Books that inspired/helped you

[JazzMaverick]

"The Advancing Guitarist" (same as mentioned above)
"The Jazz Theory Book" - (only one of the greatest books ever)
"Music Cognition" by Dowling Harwood
"Harmony and Melody" by Elie Siegmeister

Those are the ones I'm currently reading. Think I'll be reading Jazz Theory book for a fair few years, though!

Thanks for sharing those other books! I'll check them out too!

[wolflen]

ted greene all his books
joe diorio - intervalic designes
howard roberts - sight reading & chord melody
earnist toch - shaping forces in music - this one is good..it punches at the "rules" of theory & harmony

[Bill C]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

I'm going to end up sounding like a Wayne Krantz fanboi (which I'm not, really), but I found his book "Improvisor's OS" quite inspiring.

Book : Wayne Krantz

I'd agree. The pages of "formulae" are somewhat overwhelming to put it mildly, but the second half of the book tells it straight - honest painstaking work yields results. WK has some cool audio lesson downloads on his site where he talks through and demonstrates the ups and downs of the processes outlined in the book. I think Wayne is a great communicator, he seems to have a real gift for illuminating concepts/paradoxes etc.

I also think Barbara Franklin's biography of Ted Greene "My Life With The Chord Chemist" is inspiring in the way it shows Ted's humility, devotion to and love of music in all its shapes and forms.

[fep]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

I'm going to end up sounding like a Wayne Krantz fanboi (which I'm not, really), but I found his book "Improvisor's OS" quite inspiring.

Book : Wayne Krantz

Hey Jeff, I thought your favorite book would be the "Joy of Improv".

Reading your description of that book has put it to the top of my wish list to get once I get through a couple of other books.

[JonnyPac]

I'm super into Bert Ligon's books. Jazz Theory Resources vols I and II are tops. Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony is great too.

I feel like The Jazz Theory Book is a double edged sword. It has some really neat examples but the information is very misleading at times. Be sure to balance studying it with other authors and ideas. Jazzology is a good choice.

Putting together (and revising) my own 90 page guide to CST and such was a lot of work and it forced me to rethink and refine my views. It changed my playing too. Sometimes committing ideas to paper and diagrams can reveal gaps in ones knowledge creating an oppurtunity to grow.

BTW here's the rude awakening review of Levine by Robert Rawlins (Jazzology):
MTO 6.1: Rawlins, Review of Levine

[fep]

Originally Posted by gingerjazz

Hi everyone,just thought it might be great for everyone on here to point out or recommend any books they felt really helped or inspired them.It might also be nice if they could also give a brief explanation as to what they thought was good about it and how they felt it helped them.I will start us off with the book that helped me the most when i felt i knew most of my scales ,chords and arpeggios,but was having trouble making them sound like jazz.The book is called an introduction to jazz guitar soloing by Joe Elliot,and is a musicians institute book.This book focuses mainly on using chord tones and how to move from one arpeggio to the next.It then moves on to how to embelish these tones ,with some demonstrations of enclosures and the like.The book is not expensive and i would recommend it to anyone who is having trouble moving on to the next stage after learning all those arpeggios and scales but cant seem to make music with them.I have loads of other books to recommend but will give someone else a chance first.Bye for now and peace.

Based on your post I bought the book/cd...

Just got it last night and it looks really practical. Much of it will be a review for me, but I spend most my time going over the basics anyways.

What I really like is the primary goals that he sets (at page 2 of the introduction and mentioned elsewhere in the book):

As a developing player, you have two simple goals:
- To acquire a vocabulary (licks you know)
- To acquire a repertoire (songs you know)
(For a song to be "in your repertoire" you must be able to play the melody, improvise a solo, and comp for another soloist-all from memory.)

I think that is a great and concise statement on what I should be spending the majority of my time working on (for me, my repertoire includes writing original tunes so that is also something I'll be working on as I go through the book).

I also like his approach of giving specific assignments for each lesson. This makes it easy to stay on track and have productive practice sessions.

[Jon S]

While it may not be as advanced as some of the other books mentioned, I like Arnie Berle's "Chords and Progressions for Jazz and Popular Guitar". He introduces theory and chords in an easily digestible format.

[kenbennett]

Not a method book, nor theory, but truly inspiring is "The Guitar In Jazz--An Anthology" edited by James Sallis. A collection of essays by guitarists and jazz writers, it covers almost every player you can think of. It was a required book in one of my friends college course work. He gave it to me after finishing that class. I missed many a train station reading this on the way to work last year.