It attempts to tackle the difficult issue of learning tunes.
The book has some good ideas as well as some hopeless pedagogical
traps. As usual, the buyer of jazz education books must beware.
People used to learn tunes by playing them on gigs every night for
long periods of time. Of course this was easier for some than others.
Also, these tunes used to be the "music of the day", being sung by
all the name singers, on every radio station, etc.
The opportunities for entry level players to get this kind of exposure
to tunes in a working situation has largely disappeared owing to changes
in the popular music of the day, the invention of good sound systems,
lifestyle changes (people don't go out drinking/driving so much to
restaurants, bars, clubs), etc.
So now, the aspiring musicians has the daunting task of learning the
basic repretoire at home before being able to reach the professional
level.
Professionals for the most part are not at gigs with fakebooks.
They know the tunes. Of course there are degrees to this. SOme top artists
have skipped the step of being a local working musician and may have
a very limited repretoire.
For most of us though, we won't get too far without getting this
basic vocabulary down as a practical matter. Depending on your job,
you need to know more or less tunes.
For example, most professionals would be pretty surprised if they called
"Take the A Train" and you didnt know the chords.
Of course depending on the era and orientations of players, different
tunes would be essential.
For example, lots of older swing era players might now a zillion tunes
but not be able to play "Beautiful Love" or "Stella By Starlight".
One side note on this book that is very puzzling.
"After You've Gone" does not start on the I chord!!!!!!!!!!!!
I first saw this mistake in a Frank Mantooth chord sub book for which David
Baker was the editor. They had rewritten the key signature of the tune
to accomodate this.
In any case, this tune starts on the IV chord, goes to iv (commonly subsituted
with the dominant chord in which the iv is treated as a ii). Thus it
starts like "Just Friends" in the respect. Our old friend the minor plagal
cadence.
Interestingly enough, "Just Friends" is classified correctly.
However in "After You've Gone", the minor chord is frequently forgetten
these days.
Thus we see in Bb,
Eb | Ab7 | Bb | ....
The Ab7 is really more of a Ebm6/Ab .
reed
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com