Continuing on my series on reading
I want to review a book called jazz exercises, minuets etudes and pieces for piano.
at first glance you may feel this book is rather simple and tame it doesent really sound too jazzy at first
but if you got a chance to listen to mary mcfartland interview Oscar he stated that he did a lot of czerny to get his finger work together.
this book is about handling fingering at rapid paces
lets face it the best solos sometimes do a lot of intervval leaping and the goal is to keep your line swinging as smooth as possible
you cnat just have the right notes your fingers have to be properly placed and strengthened and condition to handle the lines.
this book gives you that foundation
what I have noticed is that although the pieces are easy to play
they arent necessarily easy to play quickly
if you try to bring the first piece up to about 150 BPM you will be tripping over your self
you have to get the fingering down
which is the corener stone of effective runs/
I strongly recommend this book for those of you who read and want to begin to sharpen their technique but may not have a lot of time
or who arent storng on theory but need to get into soloing.
Oscar was a great teaccher and this book is geared for the beginningh jazzers who want to solo
there are no performance tempos but I just try to get them up to a jazz tempo which to me is at least 140
