Description
Jazz Piano Fundamentals is master-teacher Jeremy Siskind’s welcoming, clear, and detailed guide to the first stages of jazz piano study. Each of the book’s twelve units presents lessons, exercises, licks, activities, listening guides, and practice plans to keep studies organized, productive, and creative.
Step-by-step lessons guide students towards mastery in improvisation, chord symbols, leadsheet reading, voicings, swing rhythm and articulation, comping, playing basslines, personalizing a melody, the blues, bossa nova, and more. Every unit includes frequently asked questions and exclusive video content to ensure that all subjects are presented clearly and with sufficient depth.
This book is designed to be used in conjunction with The Real Book, 6th Edition. Recommended for pianists with knowledge of all major scales and coordination to play a Chopin Nocturne or Bach Invention.
“I love this book – and plan on using it in at my own school. A must for any beginning jazz piano student!”
– Martin Bejerano, jazz pianist/composer and professor, Frost School of Music, University of Miami
“Jazz Piano Fundamentals creates a methodology and answers questions in a way that I have almost never seen done in a jazz educational tome. Jeremy breaks down the practice of improvisation to its smallest building blocks, and is careful to relate each lesson to real-life examples from the jazz canon….This book will be excellent for jazz beginners, players of other instruments who wish to bone up on their piano skills, and advanced improvisers may find ways to fill in gaps in their skill sets “
– Mark Shilansky, pianist/composer, professor, Berklee College of Music
“Jazz Piano Fundamentals is not only a perfect place to start this wonderful journey called Jazz Piano, it’s also also one to come back to… Thank you!!”
– Otmaro Ruiz, Grammy-nominated jazz pianist and professor, UCLA
“Jazz Piano Fundamentals is a reflection on who Jeremy is as a pianist – a true artist who has done his homework. Behind the meticulous attention to detail is a respect for jazz tradition and a desire to help pianists explore their own creativity.”
– Aimee Nolte, jazz pianist/vocalist and YouTube Star
Andy –
I got graduated in piano on my hometown’s music conservatoire. Although, I’ve always been keen onto learning jazz. After seeking through various online ways I can get a structured way yo learn jazz piano without ruining my regular day to day scheduled, I came across Jeremy and this book. Believe me, if you’re looking into having a well structured, organised and make-you-feel-certain-of your learning, this book is your go to.
Santiago Ferrera –
The book is very well planned, and Jeremy’s experience as a teacher shows immediately. I liked the guided listenings a lot, and they really helped me grasp the explained concepts and the structure of the songs better. As many other pianists, I learned from this book through his youtube’s page, where he always shows his love and enthusiasm for the music. I fully recommend his books for self-thought students like myself.
Bethany –
As a classical pianist with an interest in music theory, I like how Jeremy explains the logic of how to play jazz clearly, but more importantly helps us to get through the barrier of where to start and how to have the confidence to build a jazz playing style. There’s a great mix of ‘real music’ to be inspired by with simple drills breaking down one knack at a time, that you can then combine through practice. One brilliant feature is the video clips where Jeremy shows you sample improvisations – nice enough that I could listen all day, and with his trademark endearing humour! I enjoyed learning with it all year and then bought my student a copy for Christmas (and bought myself book 2).
The content covers straight jazz, though always stylishly, and also blues, bossa etc and the beginnings of chromatic altered harmony to help us sound more sophisticated. It’s a great programme but you can also combine elements in the order that you need them to build up your techniques. Recommended and you’ll feel supported through his friendly replies to your comments!
Bethany –
As a classical pianist with an interest in music theory, I like how Jeremy explains the logic of how to play jazz clearly, but more importantly helps us to get through the barrier of where to start and how to have the confidence to build a jazz playing style. There’s a great mix of ‘real music’ to be inspired by with simple drills breaking down one knack at a time, that you can then combine through practice. One brilliant feature is the video clips where Jeremy shows you sample improvisations – nice enough that I could listen all day, and with his trademark endearing humour! I enjoyed learning with it all year and then bought my student a copy for Christmas (and bought myself book 2).
The content covers straight jazz, though always stylishly, and also blues, bossa etc and the beginnings of chromatic altered harmony to help us sound more sophisticated. It’s a great programme but you can also combine elements in the order that you need them to build up your techniques. Recommended, and you’ll feel supported through his friendly replies to your comments!
Calvin –
The best Jazz Piano course; the most engaging, the most passionate, the most fun.
Thomas Kobrick –
Finally a sensibly-paced step-by-step approach to really understanding and applying jazz fundamentals. I’ve taken private jazz lessons, consumed weeks of content, and read all the heavy-hitter books out there. But I always struggled to really understand, and more importantly, to USE the information in my own playing. I so wish I had had these books when I started out. I’m now convinced that the multi-faceted approach that this book takes is the only way to truly learn and understand jazz.
It presents the fundamentals in a very clear way, and more importantly, at a pace that is actually digestible. It reinforces every concept with guided listening exercises which are truly eye and ear-opening, demonstrating how concepts are used in practice by the masters. It also further bolsters your understanding with written exercises, which not only make the concepts more concrete, but they just plain make you a better musician (don’t skip these).
The tone of the books is very approachable and friendly – it feels as though you’re getting private lessons from Jeremy Siskind himself.
With just Book 1, you can go very far, but Book 2 is a no-brainer to continue the journey, giving you a full year of real instruction and many hours of practical advice on how to get this material into your fingers. Highly recommended.
James –
With this book I went from thinking about working on jazz piano again to dedicating myself to the project.
Jeremy’s pedagogical approach directly, systematically, and comprehensively succeeds in engaging what for me has been the greatest challenge in approaching the task of becoming a jazz musician: there are so many things to work on and so many avenues of approach to each of them — not to mention integrating them into one’s own personal musical expression — that one sometimes doesn’t know where to begin or how to structure the work. Not only does this book provide a generative structure for building capacities and knowledge, but it does so in a way that sustains the student’s connection with their individual expressive potential.
Every day when I sit at the piano with this book and begin practicing, I know that by the time the session is done I will have taken another step toward building my musical capacities in a way that I can put into action. I look forward to all I still have to learn from this book before I move on to volume two as well as Jeremy’s “Playing Solo Jazz Piano”.
Mike Attisha –
I’ve tried to learn jazz a number of times over the 40+ years I’ve been playing, and nothing made sense to me until I found this book last year. As a classical pianist, starting with articulation and accessible exercises to practice it was particularly helpful. All the other books I’ve looked at seem to think that teaching you all the chords and scales is a good way to start playing jazz, but this book starts with very basic improvisation right away and gets you playing actual tunes right away, all while teaching you about the mechanics of jazz. The recommended listening pages in each chapter are also really helpful to give the reader an appreciation for the history of jazz and a guide of what to listen for in each track. Highly recommended!
Enzo Monaco –
Jazz Piano Fundamentals series are what I’ve always searched for: a step-by-step guide on jazz piano from the beginning. These books guide you from very basic piano technique, improvisation drills until advanced stuff, like all kinds of chord voicing. Jeremy also teaches how to listen great jazz recordings of all time.
The best collection I’ve seen on the subject!
Alex Chadsey –
Jeremy’s books demystify the process of building competence as a jazz musician by offering a clear, comprehensive, and methodical approach grounded in the recorded history of the music. I use them regularly with my students and as part of my own personal practice. Highly recommended!