Customer Reviews

Chords and Progressions For Jazz and Popular Keyboard - Baker

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, Kenneth shows you different kinds of chord progression, mostly leading to the Tonic ( I chord ). He explains the use of all kinds of chords, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, etc. and how these can be applied in your chord progressions. Examples are given and there are just tons of information on how to add 'color' to your progressions. An excellent book.

This book notes at the beginning that it is intended for amateurs with no knowledge of theory, and is not intended to equip the user to play professionally. As long as readers/buyers keep this point in mind, they should be happy with their purchase. I already knew how to construct major, minor, diminished, augmented, 6, 7, 9, 11 and 13 chords built on thirds, so this book did not advance my knowledge very much. However it did contain some good pointers about where chord voicings can be used most effectively on the keyboard.

If you need a working knowledge of basic-to-intermediate chord voicings on the keyboard, this book is not a bad place to start. If you want to develop the knowledge and skills to play jazz gigs, don't bother. Better starting points for that would be books like Solo Jazz Piano: The Linear Approach or The Jazz Piano Book.

A 'Guiding Light' to Progressions. This book takes you from basic chord construction to advanced chord structures and progressions with simple illustrations and clearly defined instructions. I highly recommend this book to keyboardists who needs to quickly expand their C&P repertoire. Add this book to your library.

The author introduces this book as intended for the amatuer keyboard player. He uses a non traditional approach to teach chords. Usually, you first learn a scale, and then you learn which notes of that scale form different chords. The new perspective is to use semi-tones or half notes to count up from the bottom note.

For example, a major chord is usually described as the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of a major scale. This book would describe a major chord as 4-3, that is, starting from the base note count up 4 half notes to find the second tone of the chord and then count up 3 from there to find the 3rd tone of the chord.

Using this approach you can follow his guide to create all kinds of chords, simple and strange jazz chords alike - all without knowing any scales.

And if you do know your scales, but favor some more than others, you can use this approach to transpose chords into scales that are less familiar to you. What a great resource!

This book makes chords easy. Get it!

Very good book. It helped me alot being that i am just a noob! lol.

This book gives you what you need, succinctly--it might add a few more progressions and the reasons behind them but it gives you all the basic knowledge clearly.