Intro to Chord Progressions/Need a Book

[Chris Walker]

I am looking for suggestions on an excercise book to improve my id of chord progressions and playing through the chords rather than through the scales. A book that was suggested to me was "The Vandoren Etude and Exercise Book for Saxophone ".
I have been playing since 8th grade and I am now 37. To my detriment I took off my 2nd year of college and picked up 6 years later. I primarily play gospel and jazz. I have the major, minor, and blues scales down but that is where it stops. Is this the right book or is there another I should look at?

[Rackety Sax]

<<playing through the chords rather than through the scales>>

For that I recommend Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony by Bert Ligon. It's got a heavy though not exclusive emphasis on ii-V-I in major and minor, but it's a brilliant antidote to the prevailing "play this scale over this chord" school of introductory jazz education.

[Fltenor]

Jerry Cocker's Patterns for Jazz (Has helped me learned both scales and chords)
The Serious Jazz Book II by Barry Finnerty, The Harmonic approach.

[hgiles]

You should learn a few standard chord progressions which contain well, standard chord progressions. After a while you realize other tunes just rearrange phrases.

e.g. Instead of ii-V7-I-I, some tunes are I-I-ii-V7

You start to hear these things after a while. Blues changes are easy to recognize. Rhythm changes are easy to recognize. Learn this kind of stuff first. Books? This is the path that helped me the most:

Aebersold Vol1: How to Improvise and Play Jazz
http://www.amazon.com/Vol-Play-Jazz-.../dp/B0002J6I8M


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


Berklee Press Arranging

http://www.berkleepress.com/catalog/...oduct_id=11371

[Matt Otto]

There's also lots of great "free" resources here.
Check out Tim, Doron, Neff, Pete

and my sites:


http://mattotto.org/

I'm sure there's many more great websites with excellent free content...

[Souportwenty]

If you have an device (iphone, ipod, macbook, ipod touch, etc.) that can download the "ireal" app, it has many chord progressions and will also play them for you. You can change the key and also change the tempo. That and some advice on which ones to tackle first could keep you busy for a long time.

[Chris Walker]

Thanks for all the input! This is plenty to work with. Please feel free to leave any input as I get over this plateau!

[shaunwoo]

Help.. I have the pdf version of Jamey Aebersold's Vol 1. (sent to me by a friend) It's a great book but the copy I have did not include the chords progression for Eb instruments. I just need that most important part of the book.

[Nefertiti]

Help.. I have the pdf version of Jamey Aebersold's Vol 1. (sent to me by a friend) It's a great book but the copy I have did not include the chords progression for Eb instruments. I just need that most important part of the book.

Just write out each chord down 3 half steps from where it is written. C would be A, Ab would be F, etc..........

[gary]

He said he wants a book on connecting chords. Isolated licks don't do anything but hang there if you don't know how to connect them.

Chris, Shelly Berg wrote a superb book, "Jazz Improvisation: The Goal Note Method". You can google it and see if that's helpful. It comes with a DVD. The backing trio cooks.

You don't really say what your capabilities are. Here's an older version of a Berklee theory course that might help you. http://davidvaldez.blogspot.com/2006...rmony-1-4.html

[shaunwoo]

I got it. Found the missing sheets in a Spanish version of the book