![]() Along with “The Great American Songbook”, to which jazz has made numerous contributions, the jazz tradition has bequeathed us an enormous quantity and variety of original music. Be that as it may, the goal here is to give students some insight into a great musical tradition that appears now to be passing into history. Exceptions to this glum observation might be jazz pianists, who are typically the resident music theorists of the groups they play with, and budding composers and arrangers (who are also very likely pianists of at least modest accomplishment). ![]() Preface Why write a book like this? It’s unlikely to be to the taste of many music students, most of whom find music theory - of both the traditional and the jazz varieties - boring and irrelevant. This experience sparked my interest in jazz harmony, which ultimately led to the writing of this book. She introduced me to pop chord notation and showed me how she developed piano accompaniments to popular songs from the chord symbols in sheet music. For many years, Mom was the rehearsal pianist at a ballet/tap/jazz dance school and had to produce piano arrangements of all kinds of music on short notice. Finally, I have to thank my late, multi-talented mother, Marge Smith. I've often wished we could all get together for a reunion jam session, but we've long since gone our separate ways and, sadly, members of both groups have already passed on. In the second were Joe Goodman, Pete Plonsky, and Bob Shechtman. In the first group were Bill Campbell, Lynn Eberhart, Bill Sprague, Vic Weinrich, and Bernie Yaged. ![]() During those years, I was fortunate to fall in with two different groups of musicians who were willing to jam for hours simply for the enjoyment of playing and learning. I learned jazz by playing with some talented musicians in high school and college. The book is far better than it would have been without her assistance. She read several drafts of this book, providing innumerable useful suggestions, pointing out errors and weaknesses in my presentation, and asking many thought-provoking questions. The task of actually writing the book was made much easier and more enjoyable by my colleague, friend, and current boss, Paula Telesco, who served as both gadfly and cheerleader on this project. I was so impressed by their desire to gain a deeper understanding of jazz that I simply couldn't say no to their request to provide a course for them. Jaclyn, Chad, and Maxxx encouraged me to create the jazz theory course for which this book was written. He assigned me to direct the Jazz Lab, which made it possible for me to work with young jazz musicians again. Moylan welcomed me back into the Music Department after a 21-year stint in Computer Science. ![]() This project would probably never have come to completion had it not been for my boss, William Moylan (professor of Music and former Chairperson of the UMass Lowell Department of Music) and my 2003-2004 Jazz Lab ensemble students - especially Jaclyn Soep, Chad Gosselin, and M. But then, for lack of a compelling reason to begin writing, I would just put them away again. Every now and then I would take them out and add or change a few things. I had developed a detailed set of notes for such a book, but the notes spent most of their time languishing in my file cabinet. S.S.Īcknowledgments Since the earliest days of my teaching career at UMass Lowell, I had thought about writing a book on jazz theory. Remark attributed to Albert Einstein Jazz theory is simple. Things should be made as simple as possible.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |