Customer Reviews

Ultimate Play-Along Guitar Just Classic Jazz, Vol 1 (Book & CD)

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

 

 

What beautiful tunes! You'll need some chordal experience to work out the chord melodies, but they're still quite approachable for a willing player. This is really well done and will be a source of inspiration for me for a long time to come. You get a chord melody in notation with chord boxes above, a solo in notation and TAB followed by a Fake Book version with original chords, melody and lyrics.

So why only three stars? Two of the tunes ("Over the Rainbow" and "'Round Midnight") that I bought the book for don't have solos! Come on!!! One other reason is that the solos are short, usually about 16 bars. One last reason is that including a backing track for readers to practice with would make up for all my other concerns. But no backing tracks. EVEN SO, this is quality stuff and enough of it to keep me practicing long and hard.

The above review is in error: the CD does, in fact, contain backing tracks! Young people unfamiliar with stereo music may not understand that the accompanying music CD is recorded on two channels - solos on the left channel, rhythm on the right. To hear the backing track alone, simply turn your stereo balance to the right, or feed only the right channel out from your CD player. That said, this is a terrific jazz course, giving the student many performance-quality classics to learn. Both chord-melody and solos are first rate. Highly recommended for the talented beginner/intermediate jazz player.