Mickey Baker's Jazz Guitar

Rating:
Summary: A Classic jazz method instruction book
Review: This is the book that was used in my college music workshop course years ago. I still have a copy of it, and parts of this book are very good- there is a single page at the beginning that has about 40 very unusual chords with unique fingerings that the author insists you must learn right away. There is a method here which involves learning chord progressions and then choosing substitute chords within the same harmonic progression. Thats basically what jazz is all about- improvisation. However some parts of this books are just too difficult for jazz beginners, and you will need to know how to read staff line music to understand the lead solo guitar part of the book. For chords this book is just fine. I learned some interesting progressions from this book which I still play- another great jazz book is Arnie Berle's Chords and Progressions for Jazz and Popular Guitar. Learning this style of music is so much more rewarding than just blasting out another distorted heavy-metal riff.