Customer Reviews

Blues & Jazz Complete

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I wish I would have read reviews before getting this book. The CDs that come with the book are horrible. He must have recorded these on the cheapest Casio keyboard that he found on sale at Toys R Us. The book is poorly organized and the selection of content isn't that great. I'd recommend to anyone considering this purchase to look elsewhere.

Dr. Konowitz presents a thorough, pedagogically sound introduction to blues and jazz. The book is spiral bound, so it lays flat on your music stand. A variety of blues and jazz techniques are meticulously illustrated. New chords are introduced with a nice full page guide to the keyboard fingering. It is a bit cookie cutter, but having the fingering written out below and above the staffs is a plus. My only complaint is that the "band" seems to be a cheesy concoction of General MIDI instruments played through an inadequate sound engine. The CD sound quality is irritating. One word of extra advice: You will not need the CD for the companion book, Chords Complete, because it only contains incidental backing rhythm tracks for the chord exercises. I have four books authored by Konowitz. The sound quality of the CDs are uniformly cheesy except for the Listen and Learn Blues Book published in 2002.

Haven't really plumbed this book in depth. But bits and pieces are helpful (sections on major and minor sevenths, and voicings are very rich.)
As I start applying/practicing some of the techniques, I think I will get a lot more out of it. The author knows his stuff.

I was not impressed with the lessons in this book. The music did not sound like any jazz that I'm familiar with. As another reviewer put it, the music seemed terribly "white bread."

I also found the CD of very little help. As I try to learn to read western music, after studying the verbally imparted music of North India for 20 years, I find that I'm very insecure about reading rhythm. So I turned to the recordings of the lessons on the CD to verify if I'm reading the rhythms properly. No dice. The MIDI orchestration makes it virtually impossible to hear what the piano is doing. A more sensible format would have been to have ONLY the piano playing, with the left hand in one channel and the right hand in the other, so that you can hear each part clearly and distinctly. As it stands on the final product, the CD recordings are a hopeless hodgepodge.

Pass on this book and keep looking if you are interested in learning this music.