys? If not, what kind of project would it take to make it so?
   
   
4. More technical: For the dark haunting pulsing beat in the soundtrack in the later episodes of the Walking Dead, how did you make it?
   
   
5. Concert in Houston? And can you sign MP3s? lol (though it might be possible as a pgp message in the comments section in the id3 tags...)
   
   Thanks!

Mickey Baker's book is a great resource for developing your comping skills and helps to connect the dots with musically coherent ideas. The second half of the book is on soloing, but I highly recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0825652804/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478195849&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=mickey+baker+jazz+guitar+book+1

I love singing old classical jazzy music! It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside...I don't get a chance to perform very often, but I could use more sheet music like this :)

Check out the Youtube channel jazz2511 and his website http://www.bushgrafts.com

Also highly recommend Luke Gillespie's Stylistic II/V/I Voicings book

Mark Levine's Jazz Piano book is also popularly recommended, as is Randy Halberstadt's Metaphors for the Musician.

Get these books; I wish I had them when I first started. They work in synergy, developing your tone, range, lip flexibility, and finger speed tremendously.

Systematic Approach to Daily Practice: I call this my "flagship" book because it tells when and how to use the other two books, as well as provide its own tone-and-range-work.

Clarke's Technical Studies: Develops finger speed and endurance.

Walter Smith's Lip Flexibilities: Develops range and lip speed.

And, lastly, a book not normally part of the Systematic Approach,
A Physical Approach to Playing Trumpet: Posture, breathing, hand position, embouchure, etc.

I'm not an expert on trumpet or anything by a longshot, but these books helped me tremendously.

Oh, I almost forgot: Arban's. Basically the Bible of trumpets.

get this:

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369855129&sr=8-1&keywords=jazz+piano+book


and a copy of The Real Book.


The Mark Levine book will tell you which songs to practice and how to practice them. If you really want to learn jazz, don't simply imitate it by learning pre-written arrangements on sheet music. Learn to play from a lead sheet and you will have much more fun.

Hey, OP. Here's a video series on the chords from a book many of the jazz guitarists from my generation and earlier started with, Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar: Book 1. This will get you playing a good many of the common "jazz guitar" chords you'll need to play in a big band or small group setting.

Here are my accessories in a backpack I take to every gig:

• Snark Tuner
  
• Sansamp Bass Driver DI
  
• Two extra 9V Batteries
  
• Vitamin C
  
• Herb Wong's Jazz Fakebook
  
• Two cables (I should be carrying two more)
  
• Pen
  
• Blank sheet music
  
• Strepsils (I sing)
  
• Two sets of earplugs
  
• Folder containing repertoire and lyrics of our set
  
• Extra set of strings
  
  I hope this helps!

Yes as /u/nonnein points out, this is called implied counterpoint, and Bach was a true master of this and uses it in almost every piece. Listen to the Chaconne from the 2nd Violin partita for an absolute tour-de-force of this. If you know a little bit of music theory, then there's a great book Counterpoint in the Style of J.S. Bach by Thomas Benjamin that will give you some insight into it.

As to actually how Bach's mind worked, I think it's pretty hard for us mere mortals to reallllllly get it, but we can try.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Colin-Advanced-Flexibilities-Trumpet-Complete-x/dp/B000JSM5QU this has always been my go-to warmup book, and for more complex exercises to improve specific technique, I use my Arban Cornet Method (http://www.musicroom.com/se/id_no/023130/details.html)

Hope this helps :)

The Mark Levine Jazz piano book has been known to be a good one. I"m just starting too and i had the jazz instructor at my university recommend it. here's an amazon link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0961470151/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

I listed that one too. The music is amazing! And now Bear has released a piano book with that music: http://www.amazon.com/Battlestar-Galactica-Songbook-Piano-Solo/dp/1617803677

And he even plays many of the pieces as they are in the book on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuDQzr9Ryh8

This book is fantastic for learning to play jazz:

Jazz Piano Book

Nice job!

I noticed you lift your fingers quite a bit from the fretboard, especially your pinky. If you're looking to improve your mechanics a bit, check out Troy Stetina's Book. It helped me quite a bit.

Mark Levine Jazz Piano Book!

That, and a teacher (If you're not down with jazz harmony to begin with)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151

And of course, Real Book :)

I was looking at this book at SamAsh last week, lols pretty interesting.

>Method book

https://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151


What about this? I don't play a lot of piano and I have a keyboard (61 keys), still worth it? I don't mind investing in it if you think I can do it. I have done classical theory (still doing) for a while. Do you think my knowledge will help in Jazz?


>Yes, this is called dominant substitution. The first one is commonly called tritone substitution (C7 to F7). The second two are a little more exotic, and come from Barry Harris's theory.

Ah, yes! So, CEGBb - GbBbDbFb or F#A#C#E. So, Eb7 and A7 are Barry Harris's theory, huh? Ok.
Did he mention it somewhere or... was it in the books?


I am guessing you saying

>A G7sus4 chord is normally voiced as C-F-A (4-7-9).

Is because of this

>First of all, Cmaj7 with a 9 is Cmaj9. C9 is C7 with a 9.


This is all so juicy to learn but I dont want to spread myself thin than what I already am.

