Jazz Fiddle Wizard Book/Cd Set

Rating:
Summary: Full set of lessons teaching improvisation techniques.
Review: A very good practical tutorial for teaching improvisation. The book builds up your improvisational skills, each lesson incorporating the skill learned in the previous lesson. Each lesson includes detailed instructions for developing your technique, this book is certainly a good find.

I have found the lessons hard work, so you must be prepared to put in a lot of practice. The book is also not explicit in all details and you are required to use a bit of imagination and common sense when just being told to 'improvise'.

I feel a bit of background information about the different techniques being introduced would be interesting. Early on 'bebop scales' are introduced but there is little explanation of where and how these originated. Clearly early swing jazz fiddlers such Stephane Grappelli and Joe Venuti would not have used bebop techniques since the bebop era followed the swing era, but there is no mention of any of this.

You should also be prepared to invest in a Stuff Smith CD, since some lessons refer to his work and it seems to me it is important to listen to some of his solos. No example solo's are included on the CD, the CD contains backing tracks.

This book is packed with lessons and I have not seen anything else quite like it for teaching jazz fiddle.