Customer Reviews

Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen

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Tom Piazza took on a difficult subject. Explaining how to listen to jazz via the printed word can be a daunting task and the author's approach of selecting several classical jazz recordings for inclusion with the book on a "companion CD" is right on the mark. Piazza approaches each of the tracks individually, often providing stop watch-timed musical analysis--allowing the reader to first read and absorb the technical explanations and then playback the track and engage in focused listening exercises."Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen" is geared towards musically-trained readers eager to add to their knowledge base the intricacies of jazz music--it is not a book for those without any prior knowledge of music theory and terminology. Piazza also succeeds in bringing to life the music through creative use of analogies, thus going beyond explanations of the discussed recordings. He also offers ample of "further listening suggestions." The only thing missing is a glossary containing the most commonly used musical terminology which is not always synonymous with the terminology used in classical music theory. Definitely worth checking out!

The book is great. The best I've read on how to listen to jazz, especially for someone who is a novice.