Improvising Jazz Piano

✍ Scribed by John Mehegan

• Publisher: Amsco Publications :, Exclusive distributors, Music Sales Corp
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 101
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

As much as I really don't like to give a poor review, especially to a book written by Mehegan, who left a mark of merit before he passed, I have to agree with the above reviewers that this book is not all that great. I am not a jazz pianist; in fact, I'm not even a good pianist. But I have tried, for a long time, to "get the gist" of jazz improvisation, and I've not yet succeeded. I've discovered two things, though: One, I think the jazz greats are to be greatly admired. When they combine intuition with practice, truly wonderful things come from those artists; and two (and I'm just guessing here), some of us may not be hardwired for jazz. And I may be one of those.

Anyway, I greatly appreciate the above reviewer's call on this work: his observation regarding the "dictionaries"; and his frustration regarding "the point behind showing every chord in every key and every single mode." However, I used that part of Mehegan's text to my advantage--but not to learn to improvise. I used it as a reference when I was writing my book. And though I did pick up his book by chance, it turned out that the demonstration of all those scales--in all those keys--proved invaluable. The mechanics of constructing chords in different keys may not seem important to some, but regarding truly accurate chord notation, it is critical. So, for me personally, I benefited greatly from this aspect of the text. However, that personally positive feature is not enough to warrant giving the book a higher rating. Reluctantly, then, I give this book only three stars.

And incidentally, my next music book purchase will surely be the Levine book, "The Jazz Piano Book." That should do the trick.

Joseph L. D'Agostino, author of "Modern Music Systems: a new perspective on music scales, clefs, and chords"