Jazz Improv/Scales for Piano

jimi_t

Anyone know of any decent resources? I've playing for over a decade, did most of my ABRSM grades (up to grade 7 theory) and decided I didn't like the way the syllabus was orientated - now I'm getting back into it and am looking for any good pointers for improving over 12 bar blues, accompanying guitar and bass in a jam session, blues and jazz scales etc...

hudie mcmenamin

My old jazz piano teacher recommended the jamey aerbersold play-along books. Have a look at http://www.jazzbooks.com and look at the play along series which is a mixture of theory, some music, and a cd where you can play over a backing band etc.

For blues, I started out by learning the blues scale: 1 b3 4 b5 5 b7 for most of the common keys, and then playing this scale in straight 8s and swinging over a simple left-hand 12 bar blues thing: 1 3 5 6-5
Once you're confident playing both hands together, you can start to mix it up a bit. It takes a fair bit of practise and lessons can be very useful.

For jazz, you generally start off by learning all of the maj7, min7 and dom7 chords in all keys (both hands) and root position and all the inversions! It's not as bad as it sounds...and you just go on from there...

Rigsby

http://www.outsideshore.com/primer might be worth a look. While it's not strong on technique ect. it's full of info on theory and seems to specialise in jazz.

jimi_t

http://www.outsideshore.com/primer/primer/index.html for anyone whos getting a 403. Nice one Rigsby - gives me something to work through for the doldrums of January

Fusion251

I'd recommend this book
http://www.jazzwise.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=859. Well written, good examples, easy to understand!

Cheers
Fusion