Berklee Jazz Piano

I've played guitar and bass for over 50 year and now it's bucketlist time and learning piano is item one. I started with some other books, but this one has the fundamentals I need to get going on piano so I can start applying things I know from years of guitar on piano.

This is a great book for an intermediate player who already has some exposure to jazz and good reading skills, and who needs to learn the jazz vocabulary and needs ideas and good examples on how to apply it. There are good examples and exercises to get the student playing and learning up to a professional level. And there are plenty of topics taught in a concise and new way not found elsewhere. It is also very applicable if you are learning with a teacher who can use it as a guide.The author Ray Santisi is famously experienced, being a professor of piano at Berklee, etc., and having taught jazz for decades, including some big names such as Diana Krall. And indeed the material is very up to date and relevant, and shows his years of experience, giving you unique ways of understanding some well known topics.Having said that, the book is there to sell copies and does not to give in depth instruction using Berklee's jazz piano teaching methods. Rather, it gives a whirlwind tour of the Berklee method, which covers many topics at a high level. While the examples are effective, and easy to understand and apply, there is a large amount of exercise and instruction missing here. So for example you'll learn some good basics about walking bass and other piano bass lines, a great introduction for the beginner. But after that, you are on your own to sink or swim next time you jam with your quartet or go solo.The result is that the book delivers a bag a of tricks for the jazz pianist, and while they are useful, they sometimes require considerable effort to incorporate into your playing - I bet some of you learning on your own will identify with this.Very useful topics are how to play five and six note voicings, and how to understand modes and apply them to playing situations. And there are many more. However in other places, no context or explanation is given as to where voicing come from, so sometimes you `ll see chords clustered all over the place without explanation. Sometimes the author just becomes too clever, seemingly over complicating some of the voicings (look at those examples on particalization - some examples are not so easy to remember, let alone apply your jazz group!).The bottom line is that to get the most out of this book, firstly you already have understand voicing construction, swing feeling, harmony and some other fundamentals before you get to this book. Secondly you need to work hard to apply these to standards.Other typical frustrating aspects include statements like "now apply these techniques to standards". More examples and exercises please! Learning a style is journey - I need a more detailedroadmap.If you are looking for a single jazz book to get you from beginner to pro, and you are doing it without a teacher, I'd go for Mark Levine's Jazz Piano and use that as my basis, and maybe Santinis book as a supplement. Levine's approach is thorough and the material is clear and practical and shows you how to go from zero to pro over time. This book is too shorthand to help.

I play the piano since decades, but it doesn't mean I know everything. No one does. So I bought Santisi's book to complement my insights with his. He is a great musician.I had a hunch this is going to be an interesting ride when I already disagreed with Santisi on page 1. ("What do you mean, basic jazz chords are sixths and sevenths? All the chords you listed here are sevenths in various inversions. It depends where they lead to, you say? To something third. Unless they are played by Kenny Werner, then he'll resolve them to Z sharp major. Yeah, there's no such scale, but that won't stop Kenny.")I skipped the various ensuing time-honed techniques (render unto Garner the things which are Garner's...) right to page 38 where the good stuff is - yess, fourth voicings! Starting with the same C major diatonic chord chart I worked out too. The second chart is C minor chords. Well, nope. These sound like dominant sus or major to me. For a minor, one uses the 6th, what Santisi exactly warns against. It worked for Bill Evans... and where are the various dominant and modal fourth charts?To make it short, so far I only agree with Santisi on maybe 1 page's worth of stuff out of the whole book, but it's all good. Because this made me go back and research more things on my own, so instead of becoming a weak second version of Santisi, I'll become a strong first me. You cannot ask a musical educator anything better than this.

This book is a short, no-nonsense, accurate presentation of what everyone should know about playing jazz piano. The harmonic, melodic and rhythmic essentials are explained. When he covers modal playing, it is NOT the usual dorian/mixolydian/ionian on ii-V7-I progressions that you find in other method books. He explains them correctly; they are their own unique harmonic framework that is distinct from traditional major/minor key chord progressions. I also think that his information on jazz counterpoint is worth it's weight in gold and it's information that I've not encountered elsewhere.One could spend many thousands of dollars on private lessons and not get the info presented here. It would probably be doubly beneficial if used as a study guide along with a good teacher.

Recommend for anyone studying jazz. This will be some good homework to give yourself.

Study them. You've saved yourself a lot of money. You haven't saved yourself time, because it will still take a long time to master all this info. But if you factor in it e it would have taken to move to Boston to attend Berklee school of music, yes, you've saved yourself time. Buy the whole Berklee series. They are great books.

This is the best book for jazz piano - hands down! Here we get a logical presentation of the various skills needed to become a competent jazz pianist. I met Mr. Santisi a couple of years ago as he was walking into his studio at Berklee. I thanked him for his wonderful book. He simply replied, "We were hoping it would be helpful." I think it is that and more.

I would like to have known a little more about the contents of the book before I purchased the product. Anyway, the writer has done a good work. The book introduces the most important features of the jazz piano playing. The topic is going ahead in a logic way. There are suitable exercises and audioexamples how to progress. I still think that the audioexamples with the band could have been selected more many-sided. There are not so spesific examples of the jazzballad, up-tempo tune etc. I still recommend that book for everyone who wants to progress in playing jazzpiano. Even if You instrument is not a keyboard You can find some benefits from the book.

Excellent

Whilst the book and its content and organization were all good, the format was a simple 'scan' of the paper book and not customized for the (Android) Kindle. The quality of the scan is also not very good, with much of the text and diagrams being somewhat fuzzy. Perhaps it should be described as a 'Print Replica' or similar rather than a 'Kindle Edition' as it's not customized for the Kindle Reader (on Windows Desktop or Android). Not a good value at this price, considering less expensive Kindle-specific books are much easier to use. It's Ok to use on a desktop but the document is effectively unreadable on a phone.

Great book, but definitely for someone who either already has some knowledge of jazz piano, or is taking jazz piano lessons and has a teacher explaining the exercises.

Non è compatibile con il Kindle. Purtroppo il testo non risulta leggibile insieme agli spartiti, anche ingrandendo il font.

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