Berklee Jazz Piano – Piano Method Book | Learn Jazz Chords, Scales, and Improvisation | Includes Online Audio | Jazz Instruction from Berklee College of Music

Berklee Jazz Piano Book by Ray Santisi is a wonderful book about jazz piano techniques, harmony, pentatonic patterns, compositions, rhythm tracks to play along with, modernistic jazz concepts and most of all, the tried and true methods that the author Ray Santisi has used with his students at Berklee for over 50 + years. Ray is still teaching at Berklee and playing gigs in Boston every week. Mr Santisi taught Keith Jarrett, Diana Krall and many other noted and famous jazz musicians. As a former Berklee student myself in the 70's and studying jazz piano privately with Mr Santisi personally, I can attest to the exceptional value of going through the book at your own pace, using what works for you and hearing the exercises and drills filter in the student's style to keep advancing to higher levels in the art. If the student takes the time to play through the book even 10-20 daily for a month, a significant improvement will be noticed in the performance. Another plus about buying the book is; an enclosed CD of the drills and examples plus the play along rhythm tracks and original compositions played by Mr Santisi or his advanced students to get an idea of how the exercises sound in real time. Many jazz piano technique books don't include a CD, so this is really like getting a freebie CD with Berklee Jazz Piano. Some pianists are not good at sight reading and can transcribe music faster by ear, so the CD comes in handy for this purpose. Just pop the CD into ITunes and you're ready to rock..(jazz). Although this book is geared more toward medium to advanced jazz piano students or classical pianists needing additional sources for jazz piano techniques, beginning students could use it as a method book with the guidance of a jazz piano teacher. I will also use it myself if I start teaching modern keyboard styles in the new year 2011. Berklee Jazz Piano by Ray Santisi is a great text which teaches jazz piano techniques in a concise and necessary manner, easily understood and applied to the student's needs and desires to grow as a jazz pianist. You also can't beat the price of the book being offered here at Amazon.

A terrific book by a legendary teacher. It's an excellent way to learn jazz piano for beginners or refresh your skills if you haven't played jazz in a while. Some reviewers ask about the missing CD. The audio tracks are now on the publisher's website. The first page shows the url and provides the access code. After you create an account and log in, you can download the tracks or play them online.

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.

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.

Una excelente obra para el aprendizaje del piano en este género musical.

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 good guys..it is really a jazz piano book that you could keep in your shelves. It would be a complement to Jazz Piano Book (Mark Levine). Furthermore, this is a very professional book..you will really find stuffs as detailed, and new topics that is new to Jazz Piano books, like Pianitization. Detailed lessons on compings which is very helpful, has some walking bass concepts explained...much much more !! Overall, I absolutely recommend this book to any Jazz Pianist !!! Seriously guys and girls !!

Gostei muito do livro

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.

j'ai été ravi de découvrir la réflexion d'un enseignant de grande qualité, qui a fait l'effort de partager sa vision de la transmission de ses ouvertures à l'improvisation aux générations qui le suivront.

Wirklich gutes Werk für Fortgeschrittene .. ... .. Doch aber leider muss man schon selbst üben - schade . .

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