Text Books

Levine, Mark

The Jazz Piano Book

Levine, Mark

The Jazz Theory Book

Coker, Jerry

How to Listen to Jazz

Coker, Jerry

Patterns for Jazz

This book is amazing. It starts out seeming to be a really boring collection of finger exercises, but by the end it has gone through every harmonic concept discussed in Mark Levine’s books, with almost no discussion, and while actually making you learn it rather than just talking about it.

Russell, George

Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization

How’s that for a title? I just discovered this fascinating book. Written in 1953, it argues for an entirely different way of conceiving of harmony, based on the Lydian mode of the major scale (with a raised 4th). The book is outrageously “scientific.” It starts by looking at the overtone series compared to the equal temperament approximation. (The notes on the piano (i.e. western music generally) are only an approximation of what they “should” be if built on a series of harmonics. Certain of the notes, in particular F# (starting from C) are wildly inaccurate. One semitone in the 12-semitone octave is 100 cents. So counting up from C, F is 500 cents, and F# is 600 cents. But in the series of overtones, the eleventh overtone, which is labeled F#, is 551 cents–only 1/100th of a semitone closer to F# than F! It is on this extremely obscure fact that Russell bases his new theory of harmonics: the scale should have a raised 4th, to be that 1/100th of a semitone closer to the eleventh harmonic. David Bennett has a typically amazing video on equal temperament if you’re interested. It’s encouraging to me that many jazz musicians are as obsessed with the science of harmonics as well as the art. This book was very influential. Miles Davis’s Kinda Blue, for instance, was based on this book. When you see the phrase “modal jazz,” it is referring to harmony that is based on the ideas in this book.