How to Practice Jazz

by Jerry Coker

An essential book for every jazz musician wishing to organize their practice time and priorities. Ever feel like you have a million things to practice, but you don't know where to start? Jerry condenses his decades in jazz education into a usable, practical book that highlights some of the best ways of dividing your practice time so that you can focus on the essentials, instead of just running over the same scales and tunes with no real direction. Includes a list of most of the Jazz play-along recordings available (by track) and analysis of each. Paperback.

Genres: Music

999 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2010

Reviews

[Zuzana_Jelinkova · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you miss one day of practice, no one notices. If you miss two days, you notice. If you miss three days, your friends notice. And if you miss four or more days of practice, everyone notices!"

[GLF (Seeing better than ever!) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more a book about how to go about practicing Jazz and is not a "method" or a series of musical studies.

The book is intended to inspire and explain rather than demonstrate. Some of the explanations (annoyingly) refer you to other books that Coker or other Jazz Educationalists have written, meaning, in short, that you will not find all the answers fully explained here.

But in it's limited objective to get a musician organised and motivated to practice/play Jazz it is successful.

[Vijay Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm an alto saxophonist. I love jazz and, like all musicians, I try to improve my playing ability day by day. My teacher, whom I respect very much, recommended me to get this book and read it. It has taught me a lot. Ten years ago, when I first started playing, I wasn't sure what was driving me forward and why I wanted to get involved in the world of jazz. Thanks to this book, I was able to discover a method of practice and list of tracks and play-alongs. I highly recommend it to anyone who aspires to be a jazz musician.

[gekko100 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly light, but offers some useful thoughts on how and what to practise when try to learn jazz. Has a useful listing of playalong tunes (including Aebersold and a couple of others), organized according to the particular progressions/scales that can be used with them.