Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music [Spiral-bound]

Jimmy Amadie (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0961303506 | ISBN-13: 978-0961303501 | Publication Date: December 28, 2009 | Edition: Third

This book teaches the student how to construct, embellish and notate chords that will enable him/her to create chord voicings and harmonize melodies applicable to jazz and commercial music.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jimmy Amadie is recognized world-wide as a jazz musician, educator, teacher and author. His texts: Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music, and Jazz Improv: How to Play It and Teach It, are used in more than 35 countries including Australia and Japan with information on the texts published in English, Italian, German, French and Japanese. Mr. Amadie has been pianist/composer in Woody Herman's Big Band, Mel Torme's personal accompanist, co-author of compositions with Steve Allen and composer/conductor for the National Football Film scores. Mr. Amadie records for TP Recordings and his CD's are currently available: Always With Me - Solo Jazz Piano; Savoring Every Note - Solo Jazz Piano; In a Trio Setting - Jimmy Amadie Trio; Let's Groove! - Jimmy Amadie Trio special with special guest Phil Woods; A Tribute to Tony Bennett - Jimmy Amadie Trio with special guest Phil Woods; The Philadelphia Story - Jimmy Amadie Trio with special guests Benny Golson, Randy Brecker and Lew Tabackin; and his new CD, Kindred Spirits - Jimmy Amadie Trio with special guests Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano and Lew Tabackin. In addition to teaching privately, he has taught at Berklee College of Music in Boston and is currently teaching at Villanova University for their summer programs.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 168 pages
• Publisher: Thornton Publishing; Third edition (December 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0961303506
• ISBN-13: 978-0961303501
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely learner friendly yet instructive and effective, May 17, 2002

By 

"christopher_nguyen" (Redwood Shores, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music (Spiral-bound)

Of all the how-to-play jazz books I've gone over, this one stands out for being just "plain English". About the most exotic musical terms you will find here are "Augmented 11th". But Amadie manages with only this to show you his unique method to construct chord voicings that are simple, straightforward, yet surprisingly varied and creative.

I appreciate the plain and deliberate pace of the text instructions, like someone is talking to you, but still precise and definitely not sloppy like some other books.

There are many different paths to building the foundation for jazz playing, and this is one of the most accessible. It is my favorite (contrast this with, e.g., Modern Jazz Piano by Brian Waite). Even if you are already an accomplished player, you might be pleasantly surprised by Amadie's method (he calls it the Amadiean Creed).

What you will learn:
1. How to quickly and flexibly voice a variety of chords (major, minor, m7, dom7, dim) with various embellishments (6, 7, 9, 10, ...), all using the same technique.
2. How to harmonize these with a melody.

What you will NOT learn:
1. How to improvise. It's simply not covered. That's in the title: Harmonic Foundation (only).

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Learning Resource for the Aspiring Jazz Pianist !, October 31, 2000

By 

Eddie Landsberg "My 10th year as a reviewer !... (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music (Spiral-bound)

Philadelphia had (until his recent passing) been home to the quintesential Jazz Sensei/Guru, Dennis Sandole. Yet, in the shadows of Dennis's studio down town, this here city has another great sensei to offer the world...

It is impossible to play Jazz without learning how to use your tones... You need them to make chords, you need them to form solos, and until you have mastered them, entire world's of ideas will be beyond your reach. The irony of it all is, over any chord, there really aren't but 7 tones you can use.

This incredible book will take you step by step through that process of finding and putting them together. I have used it with myself, I use it with my students. Work through this book and never again will any voicing or chord seem too challenging to make, play or even solo over on the spot. It will improve your ability to use fake books, to make chord notations, and ultimately your hearing.

Jimmy Amadia may have re-invented the wheel, but he's done so brilliantly... and in a manner that leads to a brilliant economy of style, both in terms of learning and performance.

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making the complex simple, so your playing can be as complex as you want., April 30, 2006

By 

N. Maxwell (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music (Spiral-bound)

Jimmy Amadie is one of the most brilliant people living. He is in that little group of people who figured out that you could communicate by talking, that clothing keeps you warm, and that the explosion of igniting gasoline can be controlled and used to propel automobiles. He is a Ray Kurzweil of music theory education. When Amadie came to music education he found insane chord notations, and statements showing little understanding, like "you can play a C chord over a D minor chord", and jazz education that produced dead comping, repeating the same voicings over and over and over. After much thought and 20 years of honing his educational strategy, Amadie came up with a blindingly simple conception of harmony and chord voicings, and then went on to develop an amazingly effective method of conveying the conception so that players were infinitely inventive and comping becomes as creative as a lead solo.

Here are some of the core concepts: There are only four chords: major, minor, minor 7th, and 7th (dominant). All chords that you might create turn out to be harmonically in one group or another. If you want, you can freak out about your favorite notation, but often you're not freaking about the notes, the harmony, or the voicing. Often, you're just stuck in what you call the chord.

Every voicing can be acheived with two notes in the left hand and three in the right. This system makes Amadie's approach work extremely well for players of other instruments who want to explore harmony on the piano or would like to be able to provide a little support on the piano. This is not a system that depends on piano chops.

All the wild and weird notes that you can add are . . . wait for the suspense . . . embellishments. That's it. Nothing fancier and nothing less.

As you work with the book, expect it to take you about a year or two. You can sit down and read all the words in a day, but you won't have followed Amadie's assignments and you won't have integrated the harmony and voicings into your playing. And, if you read it all in one day, the book may not make a lot of sense. You probably won't get it. You have to work your way through it.

Along the way, you will find that your ear has changed. You will hear 6ths, 7ths, diminished 9ths, and so on. And you will find your improvising changes. This is not a book about improvising, but it necessarily changes what each note of a chord's mode means to you, and that will give you more power to create what you're aiming for in your solos.

Every system produces a type of sound. Some systems, like Baroque and surfer, are very limitting, and everyone following the system sounds a lot alike. Once you have mastered Amadie's system, you may alter it to create a sound that is outside what Amadie sets the foundation for. But even if you stay inside his system, you can cover a range of music from Swing, through Bebop, Cool, Smooth, Modal, Fusion, to Free. Trad (Dixieland) requires that you hold back on the embellishments more than Amadie recommends, as does most of the pop tradition, including Rock and Roll.

I studied this book in 1981. 25 years later, I am still overwhelmingly grateful to Mr. Amadie for the gift he provided by discovering this conception of harmony and this way to master the concept.