Customer Reviews

Berklee Jazz Piano BK/CD

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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.

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.

I own an entire library of "how to" jazz books, and this is easily the best book I have ever come across. It is understandable and has more valuable information per page than any book I have encountered. If you buy just one jazz book, buy this one.

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.

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 !!

Its a good way to learn how jazz codes work for classically trained piano players.

I'm currently studying Jazz piano and got this as an extra guide to help me out this summer before I started. It's a pretty good book with lots of example charts to read from and recordings on the CD to play with or hear. My only complaint is that some of the book and "instructions" aren't written very clearly, leaving you staring at the book asking, "wait, what does it want me to do?" For example it may give you a passage on how to practice a chord progression, but then the example measures it gives you don't follow those instructions.
You just have to glaze over those parts and try to do something close to what those parts must mean, I guess.

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.

The book is great. I don't agree with some of the teaching methods, however. Make sure you are well versed in music theory before purchasing. I was hoping the book would have more on passing chords/ chord substitutions but I still learned several things. I haven't even put the CD in so I can't review that part, but I'm sure the CD compliments the book great because the book is always refering to different tracks on the CD. You can play along with several tunes and the lead sheets are all included.

This book not only covers jazz piano techniques-it covers important harmonic theory.The cd with the book gives excellent examples of the printed music.Santisi is a living legend in jazz piano in Boston.Check out the book!