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The Jazz Chord/Scale Handbook: A Comprehensive Organizational Guide to Scales and Chords Found in Jazz and Contemporary Music
The Jazz Chord/Scale Handbook provides a concise yet comprehensive reference source for chord/scale theory. This is not a "how to" book, but rather a systemized guide to identifying, organizing, and understanding the relationships between virtually all the common (and uncommon) scale/chord relationships used in jazz improvisation and composition. Based on the principle of harmonic systems, the handbook organizes all the modes of major, melodic and harmonic minor, harmonic major, as well as nine different symmetric scales, various pentatonic scales, the blues scale(s) and more. Most importantly, each scale is presented with appropriate modal and functional chord voicings, information about common usage, and examples from the recorded jazz literature.
4 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2015
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December 21, 2021
This is a quick read but I suggest having an instrument on hand to play some of the examples found in the book. While you can just read through it and observe the chords/scales and their unique character, you can get more out of it by hearing them. I used a piano on the Garage Band app of my phone, since most of my reading was while traveling.
This book would be useful for beginners, like myself, and advanced jazz musicians, but also for those interested in composition who are interested in exploring sounds outside the Major Parent Scale and its respective modes. I not only enjoyed the short musics examples you could play through, but also the suggested listening for each mode, and the comparisons on how bright versus how dark the chord/scales are when compared with each other. I noticed a few mistakes in the book but nothing that seem egregious. For example, on the Locrian Natural 6 chapter they spelled out the chord in thirds up to the 13th, but they wrote a flat before the 13 symbol for the chord, when it should have just been a natural 13 (aka natural 6). It’s not uncommon to find these mistakes in music, so I barely batted an eye at it and figured I would just make a quick mention of it here.
I enjoyed this good read and took my time reading and playing these examples, hoping to use some of them in my own playing one day. It’s a wealth of knowledge that could take a lifetime to work through.
This book would be useful for beginners, like myself, and advanced jazz musicians, but also for those interested in composition who are interested in exploring sounds outside the Major Parent Scale and its respective modes. I not only enjoyed the short musics examples you could play through, but also the suggested listening for each mode, and the comparisons on how bright versus how dark the chord/scales are when compared with each other. I noticed a few mistakes in the book but nothing that seem egregious. For example, on the Locrian Natural 6 chapter they spelled out the chord in thirds up to the 13th, but they wrote a flat before the 13 symbol for the chord, when it should have just been a natural 13 (aka natural 6). It’s not uncommon to find these mistakes in music, so I barely batted an eye at it and figured I would just make a quick mention of it here.
I enjoyed this good read and took my time reading and playing these examples, hoping to use some of them in my own playing one day. It’s a wealth of knowledge that could take a lifetime to work through.
Displaying 1 of 1 review