I recommend Mark Levines jazz books to people. I think there is
alot of valuable information in them that basically doesnt not exist
in any other books. I also studied with Mark for a while and learned alot
of things from him.
However....
IMHO, alt scales and diminished scales are a total dead end for
improvising.
I'm almost totally against seeing improvisation as moving from
one chord scale to another. I don't see any of the players
I'm interested in paying attention to things in that way. The
people I listen to are more interested in simplifying the piece
into larger groups of measures that are essentially in one key.
That's how people play those long horn lines that everybody
wishes they could play.
You need to spend some time transcribing and studying transcriptions.
For example, look at all of Charlie Parkers solos and then tell
me that diminished scales or alt scales had anything to do with his
playing.
Even in Marks first book, he claims that Charlie Parker used
diminished scales for dominants. I don't know how he could come
to such a conclusion from transcribing Birds solos.
If one playes a b9 but not a #5, does that mean that he's playing
diminished scales? I don't think so. Only if you have convinced
yourself that there is just Mixolydian, Diminished and Alt.
For example, the modes of the harmonic minor scale are very
important too and provide other ways to view the dominants.
However, I just think of tension choices when it comes to
dominants and sometimes just think of the large key center
that I'm in and don't pay much attention to the dominant.
There are uses for alt and diminished scales but for all of
the players that I study for example, I.e. Bill Evans, Chet Baker,
Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz, Clifford Brown, Tal Farlow,
Jim Hall, ......they play virtually no role whatsoever in their soloing.
I think that alot of the Coltrane derivative players (which I have no personal
interest in at all), use more chord scales and especially alot
of the melodic minor derivative harmony (which includes the alt
scale) . I don't know because their music doesnt interest me and I
don't spend any time transcribing it. However, Mark really likes those
players so he's spent alot of time studying what they do.
What I advise is that people transcribe the solos of people that
they are interested in and figure out what those players are doing.
Using that information you have a better idea of which approaches
will lead to the kind of playing you are interested in.
Getting that information from a book is a bad idea.
Reading books of others helps you to understand ways to think about
music and formulate things but it's not a substitute for you own
personal exploration.
reed
Reed Kotler
http://www.reedkotler.com home of a nice unix like toolset for windows NT/95
http://www.justjazz.com home of a jazz musicians discussion list