Customer Reviews

Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music

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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).

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.

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.

I am a mediocre piano player with some knowledge of chords, majors, minors, diminished, 10ths, 7ths, 9ths, etc..., but lack a real understanding of how to properly structure and use the chords when I play. I often struggle with creating the right harmony of notes.

I just started reading and practicing the first chapter and analyzing how Jimmy Amadie's instruction fits my style of creating chords. So far I can say Jimmy's chord structure rules are excellent. Over the next year or two I hope to work through each page of the book and practice at my leisure using his guidance to fully enhance my sound.

I am very pleased and look forward to what I will learn in each chapter right through to the very last page.

There are several things that make this, I believe, the best starting point for a pianist who has no prior experience playing jazz, regardless of whether they are competent in other styles of music.

First, Amadie does not beat around the bush or make the vague, unsubstantiated statements often found in other jazz books. You will not find advice like "play what you hear in your head", or "improvise over these modes." Instead, you will find a complete, immediately useful system for voicing chords and an intelligent sequence of practical exercises for learning this system and getting it under your fingers. It is two-handed voicing for Major, Minor-Major, Minor 7, Dominant, and Diminished chords and their extensions (9ths, 13s, augmented, etc). Both his explanations and practical exercises are digestible. He neither dives too quickly into complicated material nor limits himself to treading shallow water.

Second, this is a manual rather than a book. His writing is no-nonsense and no frills. Amadie is not trying to meet a quota of words. He doesn't try to fill pages with useless verbage. I personally find this refreshing. It fits my learning style.

The book is light on theory and heavy on method and exercise. I believe this is the proper way to learn to play. It puts the chords and scales under your fingers first. You have the satisfaction of playing proper voicings and being able to instantly apply what you've learned to lead sheets and fakebooks. As you become familiar with the relationships between the notes and chords - as it becomes second nature and you no longer have to think about it - two things will happen: (a) your natural curiosity will result in figuring out some of the theory on your own, and (b) the theory when explained to you will make more sense and require less thought due to your newly-found familiarity with the keyboard.

Third, I am a firm believer that those who teach should also be able to "do." Amadie is a very good jazz pianist. Go to his website and listen to samples. Read his biography.

Fourth, you are never left wondering what notes to play. It's all there for you. You don't need to think about it, you just need to practice it.

Summary: In "The Harmonic Foundation" Amadie shows you how to construct jazz voicings on the chords you find in lead sheets and fake books. It also shows you how to convert the simple chords written for any song (basic major and minor chords), into the embellished chords with extended harmonics. Each chord can be voiced in many different ways. It's up to you which voicings to use as you play a song. The exercises include the application of the method to real songs; in these songs the student must use what they've learned to provide voicings for the chord changes.

Working through this book the student will learn the full range of chords required in playing jazz, how to voice them, and will practice them enough in all keys as to be able to follow along in fake books.

I think Amadie deserves a lot of credit for breaking down an art form into its quintessential building blocks and sharing that information with us.

After the order, I received the item in good time. It arrived in excellent condition and was packed very securely. I would purchase from this seller again.

A true original is a rariety, indeed. Amadie more than qualifies in that department. His Amadiean Creed, found in these pages, will more than attest to that. So-Read, enjoy and learn!

Jimmy Amadie's Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music fills some bars that should have been written some time ago-and in the right key!