There are several great books out there from which you can learn pretty much any style of music
if you can read notes and rhythyms then you can take your pick
if your sight reading is not too good then you should look for books that come with Cd's
the method i am going to propose here is for the intermediate musician
if you pick up a book like jazz piano by mark levine or blues or jazz keyboad by alfred press
or the new jazz books by hal leonard which cover every genre of jazz
and rock
you may want to take a few approaches
one is to take each litttle concept and transpose them into every key this is the most time consuming but defineitelt the fastest way to build your musicianship
another approach is to take the first exercise from each chapter and learn them all then go back and do the second exercise or ecample form each chapter this way you grow in several areas at the same time
some of you feel that you need to malster each technique before moving on
i think it is best to get a firm grasp on it try to apply it in your music and revisit it periodically
you could also take whatever song you are working on and dig into the books and find things that you can employ in your song this way you are using the books like reference material
If you notice each method is geared to a different personality type
this is important because there are three different categories of learners
and you need to figure out which type you are so that youy may choose the correcet method
ther refeerence style is geared to the visual learner who doesent absorb much by readig and is usually shorter with the attention span this method allows quick application of concepts eventually with several exposures the concepts will be understood more completely
the one example from each chapter approach is more for the proffessional musician who needs to learn all aspects of a style it is often that a book will seperate concepts in chapters rhythymn runs left hand harmony etc
so its not always necessary to learn the whole run chapter before undertaking the lefthand chapter
transposing everything is imperative and should not be discarded or overlooked
the kinesthetic learner has no problem with this but the auditory learner may find this method a little tedious just suffer the process the rewards are well worth the effort
every library should have one good chord book
one good theory book
and at least two method books on whatever style you wish to learn
Hap[py reading