Kingdom Hearts Piano Collections (sheet music) (free sheet music)

Final Fantasy XIII Piano Collections (free sheet music)

And Jennifer Thomas' work

The Real Book is a popular one. I've also heard good things about the New Real Book.

Um....

The Great American Songbook on Amazon

V2

And the one, I think, with the most utility for OP

For improvisation, Dave Frank's Joy of Improv books are good for working through. Here's his full DVD going over the very basics.

For comping and jazz harmony in general, Matt Levine's Jazz Piano Book.

I don't know how to make your playing interesting but to get faster I recommend Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar book

The Levine book is usually the go-to book for jazz pianists:

https://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549422911&sr=1-1&keywords=jazz+piano+book+mark+levine

Make sure to use your ears a lot, sing what you play, transcribe a ton, take your time and concentrate!

I'm getting ready to go to school to get my teaching certification, so I can teach music in schools. I can't guarantee that I could do that if I wasn't single.

[This] (http://www.amazon.com/Manuscript-Paper-Standard-Wire-Bound-Stave/dp/0881884995/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394292306&sr=8-1&keywords=blank+sheet+music) would be very helpful to me.

The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine is a great jazz course, aimed at pianists who are already reasonably proficient.

This book is a great resource for jazz theory and piano chords.

https://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151

Drummers / Percussionists should purchase Master Studies by Joe Morello. I've used his book for years (my teacher studied with Joe), and I've since used them with my students.

Master Studies II is out as well and is just as good.

These books are a more modern version of George Stone's Stick Control.

Some of my favorites:

Messaien - The Techniques of my Musical Language

Straus - Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory

Ross - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Chinen - Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century

Gottschalk - Experimental Music Since 1970

Perle - Serial Composition and Atonality

Xenakis - Formalized Music: Thought a d Mathematics in Music

Mann - The Study of Fugue

The Jazz Piano Book is a fantastic place to start.

There are two ways you could go about this:

Way one: grab a comprehensive reference like The Bass Grimoire. Matching scales to chords turns out to be a vast database.

Way two: Learn some basic music theory regarding chord construction, inversions, and substitutions. This applies across keys and once you know it you can match a scale to a chord on the fly.

1. Get Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar
   
2. Practice.
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit.

are you asking about hand independence or developing even playing with both hands? and can you read music?

a short answer assuming some things: get Master Studies by Joe Morello, and start with the Stone Killers. Work your non dominant hand more than your other.

Wikipedia, for sure. It's got great information on every kind of chord, what modes are, what makes an arpeggio, etc etc

I don't use many guitar books, but I'm still working through Speed Mechanics, and it's been several months since I bought it. It's just exercises, though, so it's not really 'helpful', per se.

Mark Levines' book on jazz piano covers pretty much all of pop music theory.


http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/0961470151

This book Has helped me a whole lot through the years. It teaches finger position and technique and picking. It's a really good book.

[Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book] (https://amzn.com/0961470151) is a really good place to start especially if you already know some basics.

This is an easy set of spanish-style songs. It includes a CD for reference.

Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book is considered the standard jazz piano book. Between that and a good teacher you should be set.

The Mark Levine books The Jazz Theory Book and The Jazz Piano Book are both good resources.

If you can find an hour a day for this which is available at larger guitar shops, it will keep you busy learning the basics for a year or two. A good investment.

You don't need theory for this book. It might teach you some.

The Bass Grimoire might be a helpful resource.

get this book and practice out of it every day. your lip slurs will be powerful.

Mark Levine's book is the standard work. I recommend working through it.

If you'd like something physical, you can instead purchase a manuscript notebook to write in.

https://www.amazon.com/Manuscript-Paper-Standard-Wire-Bound-Stave/dp/0881884995

2 things: jazz piano teacher, and this book.


Also, play a lot with other people & improvise.

I've got Nelson's book too. It's a good book too, but I think it's not a patch on another Stetina book... "Speed Mechanics" : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speed-Mechanics-Lead-Guitar-Stetina/dp/0793509629

(Damn, Troy... you should be paying me man!)

This one is pretty much the standard Real Book, based on my experience.

Personally, I'm partial to this version, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone else actually use it.

Any drummer worth his salt has learnt from Master Studies by Joe Morello

Learn Jazz Guitar theory. Then start to learn some of the Jazz standards.

After playing Jazz guitar at a somewhat novice level for a few years I have decided to study this book. Apparently this is the book.

Who the hell told you counterpoint was easy to learn?

No, my friend, counterpoint is the pinnacle of composition. It's dreaded by every music major and even the theory/composition majors have a healthy fear of it.

I don't really know of any online source that can teach you what you need to know, either. Maybe some theory, but not counterpoint. You need to get a book and diligently work through the exercises. I recommend Study of Counterpoint: From Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum, Kennan's Counterpoint and Mann's The Study of Fugue for this. Check out both the Fux and the Kennan first and decide on one, then if you find that you want to go deeper go ahead and get the book on fugue study.

Here's one:
https://www.amazon.ca/Mickey-Bakers-Complete-Course-Guitar/dp/0825652804
I did get the name wrong to a degree.
But importantly, this link has a fair amount of material that explains the book:
http://www.jazzandhotguitar.com/